Slashdot Mirror

FYI, the document mentioned on the Europarliament page (entitled "Development of surveillance technology and risk of abuse of economic information") is dated October 1999. The document itself is not available there however :-( My guess is that the document on the mirror site is a draft version of the same report. If not, it's worth a read anyway!

If I can manage to download a copy of it, I'll try to put a mirror up in the US. And then I'll try to explain the traffic to my ISP. ;-)
--
Brad Knowles

Check out an overview of the treaty at European Parliament. Informed (if somewhat alarmist) commentary can also be found at the Federation of American Scientists.
Basically, the treaty limits the signatories and their sucessors (the former SSRs) to a pair of anti-missile defense batteries apiece. When the US signed we were already planning to decomission Talos anyway, and funding had dried up for further ABM systems, so the US Gummint figured they'd gotten something for nothing. Later, Ronald "Ronnie Raygun" Reagan decided to play fast and loose with the terms of the treaty in order to develop the so-called "Star Wars" programs. The strapped chicken fiasco discredited Reagan's plans, but the KEW systems are still eminently viable and would probably be in production today if Bush hadn't reneged on paying the companies who sank millions into developing the old "flying crowbars" concept.
Hey, you asked. Kind of a sore spot with me since I was peripherally involved in KEW 2.x.
--Charlie

It exists, beyond question. It is also incredibly naive to imagine that amateur attempts to "jam" this system will be more than a minor nuisance to its operators.

If you don't believe that, then read this report from the European Parliament on The State of Electronic Surveillence.

The Technologies of Political Control

The only reason the US Intelligence community cares about encryption so much is because of Echelon. Echelon works in real time and the NSA has a finite amount of 'puter resources to throw at data interception. The feds need to insure that people don't use too strong of an encryption because then Echelon couldn't handle it. The NSA listens in to everything that enters or leaves the USA and the EU. If you don't believe me check out this link to an EU site.

The one in the TechWeb article is slightly mangled... if you didn't figure it out, try this.

Check out the May 1999 STOA newsletter for a very quick summary (scroll down a bit). None of it is US authored, AFAICT.

1. Transient and incidental acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2 which are an integral and essential part of a technological process for the sole purpose of enabling use to be made of a work or other subject matter shall be exempted from the right set out in Article 2. Such uses must be authorised by the rightholders or permitted by law and must have no economic significance for the rightholders.

Temporary copies - as in a cache copy that expires after a set period of time.

authorised by the rightholders - if they don't use the procedures in the HTTP spec for specifying that a document may not be cached (the Expires: headers that most cache servers honor), then they have implicitly authorised temporary copies. So if they need accurate hit counts they can use Expires headers or other things like CGI counters (that can't be cached).

no economic significance for the rightholders - caching web pages has no economic significance for the author of a web page since they will get the same number of viewings either way, and things that had to be paid for will still have to be paid for.

So let's not make a mountain out of a molehill :)

-Todd

Since the Register's article seemed to be a bit light on the facts I dug up the full accepted proposal from the European Parliament's www-server. Check out the HTML-version at (no spaces):

http://www2.europarl.eu.int/dg7-bin/seid.pl?PRG= DOCRAPPORT+APP=RAPPORT+FILE=PE-RAPPORT- A4-0026-99-EN+LANGUE=EN

Sorry about not linking directly, but slashdot seems to enter spaces to long URLs :(

It is also available in WordPerfect and PDF formats and in several languages, suomi mukaanluettuna :).

I haven't read it thru yet (It will take some time... 68 pages in PDF file). My first impression was that MEPs are actually trying to earn their salaries... they have made quite a lot changes and amendments to the Commisions proposed text.

If I have energy left after reading the report, I'll write to my MEP and try to get his opinion about matter and why he voted for/against it. I urge other Europeans do the same even it may seem pointles, but that's just the way how representational government works.. Naturally one should not send the usual flamemail to MEPs.

Since the Register's article seemed to be a bit light on the facts I dug up the full accepted proposal from the European Parliament's www-server. Check out the HTML-version at (no spaces):

http://www2.europarl.eu.int/dg7-bin/seid.pl?PRG= DOCRAPPORT+APP=RAPPORT+FILE=PE-RAPPORT- A4-0026-99-EN+LANGUE=EN

Sorry about not linking directly, but slashdot seems to enter spaces to long URLs :(

It is also available in WordPerfect and PDF formats and in several languages, suomi mukaanluettuna :).

I haven't read it thru yet (It will take some time... 68 pages in PDF file). My first impression was that MEPs are actually trying to earn their salaries... they have made quite a lot changes and amendments to the Commisions proposed text.

If I have energy left after reading the report, I'll write to my MEP and try to get his opinion about matter and why he voted for/against it. I urge other Europeans do the same even it may seem pointles, but that's just the way how representational government works.. Naturally one should not send the usual flamemail to MEPs.