There's not much difference now between the rhetoric on blogs and on the floor of Congress. Both are condemning the trampling of the Constitution, and neither is having an effect on the actual votes in Congress.

William Safire's now-famous Nov. 14, 2002 New York Times editorial has been quoted extensively in both chambers this past week.

Read more for the excepts from the Congressional Record...

Only partial quotes are provided here -- follow the links for the full quotes, to see the level of sustained exhortation first-hand.

2:35:13 AM    

Languishing on the Backlist

"Larry Lessig received an analysis of the potential impact of invalidating the 1976 retroactive copyright extension. My gut feeling was that very few creative works from that period remained in print, with an even smaller set in circulation at the local Barnes & Noble or Blockbuster, but it is astonishing to see the numbers.

Of the 300,466 books published in the U.S. from 1927-1956, only 9,240 are currently available from publishers at any price.
[~] Jason Schultz

I think the word for those 291,226 out-of-print books is hoard. Where's Beowulf when you need him, or Bilbo?" [Cox Crow]

2:32:50 AM    

On the other hand, I always figured it was investment in order to benefit from the technology, not investment in order to manipulate the market. I may have been naive.

Miasma

Spooks and Geeks.

Continuing the theme of Adventures in Alleged Privacy:

Over a year ago, I pointed to Safeweb's Triangle Boy, which was attracting great attention in China because it provides surfers a cloak of anonymity.

Recently someone whose identity I will leave deliberately vague emailed me to ask whether I could send them the software. It seems they're having trouble accessing it:

Tom?hello, I'm in China.I want to download the "triangle boy" software on the http://www.safeweb.com. But I cannot connect to it.Can you email the software to me? Thanks!

I checked, and found that SafeWeb suspended its free download for consumers last November, claiming economic pressures, ISP problems, etc.

Interestingly, well before that - back in February 2001, SafeWeb announced it had received an infusion of dollars from the CIA's venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel.

SafeWeb did not specify the amount, but Robert McMillan reported in Newsbytes (via Google's cache) that the CIA actually dropped $1 million on SafeWeb early in 2001. (It seems one motive was that its agents in Saudi Arabia needed to shroud themselves from meddling by the Saudi government.)

When it announced the CIA cash infusion, SafeWeb took considerable pains to make this out to be an ''arm's length'' deal:

According to the agreement, SafeWeb will develop privacy and security technology to In-Q-Tel specifications and will deliver it in two phases. The agreement between SafeWeb and In-Q-Tel is an arms-length, pure licensing agreement, involving no technology or IP transfer. In-Q-Tel will not have any board representation, management representation, or equity stake in SafeWeb. However, SafeWeb has issued warrants to In-Q-Tel, which In-Q-Tel may exercise and convert into equity in the future.

SafeWeb's core product will remain separate from any future government use of the SafeWeb technology.

Yet maybe not so oddly, it was this "core product" which then was removed from the market for rather vague reasons last November. It remains suspended, limited to a Voice of America project "to free the Internet in China."

So at the moment, I can't download Triangle Boy and send it to my correspondent in China, who might really need it. (I've written to the company.) And, in the era of Total Information Awareness, I am left to wonder about the confluence of Spooks and Geeks, as is the Economist.

That magazine noted that in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, "Security is likely to play a bigger role in the design of technology." Investments like In-Q-Tel's make it clear that the intertwining of government in security issues is likely to grow in intimacy:

The rapprochement will, in any case, settle the question of whether the high-tech industry and government can remain at arm's length.

More on In-Q-Tel here. More on Triangle Boy:

"triboy"

SafeWeb also has a kewl presentation, in Flash 6. What a tangled web we weave...

[Addendum:] Lemur points me to this BBC piece about adware and spyware, which mentions (but annoyingly fails to point to) Andrew Clover's fascinating site. It found BDE on my machine right off - a parasite picked up from Kazaa.

Your thoughts welcome.

[Tom Matrullo's Stuff]

12:54:57 AM    

Miasma

Privacy News from Wired News - Record the Lens That Records You.

Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto associate professor of political science, wants people to grab their cameras and hit the shopping malls Dec. 24 and participate in World Sousveillance Day.

Surveillance means "to view from above." Sousveillance means "to view from below."

On the day before Christmas, at noon, local time, all over the world, Deibert wants citizens to "shoot back" at surveillance cameras -- not with guns, but with cameras of their own. Participants are to head out, in disguise, to their favorite malls and public spaces, and photograph all the security cameras they find.

Deibert warns that photographing security cameras will quickly cause large men wearing navy blue blazers and two-way radios to place their hands over your camera lens. Photographers may even be escorted off the premises.

Which is exactly the point. Deibert hopes World Sousveillance Day will "raise awareness about the increasing pervasiveness of all forms of surveillance in today's hypermedia society."

[ ... ]

Paula Kelliher, marketing director of the upscale Galleria Mall in White Plains, New York, warns that photography, especially of surveillance cameras, is not permitted on mall property.

"It's not really in the best interests of our customers," she said.

[Privacy Digest]

12:48:22 AM    

John wrote:

"I don't believe the reassurances that users will have to click 'allow' because we already see the tendencies of interfaces to use default settings and 'opt out' clauses that are very hard for newbies to be aware of or even find...."

Please re-visit the interface, and read the documentation under that "?" button if necessary.

Recap: If a site can accept inbound cam or mic feeds (and their associated bandwidth costs), then a visitor to that site will see a panel requesting such permission. This is a per-domain permission, and can be set for one-time or perpetual permission, at your discretion. These permission settings are locally stored and you can review or edit your current permissions at any time.

You may choose to believe I am lying, but if this were so, and if the Flash Player could do what is being alleged here, then this would have an immediate public effect upon the adoption of the Macromedia Flash Player. There are built-in incentives for us to do the natural, humane, and expected thing here.

If you could help us nip such damaging stories in the bud in the future, then I would greatly appreciate such attention, thanks in advance.

Regards, John Dowdell Macromedia Support

John,

I surely believe what you say here and what you have said on the other site. Your ethos and Macromedia's has always been VERY good by me, and I mean that sincerely. I've been a Director user since version 3.

I meant it when I said I like Macromedia, but don't trust other folks, esp Doubleclick. I most definitely understand your reasoning in working toward adoption of the Flash player. I've been a supporter of these early players (and some of my 1996-97 or so Shockwave player pieces no longer play, which sort of sucks) and have strongly promoted their adoption.

That said, I do stand by what I wrote. When I first adopted Mosaic, then Netscape, could I have foreseen the default settings Microsoft was going to slip into IE? Certainly not. In those days I would have told you I would not be caught dead using IE, and now here I sit, forced to use it because of its features and dominance of the market. This is hardly a market choice for me.

And the herd function I spoke of, even Netscape has fully embraced it as well. Browsers, interface design, this is my field. I am aware of every time an interface is constructed to limit choice rather than expand it. I notice things like that, things that often slide past newbies unnoticed.

Will your Flash player and this doorway into these features always be delivered by browsers in the same way? We aren't even guaranteed to be using a browser in the future. Sherlock isn't the only standalone Internet application, and Internet appliances (where likely cameras and mics would be solid features) will abandon the browser even further. Will an Internet appliance even give us a dialogue box for such permissions? Or will they be required even for the function of the appliance? Will buying the appliance (or camera) include automatic permissions such as you note are now not automatic? (I'm thinking of the automatic-style interface intrusions built-into the new breed of hard drive-based video recorders, where adoption assumes acceptance of privacy intrusions, hell, even with the monitoring in a Directv box)

I would be inclined to trust Macromedia that it would not be so, and that people like you will always be on top of these things.

On the other hand, I've seen mass turnovers in personnel at companies, even shifting visions at places like Macromedia, which is not the same colorful, irreverent, and spirited company for creative folks that it was in the mid-90s. Look at the incarnations of AltaVista, once a respectable company, now, god knows what. Turnover at such feast or famine companies as DoubleClick, god help us.

All it takes at one of these companies is a VC-ordered management shakeup, a bunch of new hungry and unscrupulous marketing and management people sweeping in after a layoff to steal the soul of a good company, and the privacy policy, the standards and interface features, permissions, go right out the window.

Which was the point of my post. Not to rag on Macromedia. Of Macromedia, I remain the grateful fan I was since my first days with Director in Spring 1994.

I do appreciate your taking the time to write.

Miasma
12:34:55 AM