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ICANN has been in the news quite a bit recently. Although new TLD's have been in the works for more than five years now, ICANN has given in to the lobbying of its patron mega-corps and stated that no new TLD's would be created unless trademark holders got first dibs on them. So much for a personal TLD exempt from trademark considerations... ICANN is currently pushing its At-Large Membership, which everyone should join, even though the system has been carefully rigged so that the public cannot make meaningful changes in the composition of ICANN's Board. All these and more will be discussed in their Cairo meeting, which will be Webcast starting 2 a.m. EST on March 8.

Greyfox writes "This USA Today story tells us that the Utah Senate just passed a law to withhold funding from libraries that don't implement net filtering. The law now goes to the governor for signing or not signing." The bill text talks about keeping minors off sites with "obscene" material. Most Utah libraries will probably just sign on to the existing statewide Smartfilter network, which (as the Censorware Project has shown) already blocks a legitimate access every 99 seconds. As the law pressures more libraries to sign up, that rate will climb. More thoughts below...

I am not a lawyer, but here's something interesting. The bill requires that any public library receiving state funds:

"...adopts and enforces a policy to restrict access by minors to Internet or online sites that contain obscene material."

"Obscene" is a term with strict legal meaning. The definition is, roughly, that the material must depict sexual conduct in an offensive way, must appeal to prurient interest as defined by community standards, and must lack serious scientific, literary, artistic, or political ("SLAP") value.

But no internet blocking software in existence blocks material according to these or any other legal criteria. For example, "sexualconduct" is defined by the state. Is mere nudity sexual conduct? Not according to most states. In Utah? I don't know. Does Smartfilter offer a Utah- or Utah-community-specific version? Of course not.

Most censorware programs just lump nudity in with hardcore obscenity. Their simple categories are aimed at the home or business market, after all, and there's no need to be very picky. Sometimes they just block any webpage with "sex" in the URL - no, I'm not making this up, that's the software they were pushing in Holland.

In other words, the only way to satisfy the requirements of the bill is to install software which violates the First Amendment by indiscriminately blocking protected material. The bill uses legal terms that no software can live up to.

Also, the bill offers no definition of "site." Is a site an entire domain? If so, then no minor may access Yahoo, because, at any given time, somewhere on geocities.yahoo.com, there is probably a (soon-to-be-decommissioned) free page with sexual content.

This is not an abstract problem. The Smartfilter software used in Utah at the time of our tests blocked the Wiretap archive, which blocked library patrons from reading the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, "Wuthering Heights," and many other legitimate and valuable texts. Not theoretically - in reality - we know because we read the proxy logs.

But after our report came out, they unblocked it - so now patrons could read about how to have sex with a horse, make drugs, and build an atomic bomb. Same archive. Two very different types of material.

So, should the entire Wiretap archive be blocked, or not? Or should the decision be made at the directory level? The file level? Granularity is important, and by using the sloppy word "site," the lawmakers have dodged the issue.

And they are not alone. Lawmakers in every state and at the federal level are looking at similar legislation. It'll be worded slightly differently every time, but none of it can get around the fundamental problem: computer algorithms aren't up to the task of categorizing human expression.

If and when the governor signs this into law, it will be an important marker in the struggle over filters. It will probably encourage other states to do the same. But, this isn't the final word; wait for the lawsuits to begin.

nahal writes "DNA evidence is extremely compelling to a jury at trial when trying to convict a suspect. In this article at USA Today, the world's largest DNA crime-solving machine, located in Great Britain, mistakenly matched a suspect to a crime in a 1-in-37 million chance. American experts have called it 'mind blowing'."

JSK writes "Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., has introduced a bill into Congress which, if passed, would control networks' use of cookies. DoubleClick says they'll oppose it."

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once wrote that the right to be left alone is the beginning of all freedom. That's bad news, because privacy as we've come to understand the idea is over, and tracking software -- now widely deployed on the Web and in businesses from banking to supermarkets -- helped to kill it.

"I am not the first to point out that capitalism, having defeated communism, now seems about to do the same to democracy. The market is doing splendidly, yet we are not."

--- Ian Frazier, "On the Rez."

All week, we visit Web sites, Weblogs, mailing lists; we download software, buy books, check out movie reviews, visit news sites, order vitamins and DVDs; download MP3s; go to chat rooms; check in on ICQ, AIM. Each time, some program is tracking our every move, compiling elaborate marketing profiles, often collating the information with vast databases and selling the resulting information without our knowledge.

Privacy, as most of us have come to understand the idea, is over.

Except to the Unabomber or to a handful of Luddites living in the desert, the idea that we can keep our personal, financial and other information from corporations and governments is as outdated as the idea that the movie industry can jail all the people helping themselves to DeCSS software.

A growing array of software makes much of our individual behavior trackable - what we buy, what we read, where we visit, how we get our information. Companies that produce and deliver banner ads can track your clicks from site to site across the Web. They can cross-reference your personal ID with records listing your name, address, telephone number, e-mail, purchasing and browsing habits.

Amazon.com has pioneered recognition software programs that compile individuals' tastes and choices over time, a technology that's been adopted by supermarkets and hardware stores, who recognize us the minute they swipe our credit cards or take our telephone numbers.

ISPs (like AOL) and portals and search engines can record which chat rooms you enter, what news pages you read, what pages you've bookmarked.

Most Americans have no idea that marketers can store their user IDs in cookie files and track their movements so precisely and comprehensively. Were a government to attempt this, politicians and civil libertarians would explode in righteous fury. But when done this gradually, technologically, out of sight and in incremental, software-driven steps, it simply creates an astonishing new social reality: Those of us who go online regularly (this year, that will be more than 130 million people) no longer have a voluntarily zone of privacy.

None of us any longer has any clear idea just how much personal information about us has been gathered, or who might have acquired or stored it. Nor is it possible to imagine all the future circumstances - applying for jobs, graduate school or government grants; fending off a lawsuit, running for political office; tangling with a law enforcement agency or court - in which this information might haunt us or be wielded against us. In the name of marketing and writing cool software, we've voluntarily surrendered one of the most important human rights. (See USA Today story on DoubleClick, Web-tracking and Slashdot.)

No national politician has made the death of privacy a major political issue, nor is any congressional committee investigating it. The truth is, it's no longer an issue; privacy in the traditional sense doesn't exist anymore. In a world where we're all increasingly dependent on networked computing for work, banking, music, movies, research and personal communications, it's unlikely ever to return.

Privacy has historically been considered a fundamental element of individual liberty. Thomas Jefferson argued repeatedly that privacy from governmental or other intrusion into personal lives (he had British soldiers in mind) was a basic human right. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote that "the right to be left alone is the beginning of all freedom." Said political philosopher Jean Cohen: "A constitutionally protected right to privacy is indispensable to any modern conception of freedom."

The death of privacy has been so relentless, indirect and unintended, however, as to have gone virtually unnoticed. Reporters routinely pry into the most intimate details of the lives of public figures. Computers were collecting personal data on individuals even before the Net and the Web. Spy satellites overhead collect pinpoint photographs; government technicians pull cell and wireless calls out of the air; and police forces can even trace our auto trips as we pass through digitalized toll booths.

Since the use of the Net and Web is, increasingly, no longer an option but a necessity, we surrender our privacy --- usually unknowingly. Every time we go online, some marketer learns a bit more about us or our families.

According to the Interagency Financial Institution Web Site Privacy Survey, conducted by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), all of the 50 largest financial institutions online collect three or more pieces of personal or demographic information about users. The FDIC says that only eight of the 50 largest institutions meet minimal privacy data standards. That is, they fail to explain what data is being collected, allow consumers to opt out, permit access to the information, provide secure storage for the data, and provide customers a way to contact the company regarding privacy issues.

Last week, American Demographics magazine reported that new "data-mining" tools being deployed in food markets are promising to track frequent-shopper behavior both in and out of the store. The magazine reported that 46% of Americans now "swipe and save", that is, they use frequent shopper cards and programs. These digital cards are used to store customer gender, identify and age, and preferences in everything from hygiene products to junk food. They are then sold or traded for information from databases gathered by other businesses. In this way, companies can gather increasingly detailed portraits of almost everyone who uses a bank, credit or other money card, all now digitalized.

In his book "Code; and Other Laws of Cyberspace," Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig argues that the Internet will be regulated shortly, but not in the way we've feared. "Left to itself, cyberspace will become a perfect tool of control, not by the government, but by software programmers helping to track our every move."

Important aspects of privacy will be erased, he warns. Password - driven software will one day demand payment for every individual reader action, from copying a paragraph to reading something more than once. Free browsing, sharing and quoting from online works will be eliminated. This will also, Lessig warns, inhibit free speech. Once Net users realize that companies like America Online can trace their movements and tailor on-screen advertising to match their habits, people will increasingly be conscious of what they say and where they say it.

If so, the future Lessig foresees will catch most Netizens (including this one) off-guard, especially the belief that copyright and intellectual property can't really be preserved as the Net and the Web grow. We haven't come to grips with the idea that the technologies most of us see as liberating are destroying our privacy.

With the collapse of Communism, which featured powerful stage agencies like the KGB and the Stasi which gathered vast amounts of personal data on citizens, the idea of brutally repressive political systems already seems remote. For better or worse, national politicians in the United States bitterly compete with one another to see who can define government in the cheapest and narrowest way. Marketers are taking advantage of this comparatively benign political period to take until-recently unimaginable liberties with our personal freedoms. So far, the corporations collecting this information have seemed relatively discreet, especially compared to brutal governments. If you pay careful attention to the Spam you get online, it's sometimes possible to see who's collecting just what kind of information about you.

And increasingly, even these image-conscious companies show their teeth. Free music sites are being shut down; a Norwegian teenager gets hauled off to the police station for allegedly violating restrictions on DVD programming code.

As for governments, the geeks and nerds who've grown up on the Net have encountered almost comically clueless ones. When it comes to repression - as in the Communications Decency Acts and Congressional votes requiring the Ten Commandments in schools - our government has been about as knowing and menacing as the Three Stooges. It's easy to understand why people struggle to take it seriously. But that hasn't always been the case. Personal privacy is a monumental safeguard against abuse of governmental authority. The distance between corporate and government computers is a very short one.

For a malevolent government - the kind Jefferson worried about, and the reason the Bill of Rights was crafted in the first place - it would be radically simple to figure out who the "troublemakers" are, what forbidden books they bought, or what politically unacceptable movies they viewed (they wouldn't have to go much further than AOL/Time-Warner). Access to this kind of information ought not be passed around among corporations. If citizens wish to give up their privacy, they obviously have the right to do so. But they ought to be given a choice. Shockingly, it's already too late for that.

This issue now permeates almost every level of American society. In the name or preventing violence, schools use computer software programs to gather information on potentially "violent" students, kids that teachers find disturbing or alarming. No one knows where this data goes - presumably to law enforcement authorities, where it remains in secret digital files for life.

The tragedy of technology is that we refuse, as a society, to consider its implications, from fertility drugs and genetic research to artificial intelligence to supercomputing.

While our political, educational and media institutions focus obsessively on exaggerated or meaningless issues like the spread of sexual imagery, or invoke the undocumented specter of media violence, larger and more fundamental issues like the loss of privacy go largely undiscussed.

Thus hard-won values slip away without much national discussion or debate. This genie is probably never going back into the bottle. Given the epidemic spread of data-tracking software, it's hard to imagine we'll ever have "the right to be left alone" again.

Slav writes "We've known for a while that tracking of Web users was possible and a few companies have been experimenting with it on a small scale. Now DoubleClick, Inc. has confirmed that it's tracking Web surfers [by name and address] with the help of the databases of its newly acquired Abacus Direct." Every site that you visit which has a DoubleClick ad - all 11,500 of them - can be notified of your name, address, phone number, etc., as soon as you visit the site. Or to look at it another way, your consumer profile in the gigantic Abacus database (hundreds of fields of data for essentially every person in the United States) will now include information about what Web sites you visit.

snotty sent us linkage to a USA Today story talking about the results of Jam Echelon Day. We mentioned this a bit earlier. Sorta a depressing followup I guess, but worth a read.

Brandon Phillips wrote to us about a recent USAToday story concerning the next set of Lucas-approved post-TRJ books. R.A Salvatore is writing the new books (great author) and one of the major characters dies. Warning: by clicking through you will know who dies. Or just buy the book.

Palin Majere writes "This story from USAToday reports on how banks in the UK are finding it cheaper (and easier) to pay off cracker groups rather than try and defend themselves properly."

Palin Majere writes "This story from USAToday reports on how banks in the UK are finding it cheaper (and easier) to pay off cracker groups rather than try and defend themselves properly."

HalAshton writes "In a move that should make it easier to launder money on the internet. A Swiss bank is going online with initial deposits only $5000." U.S. regulators and the IRS are worried. Next thing you know, they'll want back doors into all crypto so that Internet-using tax evaders have a harder time hiding from them.

Thanks to Greyfox for giving us a story that confirms what I've always thought: politicians can be traded like stocks. Much like any normal stock market, now you can bid up your favorite politician - big tax break? Buy him up! Campaign corruption? Sell! If you are a South Korean, of course.

Bryan_Casto writes "USAToday has an article about Sceptre's new LCD monitor, which hides the screen image from anyone not wearing the glasses that come with the monitor. The screen appears white to ordinary eyes, but with the polarized glasses, the desktop comes into view. "

Bryan_Casto writes "USAToday has an article about Sceptre's new LCD monitor, which hides the screen image from anyone not wearing the glasses that come with the monitor. The screen appears white to ordinary eyes, but with the polarized glasses, the desktop comes into view. "

Shaheen writes "USA Today has an interesting report about how homes that have an Internet connection watch an average of %13 (about an hour) less television than other homes each day. You can read about it here. " What about those of us who forget to turn the TV off while we read our email? The scariest thing to me is that 13% is an hour. Who is watching 10 hours of TV a day?

Aaron M. Renn writes "To followup on reports of harrassment of slashdot regulars by school officials, here's an article from USA Today about how the ACLU's phone is ringing off the hook with similar complaints about abuses of civil rights by school officials. "

Tony Garcia writes "According to this article on USA Today, MP3.COM is signing deals with Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos. Seems like "big time" artists are joining the mp3 wave "Now, if only DJ Shadow and Tom Waits would agree to that-Nirvana reached.

jbc writes "USA Today has an article on O'Reilly's animal cover art. If you're like me, and are an obsessive collector of these books, you'll find it interesting. If not, you probably won't. "

mustard writes " This is an article in USA Today about a technology that uses energy pulses to transmit data. It's fast as the speed of light, cell phones could be as small as a wristwatch, and you could have only 1 tower every 100 miles. It uses new chip technology from IBM, and as an example, they cite that it could support over 2,000 cellphones per block, as opposed to coventional cellular today which is about 400 per block. But it's not limited to that, it can be used for cheap personal radar as well. Well worth a read, fascinating stuff. In a related story, the inventor of the patent is in a dispute with a government funded lab who, according to congress, stole the idea."

mustard writes " This is an article in USA Today about a technology that uses energy pulses to transmit data. It's fast as the speed of light, cell phones could be as small as a wristwatch, and you could have only 1 tower every 100 miles. It uses new chip technology from IBM, and as an example, they cite that it could support over 2,000 cellphones per block, as opposed to coventional cellular today which is about 400 per block. But it's not limited to that, it can be used for cheap personal radar as well. Well worth a read, fascinating stuff. In a related story, the inventor of the patent is in a dispute with a government funded lab who, according to congress, stole the idea."

As some of you might know, Jon Katz, one of our own has recently had his latest book published, Running to The Mountain. I've read an advance copy of the book, and was impressed (as I usually am) with Katz' take on life, spirituality, and what it means to be human. As he is obviously one of our own here, I won't even pretend to be able to give an objective review-I leave that to others-including the print version of USAToday, a rave review. For the reading benefit of the audience, I've included an excerpt from the new book below, along with the book cover. Read it-it's worth time. Update: 02/18 11:39 by H : The USA Today review is online.Update: 02/18 02:08 by H :Katz has written some words talking about this-look above the review to read it. Just want to report that since the Slashdot excerpt of my book went up, the Amazon.com sales ranking went from 9,000 to 200 in less than two hours. That's a pretty striking testament to the punch of this site. I fought pretty hard for the publisher to release the first serial rights here, (they didn't get any money) for several reasons:

1. I think the site is great and Rob and Jeff deserve some help with the rent money. Books fought from this site send some money back to them.
2. We write a lot on this site about empowerment, about individuals taking some responsibility for their technology. Writers need to do the same. I argued for months that I could bring my book to readers directly and bypass the hype machinery than handcuff writers and keep them dependent on reviewers and producers and marketers. So I always saw a link between an OSS site and an experiment like this.

And it worked. It probably doesn't take that many books to go from 9,000 to 200 (last week my ranking was l.2 million) but I think this is an experiment that has really worked. It shows sites like this reach people, even sell things. It gives some money back to a site that has given everybody else, including me, a hell of a lot. It suggests another empowering possibility for the Net. Writers can get off their butts and communicate directly with readers.
So thanks to those of you who have been e-mailing me those nice words. Thanks to the people who are buying the book and giving a dollar or two back to the site. And thanks even to the flamers for adding their usual free-wheeling spice.
I plan to top 100 by the end of the today. The USA Today review helped, obviously, but this is the place that made it happen.
you can e-mail me at jonkatz@slashdot.org Running to the Mountain
Written by Jon Katz

So, tentatively, with equal parts determination and terror, I set out on what Thomas Merton liked to call a journey of the soul.

Merton, a Trappist monk whose work I began when I was in the 9th grade and in sore need of solace, as did millions of others all over the world, was my guide on this trip. I'd read almost everything he'd written. He was a Catholic, I was raised a Jew; he had absolute faith, I never did. Still, for reasons I may never completely understand, he spoke to me, personally and powerfully. As a boy, I'd written him a letter that he never answered; if he had, I might have wound up in the monastery with him. Merton died thirty years ago. I never met him, but if a stranger's voice can enter one's soul, his permeated mine.

"It is absolutely impossible," he wrote all those years ago, "for a man to live without some kind of faith."

It is equally impossible to change your life without some.

A prolific author, journal keeper, letter writer and poet, Merton lived in the abbey of Gethsemani in the Kentucky woods. He was approaching 50 when he retreated to a hermitage; perhaps it's not coincidental that as I approached 50, I ran to a mountain, too.

Merton was obsessed with a central issue for our time -- figuring out how to live, trying to forge a life of balance, purpose and meaning. I've grown to share his obsession, his belief that life demands a lot of tinkering, and requires people to give birth to themselves not just once, but over and over.

Central to much of Merton's writing was the idea of these journeys, powerful images of seeking and traveling. The journey of the soul -- his term -- is to me one of his most important notions. It has enormous moral force and potent appeal to us wretched pilgrims as we struggle to find direction, to figure out what to believe, to incorporate some measure of spirituality and peace into our frantic lives.

On my own journey, in the years since I stared into those monitors, my life changed more radically than I had imagined.

I underwent years of psychoanalysis, became a writer, and swore never to work for a large institution again. Shedding ambitions, friends and colleagues of 15 years, I left the world of offices, annual evaluations, meetings, suits and expense accounts behind for good.

The world I entered -- the life of a suburban parent and solitary author -- could not have been more different. I crossed a vast cultural and social divide in months, from barking orders in a high-tech control room to holding up in the attic of my house trying to write and sell a novel, keeping one eye on the clock so I never missed a carpool.

Had I a realistic idea of what a writer's life would really be like, I would have thought a lot longer and harder.

But the point was, I began one year a big-deal producer and ended it at home, fielding calls about playdates from the other Moms, learning the ways of supermarkets, and sitting in front of an early primitive Apple computer at the dawn of the Digital Age clacking out the story of a network taken over by a heartless conglomerate.

So began the wildest ride of my life.

But as I turned 50 in the summer of l997, even before I stood on that mountain, I already suspected that I needed to take another trip, even if I didn't really know why.

A decade, seven books and countless articles later, I was driving up the New York State Thruway, my heart pounding like some eager traveler about the hit the road again.

Change, I remembered all too well, is risky and frightening. Much as you flail around seeking help, when it's all said and done, there is only one genuine source of inspiration, courage and determination -- that's you.

In fact, running to the mountain, another spiritual adventure, proved even more frightening than the first. A decade of shocks, disappointments, successes and defeats had accumulated since the last trip. If I had a heightened sense that one could successfully change one's life, being a writer had taught me time and again that rejection and failure were even greater possibilities. The first time, I'd leaped more or less blindly into the void. This time, I had a sense of what awaited me.

Only recently has it occurred to me that recounting this ongoing trek might be interesting or useful to others. But because so many people have embarked on journeys of their own -- of all sorts, from embarking on parenthood or divorce to changing a career and facing the end of life -- it may be worth telling.

E-mail jonkatz@slashdot.org with questiosns or comments.

If you want to purchase this book, head over to Amazon and help Rob and I pay rent.

BrianS sent us a link to a USA Today Article on Refund Day. The rumor is that nobody will be getting any money back today.

Jeroen writes "USAToday features a nice mainstream article about Linus Torvalds, with mentions his grandfather and contains quotes from his father." The article calls him the next Bill Gates, albeit tongue in cheek.

Norm writes "Are Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins of Handspring, the original inventors of the PalmPilot, going to make a PalmPilot for less than $100 and target kids and students as well as corporate users? That could be huge. Maybe that's why they are smiling. Check out the USAToday article. I already have a PalmPilot and I love it. I can't wait to see what they come out with next. "

WebTV reports back on its users' viewing habits every night. Indeed, they have a whole department to sift through the information they collect -- allegedly to allow them to better target advertisements to susceptible viewers. What's cool is that customers are only today being told about it. Why worry about the FBI tapping phones, if large corporations can add spying devices to the consumer electronics they sell? Thanks to a contributor whose name has been lost.

A slew of rumors have started flying that IBM may be interested in purchasing Sun. However, the word on the Street is that the likelihood of this is pretty small, because IBM's business focus is not where Sun is at currently. Thanks to profesor for being the first to send this one in.

ZaMoose writes "The FCC is pursuing the idea of taxing private 'Net users in order to fund the cheap hook-ups for schools that the Clinton Administration has promised. This would hit ISPs, telephone companies and ordinary Netizens right in the pocketbook. Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress are set to block such a measure." USAToday has the rest of the story.

Noah Meyerhans sent us this USA Today Article on Cryptology. It's a very mainstream piece, and explains simply and clearly one the major reasons that back doors for Uncle Same should not be required. It's cool because my mom would understand why this is a bad thing after reading this article. There are many more reasons why govt restrictions on encryption are bad, but this is a nice start at explaining them.

Jason Springer writes " I saw this article on USA Today . I suggest you read it to get the drift. I also suggest mentioning this story which I read on Wired which has to deal with Geffen's fight to destroy MP3s (the articles are quite related). I'm not sure if you have posted this before or not, but since I haven't seen it posted myself... well, anyway. Later. "

Andy Tai writes "In this USA today artcle discussing the future of Microsoft Windows, Linux is mentioned as one potential competitor to overthrow Microsoft's monopoly." The article doesn't say anything that Slashdot readers don't know- but once again, it got mentioned in the 'Main Stream'.

This Story at USA Today was sent to us by Brian Servis. Apparently Uncle Sam is going to start sending snail mail to spammers telling them to lay off. Fortunately they've brought in the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. I'm sure if anyone can help fix the spam problem, it's the post office. *grin*

Richard Lewis Jones writes "Rumours abound in London that MS are about to launch a takeover of British Telecommunications plc - our main telecoms company here in the UK. Bill is unnaturally friendly with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair -so I think the sale would be approved fairly easily."

Read more information at This Yahoo Story and some background information at USA Today.