Call To Regulate The Net Rejected

The internet should not be used as a scapegoat for society's ills, said Vint Cerf, Google's net evangelist and a founding father of the network.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme he rejected calls for strict control of what is put online.

He said the net was just a reflection of the society in which we live.

Anyone regulating beyond what was clearly illegal put themselves on a "slippery slope" that could limit freedom of expression, he said.

"If it's not illegal, it raises a rather interesting question about where you do draw the line," he said.

Mirror image

Mr Cerf's comments come after the UK's Conservative Party floated ideas to curb the access young people have to sites such as YouTube which let them see videos showing extreme or callous violence.

Rather than impose controls centrally, said Mr Cerf, it was far better to put them at the edges of the network where users go online.

For instance, said Mr Cerf, searching for results via Google can be constrained by filters that can be set to be strict or lax.

It was a mistake, said Mr Cerf, to divorce what was seen online from what happens in the real world.

"Most of the content on the network is contributed by the users of the internet," he said. "So what we're seeing on the net is a reflection of the society we live in."

"Maybe it is important for us to look at that society and try to do something about what's happening, what we are seeing

He added: "When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror.

"We have a job to do, collectively as a society, to deal with the problems we discover in the network," said Mr Cerf, "but suppressing the knowledge of what's going isn't going to help us.

"We need to face that problem directly."

Google has a policy of removing video content when it has been flagged as offensive by users. But the company has been criticised for not acting swiftly enough
BBC News

How to Detect Spam Email

Anatomy of a spam e-mail
11 October 2006
A daily chore of modern life for many is the morning trawl through a full inbox deleting spam email. But just where does it all come from and why do spammers use bizarre text, names and images in their emails?

To the expert eye a typical spam is laden with clues to its origin. Click on the links below to find out more.



SENDER
"Iverson Vernie": An implausible name that sounds human to computers if not people. This helps to offset the "spamminess" of the message. Plus it is in capital letters which also helps to bust the scoring systems often used to spot spam.


E-MAIL ADDRESS
"eieeeyuuyuioeeiiayi@fleetlease.com - Clearly fake. All the letters before the @ sign come from the top line of the keyboard starting at the left. The spammer generated this e-mail addresses by running their finger along that line when putting the spam run together.

However, this could provide useful forensic information when tracing spam campaigns or spam groups. Another clue is given by the fact that the company owning the domain, Fleetlease, rents vehicles - there's no reason to think it is really pushing pills.


SUBJECT
Bad spelling marks it as spam as does the exclamation point. But it avoids mentioning what the message is actually about which might help it sneak past some spam filters.


BODY IMAGE
The body of the message is actually an image rather than text. Again this is another trick to defeat spam filters which find it impossible to view what is in bitmap or jpegs.

This image was called from another computer based in Hungary. The net service offered by this company is free which is probably why it is being used as a source for these images. Spammers hate paying for anything.

It could also be a checking mechanism which records which e-mail address responded. "Live" addresses are much more valuable than ones that never react.


ASSOCIATED WEBSITE
This is apparently linked to a company in Wisconsin, but the details held on the net about it are likely to be fake given that there is evidence the server is physically located in South Africa. The server hosting this site hosts another 90, most of which are touting drugs of one kind or another.

The net address for this site is well-known as a source of spam and is actively blocked by many organisations. It is thought to be one of many used by the Yambo Financials spam gang.


EXTRA TEXT
Spammers regularly use large lumps of text to try to convince filtering systems that a message is legitimate. Extracts from books are popular but random text like this is too. What should be noted is that nowhere in this mail does the text actually mention what the message is about. The only mention of the drugs it is offering for sale is in the image.
BBC News

Tips To Help You Stay Safe Online

By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website
7 October 2006

Windows needs help to keep you safe online
There are now thought to be more than 200,000 malicious programs in existence - the vast majority of which are aimed at subverting Windows PCs.

These problem programs can arrive via e-mail, instant messenger, through your internet connection or even your web browser if you visit the wrong website. The threats are so numerous and appear so fast that Windows users must feel under siege.

While there is no doubt that attacks on PC users are getting more sophisticated, it is possible to avoid the vast majority of problems by taking some straight-forward steps and exercising some common sense.

If you are worried about your computer it is possible to scan it via the web to see if it is infected. Companies such as Trend Micro, Kaspersky and Microsoft all offer free scanning services.

Organisations such as the Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) also offer advice on how to set up a safe net connection.


ANTI-VIRUS
The first piece of security software every PC user needs is some anti-virus software. It must also be regularly updated to ensure it protects you against the latest threats.

One of the ways that virus writers try to catch out anti-virus software is by pumping out enormous numbers of variations of their malicious creations. Good anti-virus programs use heuristic techniques to spot viruses that have not been formally identified but have all the characteristics.

Many PCs now come with anti-virus installed and though an annual subscription can seem expensive, it might be cheap when you consider how much it could save you if it stops your bank details being stolen.

As well as retail versions of anti-virus there are now some free programs that do a good job of protecting you. Avira, Avast and AVG all produce free anti-virus software.

Microsoft now sells a package of security programs but, so far, they are only available to US users.


FIREWALL
A firewall is also an essential piece of security software for PC users. Newer versions of Windows XP have a firewall built in and this will give you protection against nuisance attacks and many of the more serious ones.

However some people feel that the Windows XP firewall is a bit limited in its features. Many anti-virus programs have a firewall bundled with them.

There are free firewalls available too from firms such as Comodo and Zone Alarm.

To block some of the attacks it can also be useful to connect to the net via a hub or router. Often these have a firewall built in and, even if not, will do a good job of blocking a lot of the low level attacks.


SPYWARE
Increasingly simply browsing the web can subject you to all kinds of dangers. Specially crafted websites can initiate so-called "drive-by downloads" that exploit weaknesses in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to install programs you never asked for.

At best these will annoy you with pop-up ads, at worst they will let someone else take control of your PC. Anti-spyware software will help stop these taking hold and help you clean up your PC if you do get hit.

There are add-ons for browsers, such as McAfee's Site Advisor that warn you about potentially harmful sites. Also Google has now started warning when you are about to visit a potentially unsafe site. Search sites such as Scandoo will also flag sites loaded with malware.

These days adware tends to be very aggressive and it is far better to avoid an infection than try to clean up afterwards.

Security experts recommend migrating away from Internet Explorer to a browser such as Firefox or Opera. At the very least they say to keep Microsoft's browser up to date with patches.

Anti-spyware activists Suzi Turner and Eric Howes run a website that lists the bogus security products to help you avoid falling victim. Microsoft makes free anti-spyware but there are many other products from firms such as Lavasoft and Spybot.


UPDATE
With Windows it is also important to keep your system up to date. Windows XP now regularly nags people about upgrades and Microsoft produces security patches on a monthly basis.

Microsoft recommends automatic updating so patches are downloaded and applied as soon as they become available. As the time between the announcement of a vulnerability and it being exploited is shrinking, it pays to act quickly.

The other things you can do to stay safe fall into the realm of common sense. To begin with never open an attachment on an e-mail you were not expecting - even if it appears to come from someone you know.

Never reply to spam e-mail messages as that just confirms your address is live and makes it more valuable. Be wary of any e-mailed message about online financial accounts you own. Learn to spot the signs of phishing e-mails.


APPLE
Apple users who feel confident that they are invulnerable to attacks should also take steps to protect themselves.

While virus attacks are virtually unheard of, the platform can be subject to malware and adware.

The firewall on an Apple computer should be switched on and common sense regarding potential phishing attacks should be applied.

STAYING SAFE ONLINE
Use anti-spyware and anti-virus programs
On at least a weekly basis update anti-virus and spyware products
Install a firewall and make sure it is switched on
Make sure updates to your operating system are installed
Take time to educate yourself and family about the risks
Monitor your computer and stay alert to threats
BBC News

Cyber Criminals

Criminals 'may overwhelm the web'
By Tim Weber
Business editor, BBC News website, Davos
25 January 2007

Criminals controlling millions of personal computers are threatening the internet's future, experts have warned.
Up to a quarter of computers on the net may be used by cyber criminals in so-called botnets, said Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet.

Technology writer John Markoff said: "It's as bad as you can imagine, it puts the whole internet at risk."

The panel of leading experts was discussing the future of the internet at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Internet pandemic

Mr Cerf, who is one of the co-developers of the TCP/IP standard that underlies all internet traffic and now works for Google, likened the spread of botnets to a "pandemic".

Of the 600 million computers currently on the internet, between 100 and 150 million were already part of these botnets, Mr Cerf said.

"Despite all that, the net is still working, which is pretty amazing. It's pretty resilient" Vint Cerf

Botnets are made up of large numbers of computers that malicious hackers have brought under their control after infecting them with so-called Trojan virus programs.

While most owners are oblivious to the infection, the networks of tens of thousands of computers are used to launch spam e-mail campaigns, denial-of-service attacks or online fraud schemes.

Net resilience

Mr Markoff, who writes for the New York Times, said that a single botnet at one point used up about 15% of Yahoo's search capacity.

It used retrieved random text snippets to camouflage messages so that its spam e-mail could get past spam filters.

"Despite all that, the net is still working, which is amazing. It's pretty resilient," said Mr Cerf.

The expert panel, among them Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers, and Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, agreed that a solution had to be found to ensure the survival of the web.

But its members were unsure about feasible solutions, even though they identified operating systems and authentication as key issues.

It was still too easy for net criminals to hide their tracks, several panel members said, although they acknowledged that it was probably not desirable that every individual was definitively identifiable.

"Anonymity has its value, and it has its risk," said Jonathan Zittrain, professor for internet governance at the University of Oxford.

Closing doors

Operating systems like Microsoft Windows, meanwhile, still made it too easy for criminals to infiltrate them, the experts said.

Microsoft had done a good job improving security for its latest operating system, Windows Vista, said Mr Markoff.

"It's a known threat, but the numbers I heard today are staggering" -Tim Weber, BBC News website business editor in Davos

But already pirated copies of Vista were circulating in China, even though the consumer launch of Vista has been scheduled for next Tuesday.

Experience showed that about 50% of all pirated Windows programs came with Trojans pre-installed on them, Mr Markoff said.

Mr Dell said the future might bring "disposable virtual PCs", accessed through the internet, that would minimise the threat of a persistent virus infection.

Mr Toure said that whatever the solution, the fight against botnets was a "war" that could only be won if all parties - regulators, governments, telecoms firms, computer users and hardware and software makers - worked together.

BBC News

Watching Me, Watching You

Bill Thompson tries not to worry whether the NSA is reading his e-mail

In the late 1970s the US was still recovering from Watergate, the scandal that forced President Richard Nixon to resign after revelations of a dirty-tricks campaign against political rivals which involved illegal surveillance.

Partly in response to the crisis, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, limiting the president's freedom to monitor US citizens without a warrant while providing rather more to bug foreigners or the agents of foreign powers when they were on US soil.

The goal was to strike a balance between people's freedom to go about their daily lives unobserved and the need to investigate serious crime, stop terrorism and keep those same people safe.

Bigger net

Finding the restrictions rather too onerous following the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor phone calls and other communications from US citizens believed to have a connection to al-Qaeda without going to the trouble of getting a warrant.

And when the legality of this "warrantless wiretapping" was challenged President Bush persuaded Congress to amend FISA by passing the Protect America Act, which became law on 5 August.

It is the latest piece in a jigsaw of new laws, regulations and interpretations of existing laws and even the US Constitution which, taken together, provide a legal basis for the most extensive programme of domestic and international surveillance ever undertaken by a government.

"Perhaps we need to rethink our reliance on the US for our network services, if the government there persists in treating every non-US citizen as a source of intelligence data rather than an individual with their own rights and freedoms" Bill Thompson

And over the years to come its coverage, both electronic and non-electronic, will extend to millions or even billions of people, few of whom will have any real connection to terror or even criminality.

The US is not alone in wanting to collect this sort of information, of course.

EU governments want phone companies and net providers to retain information on customers for months or even years so police and the secret services can look at it when investigating terrorist offences.

But even hardline countries like the UK only want to keep what is called "traffic information", a list of websites visited or e-mails sent and received. Nobody is suggesting that the content of every e-mail or the data entered on every web form should be retained or monitored.

The US authorities will not be so reticent, we can be sure.

Coupled with the vast increases in network speed, data storage capacities and computer processing power, the well-funded NSA will soon be able to read and perhaps even store every e-mail or instant message that crosses over a US-based or owned network.

And the resulting databases will be used for purposes far broader than the stated goal of countering terrorism and keeping the US safe.

Once the data has been acquired and stored and collated there will be so many other useful things to do with it.

Back in 2000 the European Parliament reported that data gathered using the Echelon covert surveillance programme, which incidentally features in the new CIA thriller The Bourne Ultimatum, was being used for industrial espionage by US firms.

We can be sure that new systems will also be exploited for the commercial as well as the political advantage of the US, although the target may in future be China rather than Europe, reflecting the shifting balance of the world's economy.

Cafe culture

In light of the wholesale surveillance of online activities, putting information about my friends and business contacts onto Facebook seems rather tame, but knowing what is going on should encourage us all to take a more cautious approach to what we say and do online.

Reading about the new US laws and the extensions to the UK's Regulations of Investigatory Powers Act induces a state of network paranoia, where I'm convinced that everything I type is being sent to the NSA, and wonder whether the little camera in my laptop is even now secretly transmitting an image of my furrowed brow to the secret police.

But I'll get over it.

As we all know, it is impossible to live in a state of constant suspicion, and we will adapt to this new reality just as we have adapted to the presence of CCTV cameras on the streets and in the shopping malls where we spend so much of our time.

I'm writing this in a cafe, and looking up I can see the clear plastic dome of a camera fixed inconspicuously in the ceiling, watching me type.

My phone is sat next to me, telling anyone with access to the cellular network that I'm here too. And I've just told Twitter where I am so my friends can find me.

It may not seem worth worrying if the NSA, CIA, FBI and every other secret agency in the world wants to join the party.

But it does matter.

I can choose to live without a mobile, avoid cafes that insist on spying on their customers and stop using Twitter. I can campaign against the local authority's decision to install CCTV in my town, argue with my local MP about the limits of the state's right to watch what I'm doing, and influence the debate in this country or even more widely in Europe.

But I have no control, influence or even clear understanding of what the government of a supposedly friendly superpower is doing with the information it gleans from Google, Facebook, Linden Labs, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple and the many other US corporations that service my online life.

Perhaps we need to rethink our reliance on the US for our network services, if the government there persists in treating every non-US citizen as a source of intelligence data rather than an individual with their own rights and freedoms.
Source: BBC News

60 Rumor Spreaders Warned

China arrests or warns 60 for spreading rumors


BEIJING (Reuters) - Police in east China have arrested or warned 60 people for spreading rumors by SMS or on the Internet so far this year and specified the threat of modern communications to society, state media said on Tuesday.

China has an army of cyber-police who patrol the Internet for unfavorable content, but their targets are more often politically sensitive subjects than pornography.

Xia Cunxi, a public security spokesman in the eastern province of Jiangsu, said 60 were accused of spreading rumors, lies or offensive messages, the official China Daily said in its online edition.

"Rumors spread by modern means of communication can be a greater menace to society than those spread by word of mouth," Xia was quoted as saying.

The report did not specify how the cases were dealt with or how many suspects were arrested and charged.

In one case, police in July detained two men who sent text messages to more than 200 relatives or friends, claiming people with AIDS were spreading the disease by using toothpicks at restaurants and returning them to their containers, it said.

An Internet posting alleged that police chased a man riding a motorcycle with his son on the back, causing the death of the son who had won a place in a prestigious university.

In April, police launched an immediate investigation after a posting claimed a school in Jiangsu would be the site of a shooting spree with a death toll exceeding that of the Virginia Tech shootings in the United States just days earlier.
Reuters

Wireless "Piggybackers"

Wireless "piggybackers" beware -- you'll be arrested

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - If you think it's a clever moneysaver to sneak on to someone else's wireless network for free Internet access in Britain, then be prepared to see a policeman appear on your doorstep.

British police said on Wednesday they had arrested two people and given them legal cautions for "piggybacking", the term coined for using someone else's wireless Internet connection without permission.

The practice, which sharply divides Internet users, has been fuelled by the rapid growth of fast wireless broadband in homes and the average consumer's failure to secure their networks.

On Saturday, a man was arrested after neighbors spotted him using a laptop computer to browse the Internet while sitting in a car outside a home in the central English town of Redditch.

A 29-year-old woman was also arrested in a car in a similar incident in the same area last month.

Both received an official caution, a formal warning one step short of prosecution, for "dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment".

They were among the first to be arrested for piggy-backing in Britain. Gregory Straszkiewicz, from west London, was the first person to be convicted of the offence in 2005. He was fined 500 pounds ($1,005) and give a 12-month conditional discharge.

"Wireless networks don't stop at the walls of your home," said PC Tony Humphreys, of West Mercia Constabulary. "Without the necessary protection, your neighbors or people in the road outside may be able to connect to your network."

There is a lively ethical debate in Internet chatrooms about whether piggy-backing is immoral or harmless.

"If it travels through the air it is open season," wrote one contributor to a Web forum. Another wrote: "If it's out there unsecured and I'm not trespassing, it's fair game."

Up to a quarter of home wireless connections are unsecured, according to a recent survey by the consumer finance Web site www.moneysupermarket.com.

Jason Lloyd, the site's head of broadband, said it left people open to identity theft, fraud and pornography being downloaded using their account.

"The repercussions can be severe," he said. "It's bad enough when your neighbors can use your Internet connection freely, but this becomes far more sinister if someone uses your wireless connection for criminal activity."

Businesses are also at risk. A survey of 320 companies by the London trade show Infosecurity Europe found that a quarter have no wireless security policy.
Reuters

Broadband "Theft"

Briton held over wireless broadband "theft"

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters Life!) - A 39-year-old Briton has been arrested on suspicion of using someone else's wireless Internet connection without permission, police said on Wednesday.

Officers spotted the man using a laptop as he sat on a wall outside a house in Chiswick, west London, on Tuesday.

He told officers he had browsed the Internet via an unsecured broadband link from a nearby house, Scotland Yard said.

He was arrested and later released on police bail to November 11 pending further inquiries.

"This arrest should act as a warning to anyone who thinks it is acceptable to illegally use other people's broadband connections," said Detective Constable Mark Roberts, of the Metropolitan Police.

"Computer users need to be aware that this is unlawful and police will investigate any violation we become aware of."

The practice, known as piggybacking, breaches the Computer Misuse Act and the Communications Act, he added.

Earlier this year, a man and a woman were arrested in the Midlands for wireless theft as they sat in their cars.

Gregory Straszkiewicz, from west London, is believed to be the first person to be convicted of the offence in 2005. He was fined 500 pounds and given a 12-month conditional discharge.

Internet security experts say people should secure their wireless connections or leave themselves open to identity theft and fraud.

Reuters

Broadband Spillover

The Right Analogy for Wireless Signal Spill

By John C. Dvorak (08/01/2005)

We're starting to see more and more articles in local newspapers with various slants on the fact that people are routinely poaching the spillover signals coming from unprotected Wi-Fi networks. Some researchers indicate that as many as two-thirds of Wi-Fi signals in the U.S. are not secured by WEP or any sort of encryption or tunneling.

Since it doesn't really take much to secure a network, you can assume that people do not mind you taking their Wi-Fi signals to do your e-mail. What people probably would not appreciate would be you loading up on porn or making terrorist threats on their dime with their IP address. What to do?

First of all, if you want to share your signal, you are probably not allowed to do so by your ISP agreement. But let's say you want to anyway. What is needed is a system to do it properly, such as a splash screen intercept and log-on of guest users, so you can at least have some record of who is using the connection. This would also allow you to do some monitoring of activity, in case the FBI comes knocking.

But let's face it, most people do not know that their signal is being poached, and probably don't care. So why should so many people be freaked out about it? With nearly 15 million Wi-Fi networks in the U.S. and perhaps 10 million of them unsecured, how many nefarious acts are being committed by poachers? Most people using these networks are doing it for an e-mail hit or a Web site visit and not much more. Often poachers simply use a neighbor's connection, and latching onto the signal is just a way to save money. I know at least two people doing this.


The problem I have with this activity is with the way it is described—as signal theft. I prefer to call it poaching. There is really nothing being stolen. The other user is paying a flat fee, and the worst that can happen is that his or her bandwidth takes a small hit for an inconsequential moment.

"It's like leaving the house unlocked," I'm told. "Just because there is no lock on the door doesn't mean you can walk in and take things." This is one of the dopey analogies you have to listen to. The analogy is bad. Walking into an unlocked home is not the same as hooking onto someone's Wi-Fi signal that is being broadcast all over the neighborhood. For one thing, no trespassing is being committed. The signal is being given to you. It's more like the unlocked house having a sign on the door saying "Welcome! Please enter!"

Let's drop the house analogy and find something better and more accurate. Here is what Wi-Fi spillage is like. Someone has a house and a big lawn and a sprinkler system that is watering the lawn and spraying the water into the street. You drive into the water spraying into the street and use it to wash your car. Are you stealing the water? It's not your water. Someone else paid for it and you are using it. Just like the Wi-Fi signal.

One might argue that this isn't the same, since the bandwidth is reduced when you poach a Wi-Fi signal. Okay, then let's take the analogy and say that the water is not going into the street and down the sewer. The sprinkler is spraying only a little bit past the lawn, onto the sidewalk and the thin strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb. The sidewalk is public property, and when you walk on the sidewalk you get wet and keep that water from going to the grassy curb area. Is this stealing the guy's water?

Maybe readers can come up with better and more apt analogies than this, but this comes close. If you are being soaked by a hose, are you stealing water? You didn't ask to be soaked. You didn't go turn on the water yourself. You didn't run onto the lawn. How is the sprinkler situation different from someone blasting 802.11 signals all over town?

The person who owns the signal has to be the responsible party. Grabbing a nearby signal because it is being beamed into your house or car is hardly the same as going into an unlocked residence and stealing the silverware. And it's not hacking if the signal is not protected. In fact, if I'm getting unprotected signals on my property from people nearby, they're the ones who are trespassing! What if I do not want these signals interfering with what I want to do?

The way I see it, if someone is shoving a signal down my throat like that, I have every right to use it any way I want to as long, as I'm not doing anything illegal. It's crazy to think that my using that intrusive signal is illegal. PCMag

Piggy-backers Warned

Two cautioned over wireless "piggy-backing"

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - Two people have been arrested and cautioned for using someone else's wireless Internet connection without permission, known as "piggy-backing", British police said on Wednesday.

The practice, which sharply divides Internet users, has been fuelled by the rapid growth of fast wireless broadband in homes and people's failure to secure their networks.

On Saturday, a man was arrested after neighbors spotted him sitting in a car outside a home in Redditch, Worcestershire, using a laptop computer to browse the Internet.

A 29-year-old woman was also arrested in a car in a similar incident in the same area last month.

Both received an official caution, a formal warning one step short of prosecution, for "dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment".

They were among the first to be arrested for piggy-backing in Britain. Gregory Straszkiewicz, from west London, was the first person to be convicted of the offence in 2005. He was fined 500 pounds and give a 12-month conditional discharge.

"Wireless networks don't stop at the walls of your home," said PC Tony Humphreys, of West Mercia Constabulary. "Without the necessary protection, your neighbors or people in the road outside may be able to connect to your network."

There is a lively ethical debate in Internet chatrooms over whether piggy-backing is immoral or harmless.

"If it travels through the air it is open season," wrote one contributor to a Web forum. Another wrote: "If it's out there unsecure and I'm not trespassing, it's fair game."

Up to a quarter of home wireless connections are unsecured, according to a recent survey by the consumer finance Web site www.moneysupermarket.com.

Jason Lloyd, the site's head of broadband, said it left people open to identity theft, fraud and pornography being downloaded using their account.

"The repercussions can be severe," he said. "It's bad enough when your neighbors can use your Internet connection freely, but this becomes far more sinister if someone uses your wireless connection for criminal activity."

Businesses are also at risk. A survey of 320 companies by the London trade show Infosecurity Europe found that a quarter have no wireless security policy.
Reuters

Last Supper

New "Last Supper" theory crashes Leonardo Web sites


MILAN (Reuters) 28/07/2007 - A new theory that Leonardo's "Last Supper" might hide within it a depiction of Christ blessing the bread and wine has triggered so much interest that Web sites connected to the picture have crashed.

The famous fresco is already the focus of mythical speculation after author Dan Brown based his "The Da Vinci Code" book around the painting, arguing in the novel that Jesus married his follower, Mary Magdelene, and fathered a child.

Now Slavisa Pesci, an information technologist and amateur scholar, says superimposing the "Last Supper" with its mirror-image throws up another picture containing a figure who looks like a Templar knight and another holding a small baby.

"I came across it by accident, from some of the details you can infer that we are not talking about chance but about a precise calculation," Pesci told journalists when he unveiled the theory earlier this week.

Websites www.leonardodavinci.tv, www.codicedavinci.tv, www.cenacolo.biz and www.leonardo2007.com had 15 million hits on Thursday morning alone, organizers said, adding they were trying to provide a more powerful server for the sites.

In the superimposed version, a figure on Christ's left appears to be cradling a baby in its arms, Pesci said, but he made no suggestion this could be Christ's child.

Judas, whose imminent betrayal of Christ is the force breaking the right-hand line of the original fresco, appears in an empty space on the left in the reverse image version.

And Pesci also suggests that the superimposed version shows a goblet before Christ and illustrates when Christ blessed bread and wine at a supper with his disciples for the first Eucharist.

The original Da Vinci depicts Christ when he predicts that one among them will betray him. Reuters

Pull Down The Walled Gardens

Pull down the walled gardens

Internet law professor Michael Geist says the walled gardens of social networks should be pulled down.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have become part of the daily routine for millions of internet users. The popularity of these networks, however, has resulted in an unfortunate by-product - the mushrooming number of requests that come from dozens of these sites.

While not quite spam, the steady stream of requests for Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Dopplr travellers, or Plaxo contact updates, highlights the lack of interoperability between social network sites and significantly undermines their usefulness.

The interoperability issue is likely to become more prominent in the months ahead as hundreds of specialty social networking sites, covering virtually every area of interest from dogs to cooking, jostle for new users.

In fact, services such as Ning now enable anyone to create their own social network site.

The result is that internet users are repeatedly required to re-enter their personal information for each new network they join and find that each network is effectively a "walled garden", where the benefits of the network are artificially limited by the inability to link a friend in Facebook with one in MySpace.

These limitations are particularly striking when viewed from a global perspective. While Facebook is a leader in the UK (as well as in Canada, South Africa, and Norway), nearly a dozen other sites hold leadership positions in other countries.

These include MySpace (United States, Australia, Mexico, and Italy), Bebo (Ireland and New Zealand) , Cyworld (South Korea), Friendster (Indonesia, Philippines, and Singapore) , Fotolog (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay), Hi5 (Colombia, Ecuador, and Thailand), Mixi (Japan), Orkut (Brazil, India, and Paraguay) , Skyblog (France, Belgium, Senegal), Studiverzeichnis (Germany, Austria) and Vkontakte (Russia).

The result is that social networking sites are far more "local" that is often appreciated.

"The better approach - for users and the sites themselves - would be to work toward a world of interoperable social networking."

Unlike the global internet, which enables virtually the entire world to connect, social networks have created very large, localised communities with far more limited international interaction.

The obvious solution is to facilitate greater interoperability between social networking sites, thereby enabling users to better control their personal information and reduce the need for duplication, while simultaneously enhancing the value of all social networks by removing the current barriers.

This suggestion is not new - experts began commenting on the desirability of open social networks years ago - yet there are reasons to believe that the opportunity for greater interoperability may have finally arrived.

First, the focus on the benefits of interoperability cut across a wide range of technological issues including recent calls for interoperable wireless networks and the music industry's recognition of the need to offer downloads that operate with all music players.

Moreover, the frustrations associated with the initial lack of instant messaging interoperability serves as an important reminder of how the issue resonates with consumers.

Second, there are signs that the social networking industry recognises the value of openness.

Facebook moved toward an open platform for software developers this spring, enabling third party developers to bring thousands of new Facebook applications to market. Similarly, Plaxo recently launched a service called Pulse, a social networking aggregator that works with many popular sites.

Third, there is mounting interest in developing open standards for social networks that would facilitate greater interoperability.

For example, the Liberty Alliance and Project Higgins are two privacy-focused identity management initiatives that claim to provide users with the ability to manage their personal information across social networks in a secure and trusted manner.

The irony of the current generation of online social networks is that although their premise is leveraging the internet to connect people, their own lack of interconnectedness is stifling their potential.

Some services may believe that it is in their economic interest to stick to a walled garden approach; however, given the global divisions within the social networking world, the mix of language, user preferences, and network effects, it is unlikely that one or two services will capture the global marketplace. The better approach - for users and the sites themselves - would be to work towards a world of interoperable social networking.

BBC News

WikiaSearch

Wikia details plans for search rival to Google

By Eric Auchard (31/07/2007)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Friday he is putting the building blocks in place for a community-developed Web search service that would compete with search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Wales told a conference of software developers in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering Web crawler that will enable Wikia's forthcoming search service to scour the Web to index relevant sites.

"If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers," said Wales, chairman of San Mateo, California-based Wikia. "I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome."

Wikia -- which has helped groups set up thousands of Wikipedia-style sites on topics ranging from popular TV shows to specialist health or travel -- plans to develop an "open source" Web search service with the help of volunteers.

Wales founded the anyone-can-edit Wikipedia encyclopedia, a noncommercial project that is one of the Web's most popular sites. He also co-founded the Wikia ad-supported network of self-edited wiki sites. However, the two organizations have no formal ties.

The new Wikia search service will combine computer-driven algorithms and human-assisted editing when the company launches a public version of the search site toward the end of 2007, Wales said in a phone interview.

Human editors would help untangle terms with multiple meanings, such as palm, which can refer to location like Palm Beach, or generic topics like trees or handheld computers.

Search results are generated via another open-source software project called Lucene. Wales said he is looking at options to enhance Lucene, but would not detail his plans.

Grub was originally an open source project that was freely available to software makers to enhance as long as they shared any improvements they made. Wikia has acquired Grub from LookSmart Ltd., which had halted work on the project.

Wikia plans to open up Grub to other developers to make improvements or to incorporate the crawler into other sites.

Terms of the deal between Wikia (http://wikia.com) and LookSmart (http://search.looksmart.com/) were not disclosed.

However, last week, San Francisco-based LookSmart, which provides banner and search-based online advertising to Web sites, said it had agreed to supply advertising across Wikia's network of wiki sites. Wikia had been using Google's advertising service.

"We have interest from a lot of other commercial players in the search space," said Wales.

Grub relies on distributed computing technology to power the crawler. Computer users who download the software at http://www.grub.org/ can share computer processing time when they are not using their machines, cutting the cost of Wikia developing its own network of computers to crawl the Web.

Open search is part of Wikia's broader push to promote the spread of free content publishing on the Web. Wales' objective is to make explicit the editorial judgments involved in modern Web search systems. Proprietary search systems such as Google Inc. keep secret key details of how their search systems work to prevent spamming and for competitive reasons.

Ultimately, Wales wants the Wikia search service to be available to other Web sites and smaller publishers who would be able to install a custom version of the service that points Web site visitors only to links with a specific site. Target customers might include local newspapers, for example.

He detailed his plans at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, an annual gathering of open source software developers.

More details can be found at http://search.wikia.com/.

Wikia has raised $14 million in outside financing, including its latest round of $10 million from Amazon.com, according to a regulatory filing by the company. Reuters

My Name is @

Couple tried to name baby "@"

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

"The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means 'love him'," the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While "@" is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word "at" to sound it out -- which with a drawn out "T" sounds something like "ai ta," or "love him," to Mandarin speakers.

Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people's increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialization and the Internet break down conventions.

Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like "King Osrina."

Li did not say if officials accepted the "@" name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages.

Sixty million Chinese faced the problem that their names use ancient characters so obscure that computers cannot recognize them and even fluent speakers were left scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript of the briefing on the government Web site (www.gov.cn).

One of them was the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name had a rare "rong" character that gave newspaper editors headaches. Reuters

Internet Writer Jailed

China jails Internet writer for subversion, disbars lawyer

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court jailed a dissident Internet writer for four years on subversion charges on Thursday for posting anti-government articles online, his disbarred lawyer said, the latest case in a government crackdown on dissent.

The Intermediate People's Court in Hangzhou, capital of the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, convicted Chen Shuqing of "inciting to subvert state power", Li Jianqiang told Reuters.

"It's totally wrong to convict him ... He was only expressing his political views. He should enjoy free speech," said the lawyer, whose license was not renewed by authorities in his home province of Shandong, on China's east coast.

Li told Reuters he suspected he was barred from practicing for at least one year from June because he took on "too many sensitive cases".

Chen, who has been in custody since last September, will appeal.

Court officials were not immediately available for comment.

China is the world's leading jailer of journalists and writers. At least five writers have been jailed for up to 10 years since 2005 as part of a crackdown on dissent, according to the China chapter of International PEN, an association founded in Britain in 1921 to defend freedom of speech. Reuters

How Reliable is Wikipedia

CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits


By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program.

The changes may violate Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.

The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.

The program allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries.

WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit an entry on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A graphic on casualties was edited to add that many figures were estimated and were not broken down by class.

Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited by CIA computers to expand his career history and discuss the merits of a Vietnam War rural pacification program that he headed.

Aerial and satellite images of the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were removed using a computer traced to the FBI, WikiScanner showed.

CIA spokesman George Little said he could not confirm whether CIA computers were used in the changes, adding that "the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly."

The FBI did not have an immediate response.

Computers at numerous other organizations and companies were found to have been involved in editing articles related to them.

Griffith said he developed WikiScanner "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what 'interesting organizations' (which I am neutral towards) are up to."

It was not known whether changes were made by an official representative of an agency or company, Griffith said, but it was certain the change was made by someone with access to the organization's network.

It violates Wikipedia's neutrality guidelines for a person with close ties to an issue to contribute to an entry about it, said spokeswoman Sandy Ordonez of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's parent organization.

However, she said, "Wikipedia is self-correcting," meaning misleading entries can be quickly revised by another editor. She said Wikimedia welcomed the WikiScanner.

WikiScanner can be found at wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ Reuters

Outburst On YouTube

Catholic dean on leave after YouTube outburst

CANBERRA (Reuters) 01/08/2007 - A Roman Catholic priest who unleashed a torrent of expletives and racist abuse against skateboarders outside his Australian cathedral, only to have the outburst filmed and placed on YouTube, has been put on leave.

The Reverend Monsignor Geoff Baron, the dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Australia's second biggest city, Melbourne, was videotaped swearing at and abusing a group of teenagers using the cathedral grounds as a skate park.

"Move, you f****** fool," Baron tells one skater in the video, slapping one of the group across the head and prompting a torrent of abuse in reply.

Pointing to a skater lying on the ground, Baron is heard telling the youth "Little foreigner there, look at the sleepy eyes, black hair."

"At least he's got hair. You f****** bald p****," one youth replies. Others spat on and shoved the furious priest.

The embarrassed Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, placed Baron on indefinite leave after the outburst appeared on YouTube, while security guards began patrolling the cathedral grounds Wednesday amid threats of reprisal attacks.

"I want to relieve the dean of the pressures and responsibilities he carries as dean of the cathedral," Hart said, promising further action.

Baron apologized for the outburst Tuesday, but on radio described the skaters as "jackals and hyenas" who had provoked him with allegations he was a pedophile.

"It was outrageous behavior. I let myself down terribly badly, quite clearly, and I've also brought scandal and shock to other people," he told local radio.

The video clip of the outburst, which was filmed a year ago but only recently posted on YouTube, was viewed tens of thousands of times but is now listed as "removed by the user." Reuters

New Internet Law

Zimbabwe passes law to monitor communications

By Nelson Banya (03/08/2007)

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has signed into law an act enabling state security agents to monitor phone lines, mail and the Internet, a government notice published on Friday said.

Officials have said the new law is designed to protect national security and prevent crime, but human rights groups fear it will muzzle free speech under a crackdown on dissent.

In the government notice, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda said Mugabe had agreed to the Interception of Communications Act, which was approved by both houses of Zimbabwe's parliament in June.

The law gives police and the departments of national security, defense intelligence and revenue powers to order the interception of communications and provides for the creation of a monitoring centre.

Postal, telecommunications and internet service providers will be required to ensure that their "systems are technically capable of supporting lawful interceptions at all times".

Critics have said the law is a government ploy to keep tabs on the opposition at a time when political tensions are mounting and Mugabe is deflecting growing criticism from Western powers.

Zimbabwe is suffering a severe economic crisis, marked by the world's highest inflation rate, 80 percent unemployment and persistent food, fuel and foreign currency shortages.

The southern African country, once viewed as a regional bread basket, cannot feed itself and faces severe shortages of basic consumer goods after a government-ordered price freeze in June that has emptied shop shelves.

Mugabe -- Zimbabwe's ruler since independence from Britain in 1980 -- denies controversial policies such as the seizure of white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks have ruined the economy, and blames Western sanctions for the economic turmoil. Reuters

Look Ma I'm Not Born Yet

Australian fetus a Facebook Internet star

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Bubba Waring has not even been born yet and he, or she, has its own Web space with cyber "friends" clamoring to get acquainted.

Australian couple Claire Gillis and Luke Waring, who are expecting their first child in three months, decided to set up a page on Internet social meeting site Facebook to keep friends up to date on the developing baby's progress.

"We have friends and family all over the world, so we're using it for them, to post updates on ultrasounds, scans and what it has been doing all week, so that's how it started," Gillis told Australia's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The grainy black-and-white ultrasound image of "Bubba Waring" has 29 friends listed, with dozens more waiting to be accepted by "the world's most famous fetus", Gillis said.

"I'm considering whether I should just open it up to the public because I'm just receiving the most ridiculous number of e-mails and friend requests," she said.

But the image gives nothing away about the most crucial question -- whether Bubba is a boy or a girl -- with most friends tipping a boy based on a fuzzy photo and Internet profile page.

"We're not going to find out its gender, so it'll be a surprise to everybody when the baby is born," Gillis said. Reuters

Blogging Under Skirts

Dutch bloggers due in court over filming under skirts

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Two Dutch news bloggers caught filming under women's skirts in a car park in order to warn the public of the intimate views afforded by see-through stairs must appear in court, according to their blog.

A court spokesman in Alkmaar, where the pair have been called to appear in October, said they had been charged with filming people without permission after someone complained. The bloggers say the women knew that they were being filmed.

The subterranean car park in the northern Dutch town of Heerhugowaard has a transparent ceiling in its stairwell, allowing people to look up at shoppers passing above.

The Geen Stijl blog said they were only filming to see whether the local council had done anything about the transparent ceiling after the issue was brought to their attention several months before.

The two bloggers could face a two-month prison sentence, according to Dutch news agency ANP. Reuters

E-voting

Halt "high risk" e-voting-British watchdog

By Peter Griffiths (2 August 2007)

LONDON (Reuters) - Trials of Internet voting at elections should be halted until officials address serious concerns over costs and the risk of fraud, Britain's election watchdog said on Thursday.

Britain's Electoral Commission, said in a report that e-voting pilot schemes at the local elections in May were expensive, rushed and lacked adequate security testing.

"We have learnt a good deal from pilots over the past few years," said its chief executive, Peter Wardle. "But we do not see any merit in continuing with small-scale, piecemeal piloting where similar innovations are explored each year without sufficient planning and implementation time."

It was "fortuitous" that there were no security breaches during the trials, the report said.

"The level of risk of a security incident was much higher than it should have been," it said. "There was an unnecessarily high level of risk associated with all pilots.

"The testing, security and quality assurance adopted was insufficient."

Online voting could one day be more accurate and efficient than traditional methods, the watchdog found, but it said the trials had uncovered a series of problems.

They included:

* Some voters forgot the Internet password needed to cast their ballot online

* Others were confused by the forms and thought they were signing up for a telephone vote

* The system of pre-registering e-voters in an attempt to tighten security was "time-consuming and inefficient"

* In one trial area, the northern city of Sheffield, two-thirds of those registered to vote online failed to go to the polls electronically

E-voting should be halted until the government publishes a strategy on modernizing elections that addresses concerns over costs, transparency and public trust, the watchdog said.

Electoral Modernisation Minister Michael Wills said the government would study the report carefully.

"The purpose of pilots is to learn lessons for the future and we will do so," he said. "The testing of innovations in elections is an important part of developing public services that are efficient, effective, empowering and responsive to needs and demands of citizens."

Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Herbert said the report was a "damning indictment of Labour's interference with the electoral process".

The full report is at: www.electoralcommission.org.uk/elections/pilotsmay2007.cfm
Reuters

The Ghosts In The Voting Machines

Regular columnist Bill Thompson says our trust should only be given to technology when it is merited and proven.

When I started work as a professional programmer, writing in the C programming language, I sometimes wrote very bad code. It worked, but it wasn't what you'd call industrial strength, largely because it didn't do nearly enough checking.

As a result my programs would crash if you gave them unexpected input by typing a word into a field where a number was required, or because they failed to check whether a variable had been properly initialised before doing a calculation.

Fortunately I had talented and patient colleagues who showed me the difference between student programming and serious coding and understood that validating data, checking variables and handling all possible error conditions is not just a useful extra but at least as important as the part of the program that does the actual work.

The lesson has stayed with me, even though I now write little production code and only occasionally mess around with other people's programs.

Sadly, it seems that the developers behind three of the most widely-used electronic voting systems in current use in the United States have never grasped this important principle.


"Placing such trust in vendors who have shown a comprehensive inability to understand the security requirements of election systems seems to demonstrate a naivety about software development and integrity that is all too common in politicians" - Bill Thompson


Cryptography experts

Following concerns about the accuracy of the electronic voting systems used in last year's the California state legislature commissioned computer science and cryptography experts at the University of California to review the main players and ensure that 'California voters are being asked to cast their ballots on machines that are secure, accurate, reliable, and accessible'.

Anyone looking for reassurance will have had their hopes dashed, as the recently published report into e-voting systems from Diebold, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia found massive security holes in the source code which, combined with poor physical security and badly-designed procedures, make it impossible to rely on them to record votes accurately.

The report says that 'the security mechanisms provided for all systems analyzed were inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results and of the systems that provide those results', which is about as bad as it gets.

'Hard-coded passwords'

And there some of the comments by the voting machine manufacturers could be seen as misleading.

Security researcher Ed Felten notes in his commentary on the work that 'Diebold claimed in 2003 that its use of hard-coded passwords was "resolved in subsequent versions of the software".

Yet the current version still uses at least two hard-coded passwords - one is "diebold" and another is the eight-byte sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8".

Apparently part of the problem was that the researchers actually had access to the systems they were testing. In a statement Hart InterCivic complained that investigators had 'unfettered access to all technical documentation and source code information', implying that since hackers or those trying to manipulate the vote would be less well prepared the bad coding doesn't really matter.

A system can only be used in an election if it is certified by the relevant authorities, and it was clear from the California study that none of the machines examined was up to the job, so their certification was withdrawn at the start of August.

Unfortunately California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen is clearly a trusting soul because she immediately gave them all a new certification provided that security features were added to 'protect the integrity of the vote'.

Placing such trust in vendors who have shown a comprehensive inability to understand the security requirements of election systems seems to demonstrate a naivety about software development and integrity that is all too common in politicians.

More progressive

Such problems are not confined to the United States, of course, though the campaign for more openness about the technology used in electronic voting seems to have made more progress there than elsewhere.

Here in the UK the Open Rights Group, resolute campaigners for civil liberties in the digital world, sent observers to several of the e-voting pilot projects in the May 2007 English and Scottish elections.

They had to fight through a bureaucracy which seemed to see openness as a dangerous aberration, where 'observers were frequently subject to seemingly arbitrary and changeable decisions via unclear lines of authority', but the final report makes chilling reading.

It outlines many problems, noting that 'inadequate attention was given to system design, systems access and audit trails. Systems used both inappropriate hardware and software, and were insufficiently secured'.

A big problem for ORG is that 'E-voting is a 'black box system', where the mechanisms for recording and tabulating the vote are hidden from the voter. This makes public scrutiny impossible, and leaves statutory elections open to error and fraud'.

The Electoral Commission, the body responsible for the administration of elections in the UK, has also been looking at the trials and it recently called for a halt to pilot projects while security and testing procedures are improved, an implicit admission that the ORG analysis of flaws in the May pilots was well-founded.

We can only hope that these warnings are heeded, and that the UK politicians show more awareness of the problems of building secure voting systems than the Californian officials have demonstrated.

Electronic voting is not the same as online voting, and the argument that voting by text message or over the internet diminishes the importance of democratic engagement does not apply to attempts to replace a pencil and paper ballot with modern technologies that could be more accessible and count votes faster and even more reliably.

But we would be better off keeping an old, paper-based system that we can trust rather than rushing to replace it with flawed technologies whose inevitable failure will further damage trust in the democratic process.
Source: BBC News

Internet Forum Blocked

Saudis block liberal Internet forum, says activist

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi political reform activist said on Thursday the authorities had blocked his Internet forum as part of a wider crackdown on freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia.

"I want to put government bodies and public opinion in our country before the facts of how certain elements are infringing human rights," Ali al-Dumaini said in a statement published on blog sites.

Dumaini, who was jailed in 2005 along with two other activists for campaigning for political reforms, said his "Dialogue and Creativity" forum had discussed issues of human rights, tolerance and democracy.

He said the block by telecommunications authorities, who filter out many sites, was part of a series of measures to stifle liberal voices.

Activists say the Interior Ministry, run by the hawkish Prince Nayef Abdul-Aziz, has closed several weekly "salons" in recent months where Saudis gathered to discuss political and social issues.

Ten men were arrested in February on suspicion of "funding terror" but their supporters say some of them were planning to set up a political party.

"We hope these are passing incidents that we will get over in light of our optimism about the path of reform established by King Abdullah," Dumaini said.

Saudi Arabia is an Islamic state dominated by the Saudi royal family with no elected parliament and no political parties. A close ally of the United States, it is also the world's biggest oil exporter.

King Abdullah is seen as a supporter of cautious reform but diplomats say other senior royals close to the powerful religious establishment have hindered his plans.

The semi-official al-Riyadh newspaper said on Thursday the official National Society for Human Rights had asked the telecommunications authority to unblock Dumaini's site. Reuters

Web Site Workers Held

Christians held in Egypt for work on Web site

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian police have detained two Egyptian Christians for their work on the Web site of a Christian Arab group based in Canada, police sources said on Thursday.

Named as Adel Fawzi and Peter Ezzat, the two worked for the Middle East Christian Association, which has its headquarters in Ontario and has a Web site with the address www.m-e-c-a.com.

Unnamed lawyers had complained to the prosecutor general that the organization and its Web site "insulted Islam and the prophet Mohammad on behalf of diaspora Copts", said one police source, who asked not to be named.

It was not immediately clear what kind of work Fawzi and Ezzat did for the organization which has a mission statement calling for secularism, and equality and full citizenship for Christians living in the Middle East.

Headlines on the Web site include: "Islam began alien and will revert to being alien", "Is Mohammad a messenger from God?" "This Web site reveals the true face of Islam."

Copts living abroad, especially those in North America, have tended to be more hostile towards Muslims and towards the Egyptian government than Copts living inside Egypt.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said he had no information on the detentions. Reuters

Free speech, libel and the internet age

Free speech, libel and the internet age

Internet law professor Michael Geist says the issue of free speech and the power of the net to disseminate comment is far from being resolved in law.

The Rivoli, a popular Canadian music club in Toronto, Canada may seem like an unusual venue to consider internet free speech.

Yet later this week, it will play host to a fundraiser in support of P2Pnet.net, a Canadian-based website that is being sued for defamation for comments posted on the site by its readers.

The suit, launched by Sharman Networks' Nikki Hemming, has attracted considerable international attention because of the parties involved - Sharman Networks is the Australian-based owner of Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file sharing service that last week agreed to pay the entertainment industry $100m (£53m) to settle ongoing litigation.

It also highlights the vulnerability of thousands of individuals to defamation lawsuits merely for providing access to other people's comments.

"Even individual bloggers who permit comments face the prospect of demands to remove content that is alleged to violate the law"

Both Sharman Networks and Hemming sued P2Pnet last spring, claiming that an article and accompanying comments posted by readers of the site were libellous.

Vigorously disputed

Jon Newton, the owner of the site, has vigorously disputed the suit, pointing to the need to protect free speech and to ensure that defamation laws cannot be used to stifle comment.

Sharman Networks recently dropped its claim, however the Hemming suit continues.

The case places the spotlight on the liability of internet intermediaries. The importance of the issue extends well beyond just internet service providers - corporate websites that allow for user feedback, education websites featuring chatrooms, or even individual bloggers who permit comments face the prospect of demands to remove content that is alleged to violate the law.

The difficult question is not whether these sites and services have the right to voluntarily remove offending content if they so choose - no one doubts that they do - but rather whether sites can be compelled to remove allegedly unlawful or infringing content under threat of potential legal liability.

The answer is not as straightforward as one might expect since the law in Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia varies depending on the type of content or the nature of the allegations.

Unproven allegation

In the case of child pornography, most jurisdictions do not require a site to remove content based merely on an unproven allegation. Instead, sites can only be compelled to remove such content under a court order.


"What are the implications of free speech?"

Copyright infringement claims are treated differently in various jurisdictions. Canadian law does not require a site to remove contested content.

Liability would depend on whether the site can be said to have authorised visitors to infringe copyright.

The Supreme Court of Canada has set a high threshold to determine when a party "authorises" infringement. Merely hosting content, even after being made aware of an unproven infringement allegation, is unlikely to meet that standard.

Other countries, most notably the United States, have implemented "notice and takedown" systems that provide intermediaries with a legal safe harbour provided that they promptly remove take down content upon notification.

Limited opportunity

The poster is provided with a limited opportunity to respond to the infringement allegation. The intermediary can choose to ignore the takedown request, though it faces potential liability if a court later confirms the infringement claim.

The role of judicial oversight and legal balancing for illegal and infringing content is essential, since it navigates the fine line between preserving free speech on the one hand and ensuring that harmful content can be taken offline in appropriate circumstances on the other.

However, as P2Pnet has learned to its chagrin, allegations of defamation are the exception to the rule.

Under the law in countries such as Canada, the UK, and Australia, intermediaries can face potential liability for failing to remove allegedly defamatory content once they have received notification of such a claim, even without court oversight.

Indeed, several recent cases in the UK and Australia involving Dow Jones, a US publisher, have sent a strong message that intermediaries ignore defamation claims at their peril.

As a result, many ISPs and websites remove content in response to unproven claims, even if they privately doubt that the content is indeed defamatory.

Legal risk

From the company's perspective, there is no legal risk to remove the content, yet there is potentially significant risk for failing to do so.

Given how easily content can be forced off the internet with claims of defamation, the law creates a significant restriction on free speech.

Intermediaries are understandably reluctant to ignore threats of litigation, yet without a legal safe harbour that protects them from liability, it is likely that the number of questionable defamation claims will continue to rise.

Addressing the free speech issue would require legislative change.

For example, the United States enacted a law 10 years ago that provides broad immunity for intermediaries that host third-party content. That provision has since been used dozens of times to immunize ISPs, large companies such as Amazon.com, and small websites who could ill-afford to fight legal challenges.

A similar provision in the Commonwealth countries would protect sites such as P2Pnet, as well as the thousands of ISPs, websites, and bloggers, who are contributing to a robust online dialogue, but today find themselves vulnerable to lawsuits whose primary purpose may be to suppress legitimate speech.
BBC News

Benshacks

Ben's Hacks or Ben Shack.
This place to record useful computer tips sourced from elsewhere and also all blogger hacks tried by Ben