Sunday, February 2, 2003

The website for the Department of Homeland Security is up and running now. http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/ 3:12:38 PM    comment []

California's Nike ruling limiting the free speech of businesses is gooing to have far-reaching consequences. here's on take on it. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1042568699250 3:10:46 PM    comment []

Pay attention to the risks of libel law, if you begin to engage in online discussions or critiques that involve identities of others. http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher091602.asp The Rose vs. Johansen dispute demonstrates how quickly passionate polemics undertaken by ordinary people on the Internet can unintentionally become a serious legal matter. Sandra Baron, a lawyer and executive director of the Libel Defense Resource Center in New York, says amateurs voicing their opinions on the Internet have brought on an "astronomical" rise in civil libel suits in recent years. 3:06:40 PM    comment []

If you have any contact with Japan and handle personal data, be aware. http://www.asahi.com/english/national/K2003012500211.html 3:03:35 PM    comment []

If you have any business dealings with anyone in California, you need to be on top of the requirements of this law. A great deal of potential liability could arise out of this law. http://online.securityfocus.com/news/1984 http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/01-02/bill/sen/sb_1351-1400/sb_1386_bill_20020926_chaptered.html 2:48:04 PM    comment []

Here's a case where the question of the prior art really matters. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1042568717339 Here's my plea: Publish and document on websites and in publications as much as you can. The way patents work is that the new invention proposed for the patent must be novel. It won't be novel if other people are already using it. Patents permit a patent owner to stop others from doing something equivalent. On the one hand, the whole community has a stake in knowing that genuinely new ideas are patented. On the other hand, the whole community has a stake in knowing that only the genuinely innovative idea receives patent protection. Therefore, we all have a stake in publicizing what we know. That way maybe the Patent and Trademark Office will only reward true inventions with patent protections and permit the rest of us to benefit from what is known. It's a terrible injustice for a person to receive a patent for something that was already known in the community at the time the patent was submitted. If the PTO cannot find out that the innovation was known previously, then there are both an unjust reward and an unjust harm to others. 2:29:44 PM    comment []

Here's the Washington Post story about GEWIS. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3409-2003Jan30?language=printer For better or worse, the government is going to be doing a lot more supervising and monitoring of the internet. Thanks to the SANS Institute for comments: --GEWIS Internet Monitoring System (31 January 2003) The Bush administration is creating an Internet monitoring system that will provide a picture of the Internet's health. The Global Early Warning Information System (GEWIS - "Gee-whiz") will detect and respond to denial-of-service attacks and other cyber incidents. GEWIS is being built by the National Communications System, a defense agency, which receives real time network status information from ISPs and telecommunications providers. [Editor's Note (Ranum): The only way to respond to DOS is to be in the route the traffic is going to traverse. Detection by itself is a hard problem, but this whole concept is ridiculous as it's described. Of course phase 1 is just to provide a "Gee whiz" graphical picture of the health of the Internet. That's doable, given the right data. I bet that they won't get farther than that. (Paller) I disagree with Marcus on this one. Marcus is correct that only someone "in the path" can stop the attack. That "someone" is usually the ISP. When Internet Storm Center found the Lion worm, SANS analysts quickly informed the folks at the ISPs who acted instantly to block the China.com site where the worm was sending stolen password files. In other words, early detection can lead to immediate remediation.] 2:09:39 PM    comment []

Remarkable radar of the space shuttle disappearance: http://www.dondrake.com/archives/000112.html Thanks to: Donald Drake President Drake Consulting http://www.drakeconsult.com/ p: 312-560-1574 f: 312-896-5736 We're coming into a time when we should all remember that life is more dangerous than we realize. Our thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones of those involved in the space shuttle program, and expecially those aboard. 2:00:46 PM    comment []

Louis Menand says George Orwell (his pen name) was not the man we all think. Read his review in The New Yorker: http://newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?030127crat_atlarge Nonetheless, the Orwell awards sould like a good idea. The ceremony will be held at the New Yorker Hotel in New York City in April at the 13th Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy. Privacy International Big Brother Awards Page: http://www.privacyinternational.org/bigbrother/us2003/ Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy: http://www.cfp2003.org/ The Public Voice: http://www.thepublicvoice.org/ 1:50:46 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Noel D. Humphreys.