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Wednesday, November 20, 2002 |
The Internet Software Consortium is taking heavy criticism for the way it handled the release of patches for a new BIND vulnerability last week. ISC knew about the security holes in late October, but initially only provided fixes for paying members of its early-alert services. The advisory went public on November 12, though it took nearly a day longer for the patches to be readily available. Considering that BIND is critical DNS software running on millions of servers, and that the vulnerability could yield root access, many in the security community felt withholding the patches was both extortionary and irresponsible. [Hideaway.Net]
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The National Academies commissioned a report on how youths are affected by child pornography, predators, and other threats on the net. They've issued a 400-page report on their findings, which are very extensive, and were used to support the argument for the new kids.us domain. [Slashdot: Your Rights Online]
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A post earlier this month by Aaron Swartz raises legitimate questions about how citizens can best be informed when courts announce decisions. Swartz pointed to Cornell University's e-mail syllabus announcement service, which is a good resource, but limited to the US Supreme Court. I run a similar e-mail opinion summary service here at the WV Supreme Court, which is very popular among citizens and lawyers alike. And we have the RSS feeds (1, 2, 3, 4) and official court weblogs (1, 2, 3, 4) where new decisions are announced.
But most courts don't have RSS feeds, so citizens have to simply watch news reports, know which web page to check (either a court site or a specialized appellate litigation site like How Appealing), or which clerk's office to call. All of which seems inefficient.
How can we do it better? I have two ideas. First, courts can agree with Jon Udell, that is, begin to act like XML is for the rest of us, and publish XML opinions directly to the web using a standard definition of elements for court documents. Within that XML document, courts could incorporate standard topical information, such as the codes used by the
State Supreme Court Data Project, to categorize the topical information in court decisions. This topical markup would allow machine processing and discovery of court decisions relating to a specific topic.
Second, I wonder if the capabilities of RSS aggregation could be exploited at the case information level. For example, I could modify our case management system to output an RSS file each day that contains item-level data corresponding to each item on the docket sheets commonly used by court clerks to describe the progress of a court case. (e.g., here's the US Supreme Court's docket sheet for Eldred.) Citizens and lawyers could subscribe to that case's RSS feed to be informed about important filings or actions by the court. If the feed contained some top-level topical information, it may also be possible to implement auto-discovery. (e.g. run a search for pending cases related to free speech.)
I've seen the tangible benefits courts can reap from using self-publishing technology, including RSS, and I hope these benefits can continue. Perhaps the real technologists out there (I'm only a lawyer, after all) could let me know if I'm on the right track. [Rory Perry's Weblog]
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A handful of large U.S. retailers, including Wal-Mart, use copyright law as an excuse to force a bargain shopping site to remove postings revealing upcoming sale prices. By Brian McWilliams. [Wired News]
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November 13 - December 6 | New York
January 25 - February 21 | Chicago
The Illegal Art Exhibit will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the "degenerate art" of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court.
Should artists be allowed to use copyrighted materials? Where do the First Amendment and "intellectual property" law collide? What is art's future if the current laws are allowed to stand? Stay Free! considers these questions and others in our multimedia program.
[The Hacktivist]
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On saturday the 23th of November there is a huge Demonstration for the prisoners in Italy. This demonstration on the street should be supported by protests in the internet. Called for by E-Cowboys for Peace, Germany
[The Hacktivist]
Visit the website www.giustizia.it massively on Saturday, Nov. 23th, 2002, from 11.00 to 14.00 (italian time) to show your solidarity with the protests in Italy on the street. [buschinberlin.de]
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The US government has failed a test for computer security for the second year in a row.
More than half of 24 major federal agencies flunked the latest 'Computer Security Report Card'.
The Justice, Defense, Energy and Treasury departments earned failing grades, while the Department of Transportation received the lowest score.
The Defense, State and Energy departments, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, actually performed much worse than last year.
Only the Social Security Administration did OK with a 'B minus'.
According to the Washington Post, investigators used the data to determine whether agencies met network security standards, such as limiting access to privileged information and eliminating easily guessed passwords.
[vnunet Hacking]
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A collection of activist hackers is about to release software designed to thwart governmental censors of the Internet. The pro-democracy Six/Four project from Hacktivismo ( http://hacktivismo.com/ ) is a potentially valuable step to protect political dissidents and other people who have the quaint idea that their access to information shouldn't be thwarted by government-run firewalls in places like China and Saudi Arabia. [The Hacktivist]
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As the country's economic crisis deepens, thieves are stooping to a new low. They're stealing the copper wires from telephone cables. Ricardo Sametband reports from Buenos Aires. [Wired News]
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[...] f you work for a company that happens to find itself an unfortunate party to litigation proceedings, there's a good chance your seemingly confidential documents, including e-mails, will be poured over by teams of lawyers--and not just your lawyers, but the lawyers for the other parties as well. You need to know what to expect if this happens in order to avoid major embarrassment and heavy expenses.
What can an IT manager expect in a legal dispute?
When a legal dispute hits your company, your company's lawyers will immediately seek information via a detailed questionnaire or interview about the hardware and software in use, backup cycles, media used, retention of media, handling of user accounts, ghosting of PCs, and archiving. You could also be asked to produce any documentation detailing the company's corporate policies relating to document retention and archiving. These documents can later be used to verify that the routine you have in place actually matches corporate policy. And it is not uncommon for IT managers to have to take the stand in court regarding their document management procedures.
Lawyers use this information to determine the probable volume and type of electronic files they will be dealing with. It also enables their technology support group to ensure that sufficient server space, software, PCs, and other resources are available for the lawyers to carry out the review in the timeframe set by the court.
Next, you will be asked to provide all electronic data for a specified period, probably going back several years, depending on the nature of the dispute. Data requested can also include information contained on backup media. What happens next depends on the resources available. Often, because companies have limited IT resources, and management isn't familiar with the process for determining what is and what is not relevant in the discovery process, electronic material is sent directly to the lawyers to sort out. Specialist technology groups within the law firms generally set up the systems required to review these files. These IT folk have expertise across a wide range of technologies, enabling them to determine the best way to restore and dissect the information for review. [...] [LinuxSecurity.com]
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A security hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer allows hackers to erase or take control of a computer's hard drive through a Web site and possibly through e-mail, according to a warning posted to security mailing list Bugtraq, which is published by Symantec. The vulnerability, just the latest in a string of security holes in the IE browser, also has fanned the flames of disagreement among security experts because the Bugtraq warning included working code that exploits the flaw. [NewsFactor Cybercrime & Security]
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Maximillian Dornseif, 2002.
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