Cybercrime and Patents in Europe

Hairy1 writes: "The Council of Europe has been working on a Cyber Crime Treaty for some time. The final version is now available, and makes interesting reading." The submitter points out that treaty signers will be obligated to create legislation, as the UK already has, to force people to disclose passwords and encryption keys to the authorities. The U.S. may well sign this treaty - we've participated in the drafting process. On a slightly different note, people are up in arms because the European Patent Office has decided, apparently on its own, that software programs are patentable. Update: 11/09 15:23 GMT by M : A reader sent in this interesting bibliography of the treaty's history.

Comments

Patents

[iBod]

The Register has a piece on the patents issue here...
Eurolinux goes ballistic over Euro patent 'coup'

Re:Patents

[ChazeFroy]

Another interesting aspect of this law is the potential for social engineering attacks. Imagine somebody posing as a government official telling somebody or some company to disclose their passwords or encryption keys?

In the USA, it's a felony to pretend to be a government official. Hopefully EU nations have thought of this scenario when drafting this treaty.

Amusing.

[MrFredBloggs]

The EU recently released a report encouraging business & individuals to encrypt data, as the Americans, and sympathetic governments (UK) can read it via Echelon. Now they are saying that once you`ve encrypted it, you have to give the passwords to...uh, the UK government!

Re:Amusing.

[torako]

It seems to me that a lot of times one part of the European government doesn't know what another part is doing.. What they are trying to do is a) to protect European business interests (encouraging cryptography) to prevent the US from stealing information and b) to protect European business interests by allowing companies to get patents for software products.. ?! Sounds kind of weird.. I think the first thing (a) sounds very reasonable because it is proven that Echelon has been used for spying on allies after the end of the Cold War, but I don't know about (b).. There are enough legal instruments to protect software right now and considering the encryption key issue: The government has a right to get your key to decrypt data in criminal investigation, but at no other time and for no different purpose..

Re:Amusing.

[Savage-Rabbit]

As far as I could see, i.e. decrypt the lawyer speak in the treaty investigators have to have what the lawyers in the US call "probable cause". This did not read like an open ticket to conduct surveillance on anyone at all for no parcikular reason other that that there is nothing to do at the Bin Laden desk at MI.6 HQ at the moment, you have picked your nose clean, and you are in the mood for reading some poor sods personal E-Mail. In fact I like the how far they went in the Child Pornography section in banning even "Over 18 looks like 14" stuff. I rather doubt that Tony Blair and his fellow slimers will be able to order say Siemens, Dupont or the Airbus consortium to hand over the keys to encrypted transmissions just so that HM government can brown nose Uncle Sam with nice data-morsels for Boeing or Motorola. But then who in the EU trusts the British anymore when it comes to keeping the lid on sensitive commercial data and not leaking to the US for Brownie Points?

As for Echelon the EU should kick the CIA/NSA listening stations out and set up their own. If the US wants access after that let them come asking for it. And that will happen sooner or later if the US keeps abusing ECHELON. Hell, even the Germans are planning their own spy satilites

Re:Amusing.

[Savage-Rabbit]

It seems to me that a lot of times one part of the European government doesn't know what another part is doing.

That is no less true in the USA. It is almost funny how one half of the NSA is trying to make computers more secure and the other half trying to make George Orwells novel "1984" into reality.

Re:Amusing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The government has a right to get your key to decrypt data in criminal investigation, but at no other time and for no different purpose..

Don't forget that this also gives them the right to destroy or otherwise deny access to the data they decrypt, with little legal obligation to restore that data to it's previous state once it's determined that you (or the company) has committed no illegal act.

Re:Amusing.

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]In fact I like the how far they went in the Child Pornography section in banning even "Over 18 looks like 14" stuff. [/quote]

It also states that anything that may be construed as looking like child pornography is illegal, which has been an issue with a lot of child pornography cases lately (ie 3d renderings or 2d computer drawings as opposed to actual images). Of course, the whole 'over 18 looks like 14' thing is based heavily on the person viewing the material. This is also why they specifically stated that the individual governments can decide not to enforce those last 2 clauses (the 'over 18 looks younger' portion and the 'looks like child pornography but is actually a computer generated image' portion).

Re:Amusing.

[alexburke]

Of course, because Echelon doesn't exist, remember? *wink*

RIP in UK

[Martin Spamer]

This site details RIP (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000)), which has nothing to do with reglation, but with allows unwarrented searches of computer data, without the data holders knowledge or permission.

Hmm

[flumps]

I'm dubious.

Ok, I'm sure loads of other countries have participated, but it seems to me that this will be nothing but red tape to businesses.

As a citizen of "europe" I have yet to see the EU write one single peice of legislation that a) makes sense, b) actually has an effect other than to annoy people c) does any good. d) doesnt cost tonnes of money for sod all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad government are trying to get a hand into formalising these sorts of things, but what we really need is competant people advising them. I mean, look at what incompetance in these matters gave us the last time.

I won't hold my breath.

Re:Hmm

[Voidhobo]

I have yet to see the EU write one single peice [sic] of legislation that a) makes sense, b) actually has an effect other than to annoy people c) does any good. d) doesnt cost tonnes [sic] of money for sod all.

Yeah, tell my French and Greek colleagues that... Open your eyes, man. EU legislation is changing the way we live in Europe (our part of it, at least), and though it isn't always comfortable, it is very useful, makes sense, and often means less cost, less administration (true, the EU is very bureaucratic, but think of all the national instituions that are no longer needed due to the EU's multilateral institutions) and less annoyance (e.g. I'll be able to drive 45 mins. without having to exchange currency).

Re:Hmm

[flumps]

EU legislation is changing the way we live in Europe (our part of it, at least), and though it isn't always comfortable, it is very useful, makes sense, and often means less cost, less administration (true, the EU is very bureaucratic, but think of all the national instituions that are no longer needed due to the EU's multilateral institutions)

<offtopicrant>
What? You mean like the drivers licences that we carry around now - a) we have a picture card b) we have a paper counterpart.

If I could carry one or the other it makes sense, but when it comes to using it, we have to produce both?? . Crazy. Whats the point? I have to not only carry around a wad of paper and a card but also pay EXTRA for the convienience? And what about all the additional paperwork that has to be carried out? I have to get it signed by pope john paul before I can send it off and then if I sign it wrong they'll just send it back! What rubbish.

Or how about the man prosecuted for selling bananas in lbs instead of kilos? <sarcasm>Sure, that makes life much easier and makes complete sense.</sarcasm>
</offtopicrant>

Anyway, I've read elsewhere on the threads here that its not the EU anyway, its a different body (EC or sommit) so the point is somewhat moot.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had to change my drivers license 2 times over the last 7 years because the Danish government required it; -allegedly because the EU standards on how drivers licences are supposed to look changed. Each time it cost me a fee of the equivalent of 40£.

Re:Hmm

[pubjames]

As a citizen of "europe" I have yet to see the EU write one single peice of legislation that a) makes sense, b) actually has an effect other than to annoy people c) does any good. d) doesnt cost tonnes of money for sod all.

I am guessing that you are a UK citizen. Unfortunately certain sectors of the UK press takes a delight in printing "Brussels demands straight bananas" type stories, and don't report all the other things the EU is doing.

Increasing co-operation and standardizing regulations between all the EU countries is, to the say least, a difficult thing to do. Each country has its own legal system, its own style of government, and in many cases its own language.

I do business between various EU countries so I aware of the issues. The EU is doing a good and necessary job easing trade and legislation between all the countries of Europe. You say I have yet to see the EU write one single peice of legislation that a) makes sense, b) actually has an effect other than to annoy people c) does any good. d) doesnt cost tonnes of money for sod all - aren't you forgetting, for instance, the introduction of the Euro as the principal currency of most of the EU countries in just under two months time? That a) makes sense b) will have a profound effect on trade in the EU c) will greatly improve ease of trade and competitiveness and d) will greatly lower administration overheads and costs for nearly inter-EU trade.

Re:Hmm

[innocent_white_lamb]

We have to "renew" our drivers licenses EVERY YEAR here (Saskatchewan, Canada) at a cost of about CDN$25 per year. No new driving test or anything each year, just sign the form and fork over the money.

Software Patents?

[mESSDan]

Finally! I've got this great program I've been working on, I'm not going to disclose the ultra secret source code here, but let me tell you, It's awesome. You run it and it displays:

Hello World!

Re:Software Patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this flamebait? I think it was a joke. OK, not a funny one, but it doesnt deserve flamebait.. ?

Damnit and I've already metamodded today :(

Software isn't patentable...

[cperciva]

but a software implementation of an invention does not render the invention unpatentable either.

All this latest directive does is clarify that an implementation in software has no effect on an invention's patentability: If you could get an patent on a method for doing something by using LEGO bricks, you could likewise get a patent on a method for doing the same thing using software.

What's the big deal?

Re:Software isn't patentable...

[KarmaBlackballed]

If you could get an patent on a method for doing something by using LEGO bricks, you could likewise get a patent on a method for doing the same thing using software.

The big deal is where we draw the line. Do we draw it anywhere or is everything patentable? Do you think patents benefit small inventors and society, or have you been told this. Knowing and being told are very different things.

Re:Software isn't patentable...

[Captn Pepe]

If you could get an patent on a method for doing something by using LEGO bricks, you could likewise get a patent on a method for doing the same thing using software.

What's the big deal?

This is more or less how software patents are supposed to work over here in the U.S., too. However, because the PTO has pathetically little software expertise, the result is that you can patent pretty much any stupid idea that is obvious to everyone else if your patent description ends with "...on a computer!"

The other big problem with this is that the patent system is explicitly not supposed to cover algorithms or mathematical formulae, because these are deemed fundamental properties of nature. However, patenting software is a surprisingly easy backdoor to patenting algorithms. E.g. RSA Data Security and the RSA patent which held back public key cryptography by a decade or more, and would have been worse if RSA had succeeded in convincing the PTO that their patent actually covers all forms of PK crypto.

Re:Software isn't patentable...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is more or less how software patents are supposed to work over here in the U.S., too. However, because the PTO has pathetically little software expertise, the result is that you can patent pretty much any stupid idea that is obvious to everyone else if your patent description ends with "...on a computer!"

But the PTO will eventually have a vast store of software experience. They've been making movements to hire more examiners with a CS background. In the meantime, software patents which should be invalid can be invalidated in court. It the patent is a stupid idea, then challenge it and get it overturned. By stupid idea, I assume you mean an "obvious" idea, if by stupid you mean "economically wasteful" then who cares if they have a patent. A patent on something truly trivia should have no value to the patent holder and no effect on the world.

The other big problem with this is that the patent system is explicitly not supposed to cover algorithms or mathematical formulae, because these are deemed fundamental properties of nature. However, patenting software is a surprisingly easy backdoor to patenting algorithms.

It is and it isn't. The idea that algorithms can't be patentable is an oversimplification of a string of Supreme Court decisions which don't necessary say that "algorithms are not patentable." The first software case was really Gottschalk v. Benson (409 US 63, 1972) which affirmed denial of a patent on a program which converted binary numbers to decimal. The Court should have struck down the patent on grounds of obviousness, but didn't, and that mistake is probably why we have a patent mess today. The more recent case of State Street Financial Trust v. Signature Financial Group (149 F.3d 1368, 1998) proposes that algorithms are patentable so long as the numbers mean something. In that case, the numbers were money.

That distinction is made to avoid the decision in Benson, but if you're saying it doesn't make much logical sense, I agree. I think patenting software should be allowed, but examiners should be better trained to recognize obviousness. I think in the long run (say 10-20 years) that will happen. And the Jeff Bezos of the world will have their patents struck down in the meantime.

Re:Software isn't patentable...

[Savage-Rabbit]

You are right! It seems to me people have a problem distinguish between getting a patent:

1. for a method to implement an algorithm in software
   
2. and getting a patent that covers not only ones own implementation of the algorithm but also all other possible implementations.

The former is sensible. Why should one not be able to enjoy the fruits of developing a partickularly efficient method to code a certain algorithm? People get patents for implementing algorithms in hardware all the time. What is an FPU anyway other than a bunch of algorithms implemented in Hardware? So why not patents on methods to implement algorithms in software?

The latter however is stupid becasuse it means that anyone who develops a method to code the same algorithm one has patented no matter how different his methods design is from ones own will be violating ones patent.

It is silly to write off the concept of Software patents in general just because a few brain-donors want to use them to monopolize common well known algorithms.

Re:Software isn't patentable...

[sealawyer]

"But the PTO will eventually have a vast store of software experience. They've been making movements to hire more examiners with a CS background."

Unfortunately, they don't pay enough money to get very experienced CS people. With a family of four to support, I couldn't afford to work there for 30-40k. Could you?

"In the meantime, software patents which should be invalid can be invalidated in court. It the patent is a stupid idea, then challenge it and get it overturned."

Of course once the PTO grants a patent, there is a heavy presumption that the patent is valid. That presumption means that if you are accused of infringement, your opponent will probably find it easy to get an injunction to shut you down until you get your day in court with the entire burden of production of evidence and proof in your opponents favor. Perhaps you'll just settle, eh.

"I think patenting software should be allowed, but examiners should be better trained to recognize obviousness."

I don't think the problem is with the examiners. I think the problem is that the legal definition for obviousness allows bad software patents to be granted and enforced in the courts. Perhaps someday when getting a software patent is the norm, and all of the important obvious stuff can be found in the patent office files, bad software patents will be the exception rather than the expectation. But till then, stand by.

Re:Software isn't patentable...

[shimmin]

The other big problem with this is that the patent system is explicitly not supposed to cover algorithms or mathematical formulae, because these are deemed fundamental properties of nature. However, patenting software is a surprisingly easy backdoor to patenting algorithms. E.g. RSA Data Security and the RSA patent which held back public key cryptography by a decade or more, and would have been worse if RSA had succeeded in convincing the PTO that their patent actually covers all forms of PK crypto.

IIRC, there were already patents on public-key crypto in general, and so RSA were able only to patent a specific public-key cryptography scheme. The patents were to Diffie & Hellman for key exchange and ElGamal for digital signatures. Both patents expired in 1997.

Re:Software isn't patentable...

[xmedar]

Actually the RSA patent should never have been issued as some geeks at GCHQ ( the British equivalent of the NSA) had though up the idea years before RSA, they didnt patent it as it was ultra-top-secret, but it was prior art non the less see here

EU protecting privacy?

[titurel]

On November 13 the EU Parliment will vote on the the proposal for a European Parliament and Council directive concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector
Read the report here . If passed it would make it illegal to idenitfy users on the internet without their permission. Keep your fingers crossed.

Not all things that come out of the EU are bad. Belive it or not :)

This is an interesting development.

[dave-fu]

If software becomes a patentable, er... commodity, what implications will this have for free software? Will the length of legal disclaimers attached to code eventually be greater than the code itself?
And everyone fighting against encryption... it's a losing battle. "Criminals" don't exactly pay attention to "the law", and if they're not completely braindead and know that a given piece of encryption software is crippled by the fact that the government has the keys to the backdoor, don't you think that they'll either use something else or maybe just not incriminate themselves via any digital media? Law-abiding citizens are the only ones that lose here, unless you like the idea of every Jane Government sticking their nose in your business whether you've done anything wrong or not.
On the bright side, if software becomes patentable, maybe this will strengthen the notion of Code As Speech in the US courts? I sure hope that the US legislators in charge of ratifying this bill (are there any? what body would be in charge of this?) runs this by the RIAA and MPAA before they sign it.

Re:This is an interesting development.

[sydneyfong]

i always thought, that people who really want to do illegal stuff wouldn't be brainless enough to use the current existing encryption methods. Why even something like a Morse-code-over-ping (ping... ping ping... ping... ping ping ping... you get the idea) could transmit some information which outsiders have entirely no idea what it is.

Conversely, this thing is great for governments to audit suspicious people who might be going to do something potentially politically harmful to the government (good intention or not, like trying to overthrow the govt. or maybe just opposing some evil government policies) by checking his emails and stuff, and if he is then get him into jail or whatever. Kind of like what China was famous for, except it seems that those countries that are famous for bashing China for this are enforcing these laws.

And for software patents... well, does this mean patenting the source code or the design/look of it? I always thought that patents are a bit silly anyway... and the patent office is nice enough to let people patent the wheel. oh well...

I don't know, just hope that my place doesn't get polluted with these dirty issues. It's not very nice to know that our govt. might be implementing these "features" in seeing that these "advanced countries" are using it as well (IFAIK we don't have these things here yet... lucky me ;-)

DOJ Wrote it!

[BuckMulligan]

The US didn't help write the treaty. The US DOJ wrote the damn legislation. This is what is called "policy laundering" in Washington. If you can't pass the surveillance powers you want in the US, just shop the same provisions around in a treaty in other countries.

What to do for us EU citizens?

[4im]

So, what can we (EU citizens) actively do?

I've already signed the EuroLinux Petition

Maybe a membership with FSF Europe?

What else? Find politicians that'll listen?

Re:What to do for us EU citizens?

[LarsG]

If you are in the UK, check out Foundation for Information Policy Research
and Campaign for Digital Rights

Other than that, small groups are scattered here and there around Europe. If a group doesn't exist in your country - do something about it. :)

Re:What to do for us EU citizens?

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Support

EFF Europe

An initiative to create an EFF on the european level.

Is it just me...

[Colin Bayer]

or does Afghanistan keep sounding better and better as a choice of homes? You lose a hand for shoplifting, among other draconian laws, but at least you don't get punished for writing a program like DeCSS or Advanced eBook Processor...

Re:Is it just me...

[tubs]

You will probably find that TVs are banned in Afganastan, so I assume "DVDs" would also be banned.

Probably, the penalty is beheading. But at least it would be for (supposed) religous reasons and not the protection of some companies profits.

Re:Is it just me...

[istartedi]

That's funny. I was thinking that a power vacuum, US military, or UN martial law would provide a good opportunity to prosylatize Christianity and educate women with impunity. Free DVDs were pretty far down on the list.

give my keys to the athorities?

[archen]

Hmm... looks like it's time to start out-sourcing encryption to other countries that don't sign on. - India and China come to mind.

I feel safer, don't you?

Re:give my keys to the athorities?

[Tim C]

How will that help?

So you get your crypto written in a non-signatory country, so what? You still live in a country that's signed the treaty and acted on it, you still have to hand your keys over.

The only ways to avoid this are to emigrate, or to make sure it never becomes law.

Cheers,

Tim

So I don't own My Hard Drive anymore?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Look, They can regulate to their hearts content on transmission of stuff over the internet, But How the Heck can they now tell me my computer, and notably the hard drives, are subject to search and seizure , and that I am REQIRED to protect the information they want on MY OWN PROPERTY.

Don't get me wrong - child porn is bad, But taking away my rights to my own property is NOT the way to stop it. By all means, monitor for child porn, nail the ftp sites that hst it, but stay the hell away from my hard drive.

how the fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

can you patent a string of numbers, or one very large number (depending in interpretation)?

An assembler or compiler is merely a filter for some text. This number when transfered to another processor type will generate complete different results, most likely garbage. Clearly the object code means different things to different processors, so they can't use binary.

Source code? Well that doesn't actually do anything other that represent algorithms, or thought process (pseudo code); which in turn represents free speech. You know, that thing the US used to have.

CoE - U.S. Law?

[1010011010]

I thought the U.S. had decided a few centuries ago to do without European legislation. I suppose I was wrong, as it appears that the U.S. Federal Government is now using the European federal legislative body to create law here in the U.S., via treaty.

right

[Anonymous Coward]

" The U.S. may well sign this treaty"

you like they signed

-Global warming treaty
-Chemical weapons treaty
-Land mines treaty
-nuclear weapons treaty

US won't sign shit

Re:right

[Anonymous Coward]

Times are changing. USA crushed the landmines treaty. A few months ago they did the same to the biological weapons treaty, but when US marines start being blown up by landmines in Afghanistan, and the mail service is under attack by biological weapons, maybe Americans will begin to think differently.

Re:right

[bfree]

So all we need now is for Sadam to launch a Nuclear missile and a massive fire to wipe out half the planets petroleum. Maybe then the U.S. will stop behaving like big babies who are in fear of losing their toys!

Re:right

[Anonymous Coward]

You are assuming that the U.S.Gov't enforcement agencies had a part in drafting the above named treaties. They didn't, and U.S. businesses prevented its passage. However, the U.S. Gov't Dept of Justice, drafted this treaty under "policy laundering", after it was unable to get it passed through Congress. With this agency, and its component agencies (FBI, etc.) behind it, the treaty will be signed, to give greater surveillance capabilities to those agencies and to further "de facto" repeal the Bill-of-Rights.

Forced to disclose Passwords???

[A Commentor]

... treaty signers will be obligated to create legislation, as the UK already has, to force people to disclose passwords and encryption keys to the authorities. The U.S. may well sign this treaty - we've participated in the drafting process.

You would think that a law like this would violate everyone's '5th Amendment Rights':

nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself... full text.

Being force to disclose passwords to authorities, IMHO, would be equivalent to testifying agaist yourself...

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[csbruce]

While they're bypassing the 5th Amendment, perhaps they also ought to force serial killers to disclose the locations of their victim's bodies.

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[firewort]

Yes, this bypasses the 5th Amendment.

You think this matters? They practically retired the 4th Amendment a few weeks ago, under the name USA PATRIOT.

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[autopr0n]

Being force to disclose passwords to authorities, IMHO, would be equivalent to testifying agaist yourself...

How so? You wouldn't be directly implicating yourself, I mean you can't be convicted of a crime just for saying "EF8AC823A8B9C" or whatever...

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[kadehje]

.. treaty signers will be obligated to create legislation, as the UK already has, to force people to disclose passwords and encryption keys to the authorities. The U.S. may well sign this treaty - we've participated in the drafting process.

You would think that a law like this would violate everyone's '5th Amendment Rights': nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself... full text [cornell.edu].

Being force to disclose passwords to authorities, IMHO, would be equivalent to testifying agaist yourself...

Here's an even more disturbing part (from Article VI) of the Consitution that may mean that it doesn't, even theoretically, matter whether the government is forcing you to testify against yourself:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

(emphasis added) Unless the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Constitutional amendments cannot be superceded by international treaties, by ratifying this treaty the U.S. Senate would in fact be directly taking away your rights. (If anyone does know of some precedent surrounding this article one way or the other, I'm sure it would be greatly appreciated by the Slashdot community) One wouldn't have a prayer of overturning this in the courts, since the judge would for all intents and purposes would not even be allowed to take constitutionality into account. Pretty scary, huh?

Similiarly, I fear that getting rid of provisions of the DMCA specified in the WIPO treaty won't be as easy as finding a reasonable judge and having him cast the "unconstitutional" spell on the law to make it go away. At least that treaty, however, allows nations to break it upon providing a certain amount of advance notice (1 year I believe), but that would involve going to the same people who ratified it in the first place...

This provision in the Constitution is why we Americans need to keep pressure on the President and Senate to ensure that treaties that take away Americans' civil liberties like this will not be tolerated by the American public. Unfortunately most of the American public doesn't care about these liberties and probably won't until they're all gone. We need to start teaching others why these treaties and domestic laws like SSSCA are so evil and we need to do it soon, otherwise we'll have no rights to try to defend anymore.

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[AlexisKai]

Several replies to this post have opined that disclosing one's password would not constitute self-incrimination. In fact, Findlaw's Constitutional annotations clearly show that "The privilege afforded not only extends to answers that would in themselves support a conviction... but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute."

So you can take the fifth on disclosing your password if the following conditions are met:

• It must be plausible to the judge that your answer could incriminate you.
• You must take the fifth at the beginning of the line of questioning: "One must explicitly claim his privilege or he will be deemed to have waived it, and waiver may be found where the witness has answered some preliminary questions but desires to stop at a certain point."

Alexis

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[ectoraige]

Being forced to disclose passwords to authorities, IMHO, would be equivalent to testifying agaist yourself...

Err not in mine...

IANAL, but if police have a search warrant, and you have documents in a safe, you'd be required to give them the combination. It's the same thing here.

If you state "these are all mine, and nobody else could possibly have planted them there" then yeah, you're testifying against yourself.

But if you claim that the files aren't yours, or say nothing, the prosecution would have the burden of proof, and the fact that you provided passwords would be inadmissable, as you had been compelled to do so.

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[Anonymous Coward]

If you state "these are all mine, and nobody else could possibly have planted them there" then yeah, you're testifying against yourself.

But if you claim that the files aren't yours, or say nothing, the prosecution would have the burden of proof, and the fact that you provided passwords would be inadmissable, as you had been compelled to do so.

Good luck proving that some files aren't yours when you had the password that decrypted them. Also, good luck putting the burden of proof on the prosecution in any computer-related case, especially given that the files were encrypted with your password.

Re:Forced to disclose Passwords???

[Alsee]

&GT Being forced to disclose passwords to authorities, IMHO, would be equivalent to testifying agaist yourself...

Err not in mine...

My password is "I killed jimmy hoffa and buried the body under the ***** ******" (Location ommited for security purposes)

&LT Sarcasm&GT Nope, revealing my password isn't a violation of my 5th amendment rights. &LT /Sarcasm&GT

Never Laughed So Hard

[GeekDork]

That writ says NOTHING! I read it to article 9 and didn't see anything resembling a real statement for or agains something. Each and every passage that really says something "may or may not" be implemented by "a party". I'm considering moving to a place where there are real LAWS not lax guidelines. When I'm being shot for something, I want to know WHY!

Well, once in a while, my sig makes sense.

5th amendment

[jhubbard]

If it is true that the treaty forces countries to create legislation that makes it illegal to not provide keys on demand, how could the U.S. possibly sign this since the treaty? The 5th amendment prevents the gov't from forcing a person to testify against themselves. I believe that Mitnick used the 5th amend. to keep his encryption keys secret. I think that it was even discussed on slashdot a while back too.

"nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"

James

P.S. Does the search feature for stories even work anymore?

Re:5th amendment

[jhubbard]

Slashdot discussion about Mitnick's efforts to get back his data and the gov't refusal because they couldn't crack the encryption. James

Mathematics

[HalfFlat]

According to the EuroLinux article,

the European Patent Office just published a new examination directive which extends the realm of the European patent practice to software, business methods and mathematics.

Patenting mathematics is outright crazy. It's the same sort of crazy that allows the patenting of software, but in the past one could always say: patenting algorithms is like patenting mathematics, and thus clearly nonsense. reductio ad absurdum has come along and bit us all on the arse.

Trying to imagine a world where mathematics is patentable is both hard and disturbing. Can you imagine if only licensed physicists were allowed to use Hilbert space theory? If one needed to pay a levy every time one used Shannon's law to help design a product? Where would we be if the finite element methods could only be applied to engineering analyses with the blessings of its creators?

How much mathematical progress would be made, if every mathematician had to check whether the work they were building on was patent-encumbered? If every publication had to first get the approval of some patent holders, with the possibility of a required payment?

It quickly gets surreal. Many statements in mathematics are equivalent when viewed in the appropriate fashion. Many too are based on certain sets of axioms. What does patentable mean when viewed in this light?

This to me is a clear sign that extreme IP advocates have just completely lost the plot.

Re:Mathematics

[morbid]

The "great mathematician" Roger Penrose already has patented some mathematics, a tesselation he discovered, IIRC. Not that anoyne else might have discovered it before, but when you're a respected public figure and have the wherewithall to get your stuff published, and people (who don't knwo any better) listen to you and accept what you say by default...

Re:Mathematics

[morbid]

..and here's some info on it:
here and here

Re:Mathematics

[Jerf]

The EuroLinux article links to a French version of the text; an English version can be obtained by changing the "f" to an "e" (or following my link).

Here's the part on Mathematics:

These are a particular example of the principle that purely abstract or intellectual methods are not patentable. For example, a shortcut method of division would not be patentable but a calculating machine constructed to operate accordingly may well be patentable. A mathematical method for designing electrical filters is not patentable; nevertheless filters designed according to this method would not be excluded from patentability by Art. 52(2) and (3).

First, note that the Patent office, evidently not being staffed by mathematicians, believe that they have not rendered mathematics patentable. Or, in other words, explanation-free protests based on the statement that they have will only confuse them, and cause them to distrust the protesters. After all, "These are a particular example of the principle that purely abstract or intellectual methods are not patentable."

I see three problems with this:

1. "Purely abstract or intellectual methods" often are algorithms. For example, we tend to express the mathematical concept of "graph reachability" as the algorithm that tells us whether a given node is reachable from another. It can be defined other ways (including second order existential logic), but we tend to think of it algoritmically first, moreso for complicated properties.
   
   Therefore, despite protests from the Patent Office that mathematics are not patentable, damn near every discrete mathematics definition and algorithm is patentable, or close enough that a the prospect of fighting a patent would scare anybody.
   
2. "A mathematical method for designing electrical filters is not patentable; nevertheless filters designed according to this method would not be excluded from patentability by Art. 52(2) and (3)." Functions are only relevent in terms of the results. (Merely specifying a domain is rarely useful.) If one can create a mathematic concept, then proceed to creatively patent the (useful, for the Patent Office's amazingly low standard of "useful") results that can come from concept and associated functions, then the only useful part of the concept is effectively patented. Combine this with the next problem ->
   
3. An increasing amount of math is taking place on computers. For instance, the famouse and importent 4-Color problem was proven by a computer. This will only increase over time. Therefore, there may be no difference between the abstract math and the concrete implementation, which means there is no difference between patenting math and patenting an algorithm.

Remember that as you protest to the EU. They don't speak our language and, frankly, they don't know jack shit about math. And it shows. They honestly think that under these rules, math is still unpatentable.

(And frankly, I don't think we stand a chance in Hades of convincing them otherwise. The more ignorant you are, the more you think you know on a given topic, and I'd lay money these people honestly believe they know mathematics. Which means they will not listen to people like us.)

Re:Mathematics

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not eliminate all patent laws? After all, automobiles are simply hardware implementations of the laws of physics.

The reason that we affirm patent rights is that we make a distinction, right or wrong, between scientific theory and application of said theory. Computer software is no different, except that the line between theory and application is finer.

patenting software as a particular implementation of an algorithm makes at least as much sense as patenting a refrigerator which is an implementation of, say, the Joule principle.

Here is the gleam of hope for us inventors and coders, though: even slight changes in implementation are regarded as different products. From a software point of view, almost any substantive change in code could be viewed as a different product, even if the algorithm is the same. Well, that's no different, practically, from our current situation under copyright law! In fact, it's better, for this reason: under copyright law, a substantial paraphrase of code could be considered infringement. Under patent law, a paraphrase of code is a new method.

Cheer up! Patent law is better than we think!

Re:Mathematics

[the eric conspiracy]

I don't think reasons 1. and 2. hold up with careful thought, as the application is still the driving force for obtaining the patent. In the case of 1, expression in any form under current law in all countries I am aware of is not patentable, regardless of the form of it's notation. As far as 2. goes, who cares? If you are clever enough to discover all potential uses of a basic, fundamental mathematical result and gain patents on their implementations, you deserve the gains from your hard work and cleverness, so long as the coverage is not overly broad for the the uses you bring to the Patent Office.

However reason 3. is very valid - in a practical sense a patent on a computer based use of an algorithm is often a patent on the algorithm itself in for all practical purposes. This is the weakness - overly broad coverage for the applicative use of an algorithm on a computer can turn into an effect patent for that algorithm.

"Bush to blame" according to Wired.

[SomethingOrOther]

This Wired Article makes interesting reading. It gives the impression that the preasure to alter Europes (mainly very strict) privacy laws has come from as high up as Bush Himself

As we all know, wherever America goes, Europe gets dragged along kicking and screeming!
However, I definately couldn't imagine the Duch or the Danes going along with such draconian anti-privacy laws, even if we in the UK seem complacent about our privacy and rights.

Very important things

[psicE]

First, remember that the Council of Europe is not the EU. It doesn't even have the same members. Just because this organisation passes a stupid law, doesn't mean the EU is evil, and doesn't mean the EU is contradicting itself.

Second, the Council of Europe didn't write this law, the US did; as such, I wouldn't expect many (if any) continental EU countries to sign it, especially considering it may contradict some of their EU responsibilities and they'd rather be part of the EU than pass this law.

Third, if they somehow did pass this law, we could always create a country in Antarctica.

Re:Very important things

[geggibus]

I can hear bush in my head:
"Those who are't signing this must be terrorists!"

/K

ECHELON in UK and US

[SomethingOrOther]

Sorry, I dont want to sound like flame-bait but I must chukkle at your nievety! (sp)

The 5th amendment only applies in the US!
If the US applied its own laws (including the 5th amendment) to other citizens of the world then maybe the US wouldn't have such a sh*te forign policy. (And I didnt say anything about Afghanistan!)

My main point however is that the US uses this to its advantage.
Since it is illegal for the US gov. to spy on its own citizens, it gets the UK to do it for them.
Since it is illegal (atm) for the UK to spy on its citizens it gets the US to do it for them.
They then simply swap the information.

And no I haven't been reading alt.conspiricy! This was mentioned in the European parliments report into ECHELON.

Re:ECHELON in UK and US

[jhubbard]

Sorry, I must not have been clear in my first sentence. I was in a hurry. This is the key part. I've included my mistakes in wording as well "how could the U.S. possibly sign this since the treaty?" I should have removed the "this since". The U.S. couldn't sign on to this treaty and then enact legislation to force citizens to testify against themselves. It may go to court, but hopefully the court wouldn't uphold it.

That sentence was the whole point. The 5th amendment does only apply in the U.S. I was responding to "The U.S. may well sign this treaty - we've participated in the drafting process."

Of course, since those from the U.S. that are participating know that they would be circumventing the 5th amendment, they are probably using the E.U. to further their own cause. It would be in the U.S.'s best interest, as you have noted, to have the E.U. pass this and force the participating countries to enact legislation. This sort of applies to not only what you were describing, but the U.S. could apply pressure to these countries to get the keys of its citizens to further is own law enforcement efforts abroad. I'm sure that this would prove useful in the terrorist situations but in others as well.

James

P.S. I think that it's naivety. I don't care cause I can't spell either.

forced disclosure of passwords

[Frymaster]

and how would that work with the right to refuse self incriminiation?

Re:forced disclosure of passwords

[sealawyer]

"and how would that work with the right to refuse self incriminiation?"

It wouldn't work in situations where a criminal defendant was asked to recite a key or a passphrase from memory. It probably would work if the defendant had the key on his person, or kept a log of keys that the court could subpoena.

On the other hand, if you aren't the target of the criminal prosecution, there are probably ways to grant you immunity that will overcome the problems with demanding your key.

Sealawyer

I know this is a joke but.

[autopr0n]

In Taliban Afghanistan connecting to the internet, or even just owning a computer is completly illegal.

Re: Penrose tilings

[HalfFlat]

Thanks for the links!

It does appear though, tbat this is a copyright issue rather than a patent one. Copyright has long been applicable to mathematical papers and diagrams (for good or ill), and has far less damaging potential consequences than patenting.

That won't help

[autopr0n]

This isn't about key escrow, what they are saying is that, if they ask, you have to hand over you're private keys.

So, rather then a complex and inherently insecure system with central servers everywhere, they've just decided to come to peoples houses with guns drawn and demand their keys.

You would have to move yourself to a country that didn't sign the treaty. And I wouldn't really recommend China, while it's a nice place, I wouldn't really call it a bastion of personal freedom...

Re:That won't help

[geggibus]

That's why you should encrypt the keys , and if they ask for it.. .you have "forgotten" the passphrase...

/K

Re:Mathematics- mod parent up please

[abe ferlman]

This is the most brilliant slashdot comment I've seen all year. If I had any modpoints right now I would surely spend them to mod this up.

Bryguy

Why not?

[autopr0n]

All patents are 'strings of numbers'. That is, all of them can be represented as data. (otherwise a patent database would be kind of difficult, eh?)

Genetic patents are patents on 'strings of numbers.'

Even most devices nowadays are designed using CAD type tools, meaning that they are simply strings of numbers as well. The fact that something can be represented numericaly dosn't really have any baring on anything.

Re:Why not?

[Lonath]

There's a difference here. The CAD machines are designed to give instructions about how to construct real machines. Just as specialized circuits like video cards are real machines. That is different from taking a machine that already exists (a computer) and then flipping some switches in it (programming it) and then letting it operate. You never get outside of the operation of the computer itself...you are merely using the computer. Now, if you want to create a robotic fabricator attached to a computer and this fabricator uses algorithms to make real product X, I have no problem with patenting the whole system...as long as you are actually building something to go along with the system. Taking two or more common machines and attaching them using standard cables and attachments, and then saying you made a "new machine" is bullshit. You should have to actually create something and not just use things that exist in ways they were designed to be used.

In any case, pure algorithms should never be patentable, so if you have some new algorithm for your fabricator, anyone in the whole world should be allowed to use a similar or exact algorithm (if they code it themselves) to do what they want, including building another fabricator, as long as their fabricator is different enough from the original one. It should never be the case that someone can get a patent for something that can be stored purely as software, nor should anyone ever get sued merely for typing things into a general-purpose computer and distributing them.

Another example, if you want to make a system for facial recognition, that's fine. However, whatever you do should never be able to stop anyone else from taking a bunch of computers networked as they see fit attached to standard cameras that take pictures that get sent to the database to be checked against the face database using any algorithms whatsoever. The only thing your patent should cover is your precise implementation of the hardware you create, and you should not be able to get a patent just for pushing bits around in standard hardware attached using standard hookups between devices with whatever software you desire running the underlying system.

Self Incrimination in Europe

[SomethingOrOther]

*Bangs head against the wall*
And what makes you think that every country in Europe has laws to protect self incrimination!

Example: The police "miranda warning" in the UK

"You do not have to say anything unless you wish do do so, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in Court"

Then the police will start asking you questions and "putting you on the spot"
Now tell me America, Where is my right to silence and my right to not incriminate myself!

Use Best Practices

[Alpha Prime]

Best Practices says that if your password or keys are compromised, you need to change them as soon as possible.

Or we need to develop an "under duress" password capability that destroys the data if used.

Whoops, I gave you the wrong password. My bad.

Re:Use Best Practices

[lurvdrum]

Any investigating authority worth their salt would keep a copy of the original encrypted data before asking you for your key anyway so I doubt this would help much..."OK, Joe, let's try again with the REAL key this time shall we..or should we assume you are withholding it?".

Re:Use Best Practices

[Alpha Prime]

Probably, but if I were really paranoid, no password would work on any data that had been removed from its original machine. Thus, the destruct password would always work, or the original password would be the destruct password on the investigating authority's machine.

Come to think of it, I am that paranoid...

Re:Use Best Practices

[Dr. Evil]

On the other hand you could introduce a false key, such that any encrypted data you send has two possible plaintexts.

Yes, they could probably assign a probability that some other message is also encoded in the cyphertext, but could they prove it?

Also isn't there something about law enforcement not being able to break the law in order to defend it? If a "don't copy bit" is set in the cyphertext, I wonder if you could argue that law enforcement violated the DMCA (or the local analogous law) by creating a backup copy of the potential evidence.

Well..

[autopr0n]

According to the US constitution, treties signed by the US are supposed to have the same weight as the constitution itself. Of course, the founding fathers probably

from artical VI:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Democratic Assinations

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what EU citizens and US citizens should do...

1. Petition for the petitioning to assasinate corrupt leaders.
2. Petition to assasinate whoever is responsible for this.
3. Vote on it...
4. Kill the bastard(s)...

While you can say it's a radical idea, you can't say it isn't democratic...

Re: Penrose tilings

[Happy Monkey]

Except patents last for 17 years, while copyright lasts for 75+life of author.

At least this way...

[FreeMars]

At least this way the state has to come to you to demand your password -- you'll know you're being watched.

It'll be too late, of course. Your key will be used to decrypt all your old messages. (Is there a statute saying how long you need to remember your passphrase after you change keys?)

Re:At least this way...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the stuff is encrypted with a public key system
such as PGP, you could just give them the session
keys.
If you really don't want someone to read the data,
store the private keys in volatile memory. When the
machine is siezed, the keys will be destroyed.
However this is only a good idea for data that you
can afford to lose more than you can afford to let
unauthorized people read.

You want my password?

[InfinityWpi]

Gee, sorry, I can't seem to remember it. Contempt of court? Fine. Hey, charge my company while you're at it, they're the ones who make me change it every other month and never write it down...

Re:You want my password?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the UK's RIP bill is worded such that you have to prove that you don't know it. Bit tricky that.

Jack Straw, then the home secetary, (the very one that lied about performing a real inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster) has in his posession an encrypted confession to a crime sent to him by a group showing the dumb nature of the bill. Under UK law, he can be prosecuted by his own bill, because he cannot prove he doesn't know the key.

Re:You want my password?

[7-Vodka]

the penalty is not contempt of court. It's 5 years in jail.

Terrible..

[saqmaster]

To be honest.. I find the whole RIP bill disgusting.. It's a complete violation of your privacy.. but saying this is nothing new and I won't go there..

One things i've noticed though, is the amount of UK ISP's (Freeserve, AOL to name two), to me, seem to be abusing their shadow proxies (cisco cache engines I presume)..

For, whilst using AOL or FreeServe, you try and telnet to _any_ outside mailserver on port 25, you get their mailserver. It's actually _impossible_ to get to any other SMTP service whilst dialled-up with one of these ISP's.

Now, sure this could be because they're attempting to optimize their network, but on the other hand, they could have their SMTP relays configured to store/cache messages locally - ideal for RIP bill investigations..

Scary thought..

Re:Terrible..

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually do this to stop people sending SPAM from by forging the source address then connecting to a mail server on port 25 (the AOL mailserver rewrites the source address to be something@aol.com) . It has nothing to do with RIP and has been in action since before RIP was invented.

Note I'm not defending RIP...its a shit idea and hopefully the public will realise soon...just you're barking up the wrong tree here. It's the same deal with ISP's such as NTL...who force every port 80 connection through their local webcache..although thats *supposed* to be for performance, fine aslong as the webcache stays online.

Re:Terrible..

[Motor]

For, whilst using AOL or FreeServe, you try and telnet to _any_ outside mailserver on port 25, you get their mailserver. It's actually _impossible_ to get to any other SMTP service whilst dialled-up with one of these ISP's.

This has always been true with Freeserve, ever since it started up a few years ago. It's got nothing to do with RIP, it's an anti-spam measure. Freeserve introduced it because they were the first large scale "free" ISP in the UK, and didn't want to become a magnet for spammers.

I expect much the same is true of AOL UK.

Re:Terrible..

[Xugumad]

This tends to be done, actually, to stop people from spamming. After all, if people can't connect to other mail servers, they can't spam through them, and an ISP can monitor their own mail servers.

Why exactly is it a problem for you that you can only send e-mail through your ISP, anyway? If you wanted to receive mail, I'm sure you'd find POP3 (port 110) a much more useful?

Re:Terrible..

[saqmaster]

Ok so, sure, I may have been barking up the wrong tree.. Anti-spam sounds like a fair reason, but even still, the technology in place could possibly be used (or being used) for RIP..

"Killing a bird with one stone.."

Is Source Code a Patent Violation?

[JohnDenver]

After reading in an earlier slashdot article where the California Supreme Court declared that source code is speach regardless of its ability to be compiled, I asked myself:

"If you publish the source code for a patented algorithm, are you violating the patent?"

If this holds up as yes in the US ane EU, does this mean we can scoot around the patents as long as we distribute the software in source-code ONLY form?

Re:Is Source Code a Patent Violation?

[michael_cain]

Two points here, both similar:

When the patent is granted for an algorithm, the public patent documents will reveal the algorithm in some form, maybe source code. That's the deal with patents. The inventor reveals their "secrets" in exchange for a limited-term government-granted monopoly. You can't infringe on the patent unless you apply the algorithm. In fact, if you can figure out a way to apply the algorithm to solve a problem not covered in the original patent, you can get your own patent for that new application.

The California appeals court ruled that source code is protected free speech in much the same spirit. Source code is protected speech for purposes of discussing the algorithm. Is it efficient? Does it have weaknesses? They did not rule that it is legal to compile the source and execute it to (in the DeCSS case) decrypt a DVD VOB.

Patrent Law - Big Deal

[tundog]

No big news. It seems to me it is just giving European countries the right to patent software (think US patent office). Until now this was not possible in Europe, although u could still file a US patent. Its just *ANOTHER* example of Europe playing catch-up to the US decades later.

A big problem with the big(gest hehe) European software company I work for is that since software has always been unpatentable in Europe, we are getting creamed with infrigment claims from US companies. The patent game for big corporations consist of:

Bloated Software Company A: "Hey, we have a patent on that! Pay us money or we'll sue!"

Bloated Software Company B: "Oh yeah, we'll we have patent of something your selling, so shut up!" etc.

Problem is taht a lot of Europeans companies (like the one I work for) can't tell anyone to shut up. This legelation will only help European countries compete by encouraging software patents.

Re: Penrose tilings

[mpe]

Copyright has long been applicable to mathematical papers and diagrams (for good or ill), and has far less damaging potential consequences than patenting.

Except that copyright is growing both in duration and scope.

At odds with "anti terrorist" legislation?

[gagravarr]

It states:

Article 3 Illegal interception
Each Party shall adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally, the interception without right, made by technical means, of non-public transmissions of computer data to, from or within a computer system, including electromagnetic emissions from a computer system carrying such computer data. A Party may require that the offence be committed with dishonest intent, or in relation to a computer system that is connected to another computer system.

Given the number of organisations that the UK government is planning to give access to your IT data under "anti terrorist legislation" (eg Guardian article), this will surely require some tricky legal manouvers to get every man and his dog working for the government classed as "with right" to intercept?

Also, what it'll be interesting to see how the data that the ISPs are being told to collect for "anti terrorist" means will be classed as "with right" to intercept, given the provisions in the human rights act on privacy...

Oceania?

[twimprine]

password and encryption disclosure wigs me a little much. Exactly who decides on weather this is signed into law or not? Some committee that we can't talk to?

Re:Oceania?

[Dr. Manhattan]

Exactly who decides on weather this is signed into law or not? Some committee that we can't talk to?

The US Constitution, Article 2, Section 2, detailing the Presidency:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur...

So Bush and 2/3 of the Senate have to agree. Just so you know who to lobby.

Evidence?

[HiThere]

I find precious little evidence that the US PTO wants to improve its handling of patents. It seems to be rathe a case of, to paraphrase a Bell executive, "We're a monopoly, we don't have to care."

Experience can't make up for lack of interest in quality. And that's what the US PTO has been exhibiting to increasing degree the last couple of decades (possibly longer, judging by earlier reports, but I wasn't watching then, so I can't tell whether or not this is just a continuation of a longer trend).

This is only to be expected. Monopolies, whether commercial or governmental, tend to develop in the same way. Expect things to get worse. The only way to really improve something in this mess is to adopt the "waterfall development model" and start a new design from scratch, based on what has been learned from the prior design.

Re:Evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find precious little evidence that the US PTO wants to improve its handling of patents.

Look at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/ohr/jobs /jobs.htm which is the patent office's hiring page. It seems they're only hiring people in areas of new technology. I would call that wanting to improve handling.

It seems to be rathe[r] a case of, to paraphrase a Bell executive, "We're a monopoly, we don't have to care." Experience can't make up for lack of interest in quality. And that's what the US PTO has been exhibiting to increasing degree the last couple of decades

What does that even mean? It is not the job of the patent office to evaluate quality. For one thing, if they were evaluating quality, the very definition of quality could be used nefariously to control what gets patented. Say, for example, that you create a device which has bad uses and good uses, for example, a machine to encrypt messages. Does that machine have low quality since it can be used for bad things? What if the machine is inefficient, is it of low quality?

Monopolies, whether commercial or governmental, tend to develop in the same way.

And what does that mean? You don't like the patent office's monopoly on granting patents? Or perhaps you don't like patents period? You must remember that patents are a time limited monopoly. They are economic tools, and if you really want to use something patented BUY IT. Buy the patent, buy the rights to use the patent. If it is so important to you, put your money where your mouth is. Business have patents to make money. Period. If you can offer them enough money, they'll sell it to you. If it's worth it for society as a whole (or universities or whatever) to have the patent, then society (or universities or whatever) should just buy the thing.

Re:Evidence?

[sminra]

What does that even mean? It is not the job of the patent office to evaluate quality.

Perhaps this was a poor choice of words. I guess it depends on your interpretation of 'quality'.

There are 'qualities' which the patent office does (or should) use to evaluate the patentability of an application. Patents like the wheel, or Bezos' one-click, or XORing a bit should have failed on the standard of triviality and obviousness - but they didn't.

What is the societal justification of the entire patent process? To create an environment in which inventors can recoup their RnD costs.

Clever ideas that can be implemented by an individual a few hours do not represent a 'significant RnD effort' and thus IMO do not meet the criteria of patentability.

Look, a lot of good, clever ideas are shared by a lot of people. If someone uses the patent process to lock-out others from independently discovering and applying a clever algorithm, Open-Source and society suffers - massively.

Many patents, esp. software patents, fail to meet this 'high investement' critera. They're a completely different category from, say, patents on pharmaceutical drugs which require hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D.

The patent proces should differentiate between a simple, clever idea that anyone could implement, and an invention that is the result of significant RnD work. I'd argue that we adopt one man-month of RnD as the minimum effort for patentability of *anything*.

arnim

Don't you love how this works?

[Eccles]

First, governments cooperate on creating a treaty with provisions that would never pass muster with the folks back home if they tried to pass it directly. Once signed, they then work to pass laws implementing the treaty. If people complain about the provisions, the lawmakers disclaim responsibility, saying they have to do this to comply with the treaty.

It HAS happened and It DOES happen, EXACTLY like this. Let's not get fooled again.

Re:Don't you love how this works?

[Anonymous Coward]

idiot

Re: Penrose tilings

[gorilla]

Yes, but if there is a diagram that is useful to explain or understand a subject, or there is a paper which explains it well, but they are copyrighted, you can redraw the diagram or rewrite the paper. You cannot copyright ideas only implementations. If they are patented then you cannot.

Legal basis

[TheSHAD0W]

The legal theory behind this law is that the encryption around a file is equivalent to a safe holding a document. If the authorities have a warrant to search the contents of that safe (or the contents of that location, for that matter), they will ask you for the key.

The difference is, of course, that if you don't give them the key, they can cut open a safe. With data under a high level of encryption, they can go spit. So instead, a judge issues an order requiring you to disclose your password, and if you refuse, you're held in contempt and jailed indefinitely. Never mind the conflict with the 5th Amendment; they want to search your (virtual) personal papers, and you aren't allowed to stop them.

(As an aside: The FBI wanted passwords to files they got from Kevin Mitnick's hard drive, the last time they caught him. Mitnick refused to provide them... But on Mitnick's release, the judge ruled that Mitnick couldn't have his files back, since he couldn't prove they didn't contain pirated information. I'd call it a violation of 4th Amendment rights.)

As to whether such a law would hold up in court, for that we'll just have to wait.

Hmm...barrier to entry?

[Shoten]

What effect might this have down the road on the few countries like Bulgaria where neither the culture nor the law recognizes things like copyright protection? If one of these countries wishes to join, what laws will be imposed upon them?

But...

[HiThere]

It may be a felony to pertend to be a government official, but for a government official to exceed his authority is usually quite safe. One would only be in danger if one's superiors wanted to "get" one for unrelated reasons. (Or if it became a political hot potato.)

And leaking information is almost never sucessfully prosecuted.

Funny how the system works

[cavemanf16]

From the bibliography link above (one of the very earliest entries at bottom of the page):
By Steve Gold, Newsbytes Special to the E-Commerce Times January 14, 2000
Unconfirmed reports circulating on the Usenet suggest that the U.S. government is working with the European Union (EU), Japan, Canada and other countries, including South Africa, on a draft cybercrime treaty that would try to ban hacking and Internet eavesdropping utilities.

Interesting how only the powers that be should now be allowed to eavesdrop and crack into computer systems, even though they're so intent on making it illegal for everyone else.

It's too bad that we have to trust a bunch of mostly technologically uninformed politicians to draft law these days. I'm sure their intentions are all good in trying to prevent terrorism, but sadly they've been duped, like much of American society, into believing that government can provide us with safety and security in all aspects of life. Unfortunately, in this effort to provide a safe and secure country, our liberties are getting trampled on in the process.

Re:Patent Law - Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, but if you can't patent software and business methods then you don't have to honor them either.

I.E., a UK company could start an online bookstore and implement one-click ordering without worrying about receiving a letter from Amazon.com's lawyers.

I think (but don't quote this AC) that a patent issued by the USPTO can only be enforced in Europe if it has been allocated a European Equivalent number.

I'd be happy to turn over my keys to you

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, by the way, my keys are 700 megabytes a peice and I have 14 of them. Have storage room for that? No? Oh, what a shame. Sorry, I use one-time-pad encryption. And I can only use each key once.

Hardened Criminal

Original Slashdot article

Feel free to lie to your government. They lie to you. And all leaders lead by example.

Antarctica

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

if they somehow did pass this law, we could always create a country in Antarctica.

Where? Big sectors of Antarctica are claimed by countries (some from the Southern Hemisphere, but also many EU countries). They are held back because of the Antarctic Treaty, but if the treaty is broken, these countries are going to claim First Post! And they (at least some of them) have the resources to back their claims.

Re:Antarctica

[psicE]

History shows that eventually the country will become independent. Look at India, Australia, Canada, all the Latin American countries, etc. There was a huge distance between the ruler and the territory, and eventually the ruler (Spain, Portugal or Britain) just gave up and let the territory rule itself. Seeing how few people would want to live in Antarctica (climate) anyway, few countries would care about keeping it as long as they had scientific observation rights.

Re:Antarctica

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

I don't agree.
India was closer to Britain in 1948 than in 1800, either by Suez or by plane. California is ruled now from DC.

I don't see any inexorable law that predicts independence.

few countries would care about keeping it as long as they had scientific observation rights.

Its natural resources (coal, oil?, ores) are untouched. What saves Antarctica, apart of the small influence that shame and peer pressure can have on governments and companies is that exploiting it is not yet profitable.

Constitution outweights treaties

[mmacdona86]

AFAIK The precedence in terms of legal weight of the Constitution with Amendments, Treaties, and Federal and State Laws is firmly established with lots of precedent.

Federal law trumps state law unless there is a constitutional question.

Duly adopted treaties have precedence over Federal laws.

The Constitution has precedence over all of the above; if a provision of a treaty is in conflict with the Constitution, it is invalid.

Article VI does not say that treaties can override the U.S. Constitution; it says that treaties can override State laws and Constitutions.

simply put....

[Anonymous Coward]

I forget my password.

so there.

Patents don't last forever

[Anonymous Coward]

I think much of the software that underlies Unix would be covered by expired patents, so Linux and GNU should be mostly safe.

But has anyone done a proper analysis of what software is vulnerable?
Could they take away my TCP/IP stack?

By that logic, you never owned anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't any sort of property treated that way? If they have a warrant, law enforcement can come into your house and dig in the your basement, and find your decomposed corpse collection.

Oh, and if, instead of burying your corpses, you dissolve them in acid, one of the many charges against you will be tampering with evidence.

there go my emigration plans

[maxpublic]

Jesus, and I was thinking that if things got any worse in the U.S. I might take my family and emigrate someplace sane, like Holland. But that won't work if Holland, through the EU, starts signing up for the same insanity the U.S. government seems so enamored of.

Max

So create your own "backdoor"...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would work like this: Take two plaintext messages -- one innocuous and one more, um, poignant. Encode both, using different keys, into a single ciphertext. If the authorities intercept it and demand the key, just give them the one that decrypts the innocuous message, leaving the other one safely hidden.

Re:So create your own "backdoor"...

[Master Of Ninja]

How would this work? Say if both are encrypted and stuck together and emailed, and the authorities decrypt the innocuous one, wouldn't they be suspicious of all the garbage characters at the end of the innocuous message? Wouldn't this mean that the other one is not 'hidden' at all?

what a scary thought...you think big brother

[Archfeld]

is bad now, if the White house had gone up it would have been Martial Law in the US. With the military partolling the srteets, curfew, travel papers and all..

The so-called "facts" spewed forth on ./

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a pretty large statement youre making there. How about some PROOF so we dont just have to take your (surely unbiased) word for it...

Rubber-hose cryptography defense

[Dr. Manhattan]

Best Practices says that if your password or keys are compromised, you need to change them as soon as possible.

Of course, the authorities may have already backed up your data. And the new password can be compelled out of you by various means. (So-called "rubber hose cryptography", as in, "We beat the password out of him with a rubber hose.")

So you use a cryptographic filesystem that has several passwords. One retrieves mildly incriminating data, and another one gets the real data. So you can look like you complied but it doesn't do them any good.

Available for Linux 2.2, *BSD ports coming along.

Misleading - in the UK a warrant is needed

[horza]

In the UK you must provide the decryption key upon being presented with a court warrant. Providing the unencrypted text is not enough, they may force you to hand over the key (which, unfortunately, also allows law enforcement to read all past communications encrypted with that key and not just the communications covered by the court warrant). If required to turn over the encryption key for someone else (eg a boss for an employee) you may not tell the person that uses the encryption key you have revealed it to law enforcement or you face 5 years in jail. This is called a 'tipping off offence'.

As for the EU patent office, they are typical of EU beaurocracy gone mad. The UK had already decided against software patents. I hope we see more software groups lining up behind the EuroLinux call.

Phillip.

Computer languages ARE languages

[Sara Chan]

There seems to be confusion about what a computer language is. The correct answer is

a language for describing partial recursive functions.

A partial recursive function is a type of function that was introduced by Kurt Godel, in the 1930s, using mathematical logic. (Also in the 1930s, Alan Turing developed the Turing machine as a model of human thought processes. It was then proven that the partial recursive functions were the same as the functions that could be evaluated by Turing machines. Later, electronic computers were created, and they were well modelled by Turing machines.)

The important point here is that the definition has nothing to do with physical devices. Of course, most computer languages can be understood by particular physical devices (electronic computers), but that is not required--and it only came about later. Even after the advent of electronic computers, some computer languages were still being invented for the purpose of communicating with people. Two good examples illustrating this are APL and MIX.

APL (A Programming Language) was invented by Ken Iverson, a Harvard mathematician. His sole purpose was to have a good way to describe algorithms to people. Physical computers were not even a consideration. Later, other people thought that it would be a good idea to implement the language, and interpreters for computers were crafted, but that was strictly secondary.

MIX was invented by Don Knuth, a Stanford mathematician. His primary purpose was to have a "formal, precise way" to "present the various techniques" detailed in his book Art of Computer Programming (I'm quoting from the preface). Although algorithms described in MIX could be executed on a (idealized) computer, Knuth's primary purpose was communicate to people.

Both these languages are intended to be used to describe algorithmic calculations, but not all computer languages need do this. Prolog is an example, where you just describe the input and output of the program (e.g. input "a list" and output "an ordered list", where "ordered" means "i LE j implies list[i] LE list[j]"), without necessarily describing how to calculate the output. And Prolog was invented primarily to be executed on a computer.

If an algorithm is described in English, then plainly, there are free-speech protections. What if Esperanto were used? Again, free-speech protections should apply, but note that Esperanto is an artificial language. So, I think that the same provisions should apply if the language is APL or MIX. From there, we surely get protection for Prolog, Java, C, etc.: all human-readable languages.

Has this line of reasoning been used in the courts? If not, why?

Re:Computer languages ARE languages

[the eric conspiracy]

Has this line of reasoning been used in the courts? If not, why?

Because a patent does not restrict the speaking i.e. publication, dissemination or expession of the patented matter in any way. In fact, patents themselves are by law not eligible for copyright protection in order to encourage the wide transmittal of the matter being patented. There is no restriction of speech involved.

In fact, a patent is a right of monopoly granted in exchange for full disclosure of what is being patented. Failure to fully disclose the patented is considered patent fraud, and invalidates the patent, and makes the patentee subject to other penalties as well.

The entire purpose of patent law is in fact to encourage people to publish technical art that they would otherwise tend to keep secret for economic reasons.

What is restricted is the use of the matter under patent to achieve the advantage or useful effect under the patent. This is why you can freely publish software programs like LAME that perform operations that are covered by patents - what you cannot do is put them into use without satisfying the license requirements of the patent holder.

Patently Absurd!

[hughk]

The principle of a patent is to grant the patentee a limited monopoly in return for disclosure of the invention.

If we are to have software patents then the new guidelines are out of order, because there is no requirement to do anything other than describe the functionality being patented.

It should be noted that the EPO is in Munich where Microsoft have a major office.

In any case these are only the guidelines for new patent examiners. The law isn't passed yet.

CPPA equivalent

[gessel]

The treaty may (hopefully) be held in contravention of the constitution which would bar the US from enacting it. Article 9, section 2b 2c mirror the virtual kiddie porn clause in the CPPA. If the supreme court finds that clause of the CPPA in defiance of the first amendment (for being overbroad) then, presumably, this miserable little bit of judicial imprudence would also be and we who manage our own servers will hopefully not quickly be hobbled with the provision that we catalog all the traffic for law enforcement to peruse on their donut breaks.

You just try

[toaster13]

you just try and get my keys from me. i'll be at my keyboard with a shotgun.

Re:Mathematics (Unskilled and Unaware)

[NoWhereMan]

And frankly, I don't think we stand a chance in Hades of convincing them otherwise. The more ignorant you are, the more you think you know on a given topic, and I'd lay money these people honestly believe they know mathematics.

I would not touch that bet with a ten foot pole!

A fellow Debian developer sent me this fascinating report about this subject. I had a boss who fit this profile. Now I am looking to find a decent job again ;-)

I DO IT WRONG, some more ;)

[Banned IP]

I do it wrong

Laying here in the shadows of my room, I squint up at my love. My Ms. Portman.
I am sore and tired after fucking her for eight solid hours. My chapped and aching
dick is soaking in grits to relieve the pain. She gets on her knees and starts lapping
the grits up out of the bowl. She places her beautiful hands on my penis and starts to
lick the grits off my achy piece.

Massaging my nutsack she....

WAIT, I DO IT WRONG!!!!

Yanking my dick out of her mouth I throw her to the ground and shove it in to her
gaping freshly fisted ass.

"OH BIG ASS SPORK, err, OOOHHHH BANNED IP!! Fuck my ass, fuck my ass good. DEEPER, my stallion, deeper!!
Make a Beowulf cluster of sperm on my back!!"

"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of this baby!"

I DO IT WRONG!!!!

Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email jamie@mccarthy.vg.

HAHAHAHAA fuckers! I am not ssooo wrong I can't recover! All your trolls are belong to... forget it...

The /. troll HOWTO
This is version 0.6 of a troll HOWTO, sort of a companion piece to jsm's excellent troll FAQ. As a draft, comments and criticism are always welcome, if not appreciated :)

Section 1 - Trolling techniques
There are techniques used by successful trolls to elicit the maximum amount of responses from unthinking /.ers. This section is dedicated to explaining how to use these in the course of your trolls. Remember though, a great troll can break any or all of these and still be successful...

Timing
Because you're posting as an AC, your troll will generally be ignored in favour of posters using their accounts, and so getting in early is essential. A good guideline is to get into the first 20 posts, so that people reading the article will see the troll before it is swamped out. One way of increasing the speed with which you get your troll into play is to prepare them beforehand, and then quickly customise them for the current article. This is easier than it sounds since /. typically repeats stories with small variations and runs lots of similar stories.

Note that this is why Jon Katz stories are pretty worthless as trolling material - by the time you've found the article and prepared a troll there's already 50+ posts on it, most of them flaming Jon Katz anyway :)

Exposure
Once you've got your troll in, you need people to actually read it. You also want replies - /.ers are more likely to read your troll if it starts a large thread. You also want to remember that some people have set their comment thresholds to values higher than 0 - to get the attention of these you either want to get your post moderated up (see Style, below) or get a reply which gets moderated up to 4 or 5, in which case your troll becomes visible to all.

Accounts
An alternative to the time-honoured tradition of AC trolling is that of creating a "troll" account. This gives you the advantage of posting at 1 rather than 0, and slashbots are more likely to take you seriously, especially if you at least sound reasonable. If you do this, try to avoid posting stuff where it is obvious you're a troll under the account - post it anoymously instead - some slightly more canny readers actually check your user info before they reply. Not many though :)

The ultimate goal of the troll account is to secure the +1 bonus, which is currently received once you hit 26 points of Karma. To get there, employ the techniques of karma whoring that we see every day on /. and watch the karma roll in. And of course once you get the +1 bonus, the world is your oyster in terms of /. Posts made at a default of 2 hit even those people with the threshold of 2, are more likely to get moderated up even further if they are at all coherent, and people tend to lose their critical thinking abilities in the face of the +1 bonus. Milk it for all it's worth.

Layout
To get people reading it a troll needs to be easily readable. Make sure you break it down into easily digestible paragraphs, use HTML tags where appropriate (but always make sure you close them properly) and use whitespace appropriately.

Size
Generally a troll shouldn't be too short, otherwise it'll get lost in the crowd. A workable minimum is a couple of medium paragraphs. Conversely, it shouldn't be too long, or no-one will bother to read it. Keep it to a happy medium.

Spelling
Whilst spelling is important if you want the troll to be taken "seriously", key spelling mistakes can draw out the spelling zealots, especially if you mis-spell the name of a venerated /. hero, like Linus Torveldes or Richard Strawlman (thanks dmg). Related to this is the use of the wrong word, explaining an acronym as being something it isn't or making a word into an acronym even when it isn't.

Subject
The subject line needs to draw attention to your post without making it obvious that it is a troll. A simple statement of the main point of your argument can work here.

Style
Once you realise that most moderators don't bother to read past the first paragraph or two, you can use this fact to craft trolls that can be moderated up as "Insightful" (note that I mean this in the /. sense rather than the real-world sense). Start off fairly reasonable, making statements that are /. friendly and not being too controversial. As the troll goes on, make it more and more controversial, building it up for the coup de grace in the final paragraph.

Linking
As we all know, a post with links is considered "informative" by the /. crowd. Moderators love it, and they rarely check the links, so be sure to include as many as possible. And make them wrong - a link to the Perl website should instead point to the Python website instead, and vice versa. The other alternative to incorrect links is "useful" links to places like www.linux.org and www.microsoft.com i.e. places /.ers could never have found on their own :)

Feeding
The ideal troll requires no feeding - it runs on its own, generating flamewars between clueless /.ers for your amusement. But often a troll requires some help and so you should consider feeding it. Feeding is best reserved for people making either completely clueless responses, people making responses with holes in, or those wonderful people who write a 2000-word point-by-point rebuttal of your troll.

Know your audience
Always keep in mind the kind of things advocated on /. so that you can play on and against them. This is why anti-Linux, creationist, gun-loving, pro-corporation trolls work well - the vast majority of /.ers hold the opposite viewpoints. And if a few people agree with you, so much the better - it merely validates your viewpoint in the eyes of readers.

Arrogance
Be arrogant. You, as a troll, know that you're right. No other explanation could exist. The wronger the "fact", the more assertively you should state it. Make it clear that you are better than everyone else - you know the truth and they are just too stupid to realise it. Use plenty of sarcasm, and use "quotes" to show it to people too dumb to realise.

Offensiveness
Being offensive in your initial troll can be counter-productive - it causes moderators to mark you down as flamebait in general. But if you're feeding, then you can get away with calling /.ers all kinds of things. Make broad generalisations about /. readers - call them "long-haired Linux zealots", "socialist open-source bigots" or whatever. Stereotyping is encouraged - people always want to think that they're an individual, and will point this out to you given half a chance.

Indifference
Great for articles with a political or social bent, this kind of troll expresses complete indifference to the topic at hand, wondering who on Earth cares about it. An alternative method is to say that the topic only concerns a certain group of people - criminals, idiots, hackers (always use this instead of crackers) or whatever group you want to offend.

Sympathy
Appear to take the same stance as the people you're trying to troll - claim you're as much a fan of Linux as the next man, but... This way you can make all kinds of claims in the sure knowledge that you actually know what you're talking about. A great phrase to use here is "In my experience". Remember to act like all the things you're pointing out are unfortunate but true.

The common touch
Always accuse /.ers of being elitist. This is an easy thing to do seeing as a lot of them are. Claim that is their grandmother couldn't use it, then they are just into it to feel better than Joe Sixpack rather than "doing it for the average user". This is always great for working into anti-Linux trolls - attack command-line tools and poorly designed desktops.

The 31337 touch
The opposite of the above. Claim that technology or whatever is only for the elite of society and that any attempt to open it up for everyone is wrong, an attack on intellectualism and possibly even dangerous. If people were meant to understand these things then they would, and it's their fault if they're too stupid to learn.

Contradiction
Never be afraid to contradict yourself, even in the space of a single sentence. The phrases "I am a top programmer who codes in VB" or "I am a supporter of open source who uses NT at work and 95 at home" will be sure to get a response from some weenie smugly pointing out the contradiction. Confuse the issue more by engaging in contradiction when you are feeding - this will confuse /.ers who will then make even more stupid replies, leaving them even more wide open for response.

Clues

If you're feeling brave, give the reader clues that this is an obvious troll. The classic example here is dmg's stock phrase "I am often accused of trolling (whatever that is)", but also feel free to use phrases like "I have not read the article, and I don't know much about XYZ but I feel I must comment". If anyone responds to a troll with these kinds of clues in it, feel free to bask in the glow of knee-jerk /. responses.

Denial
If you're unlucky someone will accuse you of being a troll (surely not!) and try and ruin it for you. If you don't want it all to end there, then be sure to counter it by accusing them of being small-minded and petty, saying that it's easier for them to say it's a troll than to accept that people have different opinions. Be sure to say this in the subject line, especially if their subject was the infamous "YHBT. YHL. HAND."

Claiming credit
Given that /. has its community of regular trolls (hi guys!), it's only polite to publish your troll on one of the so-called "hidden" forums for all to see and admire. This way, you get to bask in the praise of other trolls, they get to contribute to your's if they want to, and you get an easy way to find the troll later on when you want to check on its progress :)

As for when to post it, that's a matter of opinion really. You can either post it straight away or leave it will after people start biting. Remember that the troll forum is also frequented by non-trolls, and sometimes you may get a self-declared "troll-buster" try and expose you. But remember, /.ers always post before thinking, and often it doesn't matter at all.

There is no real current forum at the moment thanks to various spammers hitting the sids, but try trolltalk, the original troll sid started by 80md and osm way back in the day. Generally all postings are done there as an AC, with your name at the end of the post. Include a link to the troll somewhere in the text, which ideally will be directly to the post and its replies - click on the #XX link in the thread to get there.

Ending the troll
Sometimes you just get bored with a troll, or people start posting genuinely thoughtful stuff in reply (it does happen). When this happens it might be time to own up to the troll with a helpful "YHBT. YHL. HAND." post. Sometimes people will carry on a discussion of the issue, and if you're really lucky (and it was a great troll) they will completely fail to believe you and carry on arguing. If that happens, pat yourself on the back for writing a great troll :)

The cheap $3 crack
Finally, when all else fails and your troll gets moderated down to (-1, Troll) within ten seconds of you posting it, the only honourable thing to do is to accuse the moderators of smoking the cheap $3 crack (again) and give up :(

Section 2 - Types of troll
The Maniac
Probably the most popular kind of troll, the Maniac holds an opinion on something, and won't budge from that opinion no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. If challenged, the Maniac will simply get more and more agitated and abusive, deriding his opponents as "idiots", "wrong-thinking", "dangerous" and "subversive". Generally the Maniac takes a position that opposes the prevalent /. beliefs, but a similar effect can be achieved by taking a typical /. viewpoint and pushing it to ridiculous extremes.

Maniacs can be crafted for practically every article /. posts, although some are more obvious targets than others. Civil liberty articles, especially on things like censorship, DMCA, UCITA that really get /.ers riled up, are usually extremely fruitful grounds for a well-crafted maniac. The other obvious type of article is anything which could possibly involve religion, especially evolution :)

Here are some fruitful avenues to explore:

The Right-Wing Maniac
Always popular, the right-wing maniac (RWM) is a God-fearing, gun-toting, flag-waving American, and proud of it. They don't care about the rest of the world, unless it's to "prove" that America is better than everything else, and they cannot stand liberal whining over civil rights. They hate the moral decay of America and want it to revert into a nation of heterosexual, Christian whites like it was meant to be. Woe betide anyone that dares to suggest otherwise.

Religion
There are two ways to approach this kind of maniac. The harder to pull off is the militant atheist, but this is quite common amongst /. posters and you would have to be very offensive to get this to work. Of course with religion trolls, the argument can go on for ever once it's started... The more common approach is the Christian fundamentalist. They are ignorant, intolerant and bigoted in the extreme. For them the Bible is the inerrant word of God revealed to man - it contains no flaws and no contradictions. Thus they are strict Creationists - mentions of evolution or cosmology will set them off on vitriolic rants. Flaming denunciations of anyone daring to contradict the "Word of God" are the way to go, and any kind of proof can always be ignored by appealing to "secular humanist brainwashing". And let's not forget, the USA is the greatest nation on Earth because it has the righteous power of Jesus Christ behind it.

Ideology
Pick a philosophy, any philosophy. This troll is a troll with a cause - they have found some kind of ideological truth, and are out to expose every other philosophy as a sham. Whether it be libertarianism, objectivism, communism or capitalism, this troll will point out the obvious "flaws" in any other philosophies, whilst spouting dogma about their own. And the best thing is - you don't even need to know that much about what you're spouting - making doctrinaire mistakes will get both sides of the argument flaming you, adding to the fun.

Software
This is an old favourite and crops up in many forms, covering the gamut from OS maniacs (Linux zealots, MS-apologists or embittered BSD fanatics), language maniacs (Pascal vs. C, C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, Perl vs. Python, VB vs. everything), application maniacs(GIMP vs. Photoshop, Netscape vs. IE, vi vs. emacs) and also includes people who complain about how technology should only be for the 31337 hackers.

Guns
Americans love their guns, and will always fight passionately for their Constitutionally guarenteed rights to bear arms and shoot people. Even the slightest hint of criticism of this will bring down the wrath of a thousand and one enraged gun-owners on you, so it's always a great point to work into a troll :)

The Expert
The Expert is someone who is "savvy" in their particular field, and is perfectly willing to give their opinion on any topic even vauguely related to their field. The Expert is most likely to be from a field which /.ers as a rule despise - the classic example is dumb marketing guy, but try consultants, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, executives, journalists (just think Jon Katz). With this kind of troll sweeping statements with little content are the norm, along wire dire portents of future catastrophe and dark hints of "insider knowledge".

Some possible angles to exploit:

Industry knowledge
The expert knows the computing industry from the inside - as a long-term pro, they can dispense knowledge knowing that they can "speak for the industry". Their smug self-satisfaction is bound to annoy, as is any suggestion that things aren't the way that /.ers would like it - saying "Linux requires the rock-solid guarantee of a trusted company like Microsoft" or "Apache cannot be trusted for mission-critical enterprise platforms" is guaranteed to get you denials explaining exactly why you're wrong, in excruciating detail.

Helpful hints
With their tech-savvy (or law-savvy or whatever) experience, the expert is obviously the best person to point out what's wrong with things or to give out useful "factual" information. In fact this probably works best with lawyer trolls - for all that /.ers protest "IANAL", they certainly seem to think they could be, and any mistakes you make will send them rushing to prove themselves by correcting you.

Offtopic Trolls
Not really a "troll" in the strict Jargon File sense of the word, but they certainly should be included here :) This category includes parodies, offtopic weirdness any all kinds of amusing stuff. Not really my area of expertise, this stuff is mainly done by gnarphlager and opensourceman. Thanks to gnarphlager for this section.

Offtopic trolls, like any other, come in almost as many colours as an iMac, but generally not as cute. But then again, a good offtopic "troll" can affect more people than a repulsive little gumdrop on your desk, because you need to have someone SEE your desk before they can react. Simple? Moreso than even my overblown prose could indicate. Some basic examples:

The serial troll
Write a story. Keep expanding it. It doesn't matter what article you post it under, so long as it's high up. If you want people to recognize you, pick a couple themes or symbols, and carry them on throughout the story. Other alternatives include back linking or including the entire story, but adding more each time. Be funny if you want. Or if you don't feel like being funny, just be really weird. Someone will react.

The random troll
This has nothing to do with anything. Be it a stream of consciousness rant, or a description of the corner of your desk. Another favorite is a monologue, read as if spoken from any one given entity to another. The more outlandish, the better (a pair of socks talking to a mousepad, for example). If you really wanted to be artsy, work in an actual metaphor or legitimate meaning behind it, but it's not necessary.

The vaguely related troll
Start out with a comment about the article. Have a definite opinion of it. Then, after a little while, disintegrate into randomness. All roads eventually can eventually lead to cheese (yum), Natalie Portman, cannibalism, toasters, squirrels, futons, you name it. All it takes is a little bit of creativity. Oh, and feel free to use other trolls' motifs. Open source and all that ;-)

General tips:

If it's funny for a fleeting moment, then it's worth posting.
Puns. Puns are only less vile than mimes, but it's hard to mime on /. So feel free/obligated to litter your offtopic and random bits with puns. Hurt the bastards. And if they're sick enough to laugh at them, then they'll eventually end up here ;-)
Obscure cultural references and injokes are always good. SOMEONE will get them eventually.
Several drafts of a serial or random post are common, but true elegance is being able to come up with something on the spot that still makes the top 40 posts (on a post-heavy article)
Section 3 - Useful trolling links
The following links contain background information useful for trolls needing quick quotes and "expert" opinions to include.

General purpose links

ddi.digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html - How to deal with USENET trolls - learn your enemy :)
www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.ht ml - A List Of Fallacious Arguments - Learn them and use them liberally
www.altairiv.demon.co.uk/troll/trollfaq.html - USENET troll HOWTO
www.baiting.org - Baiting.org
www.fieldingtravel.com/df/index.htm - Fielding's DangerFinder - A guide to what and where's dangerous

Religious links

www.godhatesamerica.com/ - God Hates America
www.chalcedon.edu/creed.html - The Creed of Christian Reconstruction
www.demonbuster.com - How to cast out your demons and do spiritual warfare
riceinfo.rice.edu/armadillo/Sciacademy/riggins/t hi ngs.htm - Things Creationists hate
www.icr.org/ - Institute for Creation Research
www.xenu.net - Operation Clambake - The fight against Scientology on the net
www.hom.net/~angels/ - Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.bju.edu/rcnbc.html - The difference between Catholics and Christians
www.geocities.com/prazske00/biblequotes.html - Bible quotes by category

Political/economy links

www.aynrand.org - The Ayn Rand Institute
www.reason.com - Libertarian site
www.freerepublic.com - Right-wing stuff
www.jbs.org - Excellent site for all kinds of right-wingery
www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html - Web economy bullshit generator

Crackpot science links

www.fixedearth.com - The Earth Is Not Moving
www.jir.com/index.htm - The Journal of Irreproducible Results

Re:Hmm [going OT]

[xmedar]

I am guessing that you are a UK citizen. Unfortunately certain sectors of the UK press takes a delight in printing "Brussels demands straight bananas" type stories, and don't report all the other things the EU is doing.

Indeed, it is a tradition of the UK press to be vigourous investigators of what those that pass laws are really up to. Just recently the head of the Scottish parliment had to step down for taking money for renting out office space that was being paid for by the government and pocketing the money. Unfortunately the EU has had a lot of problems, nepotism, cronism, fraud, embesslement etc etc and the only really positive thing is the single market, which seems to be more the product of individual governments than the EU apparatus. As for the single currency AKA the Euro, that has lost >20% of its value against the US Dollar since its launch, which means your money is worth less. Having chatted with bankers before the launch of the Euro, they said it would gain value, whenI explained why the Euro was sure to be weak they laughed at me, so thats International Bankers 0 (except the guys at UBS-Warburg, they were as thick as pig shit, they get -666 Troll), analytical geek 1, then look at how the decisions of the European Central Bank are made, in secret, with representives of different countries saying different things to the press/market, you only have to look at how one member was saying earlier this week that there would be no base rate cut and then there was one, do you think anyone is going to have confidence in this sort of doubletalk? No, obviously not. Then look at some of the EUs other policies, like the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) which has kept ineffecient farmers afloat by giving them subsidies and kept out cheaper imports from places like Poland, thus helping to keep the former Eatern Bloc dependent on basic commodity trading and organised crime to make money, then there is the Common Fisheries Policy that has helped drive down the fishing stocks in the North Sea to unsustanable levels while not punishing those that catch undersized (i.e. immature and therefore non-breeding) fish thus helping to kill the fishing stocks even further. Then there is the "democratic deficit", i.e. the fact that only the European Parliment is elected and not the Commission hence alot of the corruption and other misdeeds. I personally can't see the point in it at all, just another layer of petty beurocrats, if you can point to one important thing the EU has acheived I'd love to hear about it, and by important I mean life changing in a positive way. Each country has its own legal system, its own style of government, and in many cases its own language.

You hit the nail on the head there. To have a unified system, you need to start at the bottom, with language, unfortunately that is politically unacceptable (do you remember when English words were banned by the French?), so they build on quicksand instead. At some point people will start to use the differences in language to drive trucks through some of the laws, and I will laugh my arse off.

I do business between various EU countries so I aware of the issues.

Yeah the most fun one I have come across is regarding having paid VAT (Value Added Tax) on a boat that I sailed across to Holland, if you do not produce a VAT receipt they impound your boat, if the company you bought it from is no longer in business and you don't have the receipt pay up or get impounded, repeat until made bankcrupt.

The EU is doing a good and necessary job easing trade and legislation between all the countries of Europe.

Yeah, I mean it's not like the WTO is there as a global organisation to do that.

- aren't you forgetting, for instance, the introduction of the Euro as the principal currency of most of the EU countries in just under two months time? That a) makes sense b) will have a profound effect on trade in the EU c) will greatly improve ease of trade and competitiveness and d) will greatly lower administration overheads and costs for nearly inter-EU trade.

The Euro is transfering risk of exchange rate fluctuations from companies doing business inside Europe to the EU as a block, before if one country was doing badly its exchange rate would be affected, now it affects everyone else, as there is no real accountability this can go on and on taking the life out of the Eurozone economies by hitting confidence that anything will be sorted out. If you wanted to do the project right, you start from a common language, then common laws created by forming a "superstate" and doing away with national democracies, having common tax, defence, and foregn relations policies, common defence and common currency, if you did that, it would work. Right now we have already seen the strains that Ireland and Italy have had on the project and it's not looking good. As there is no strategy or unwinding the Euro as a currency and going back to national currencies it means there is no way out, if the markets get fed up of the BS coming out of the EU and the Central Bank the currency could take a nose dive, imagine if the Euro was worth the same as a Rupee, how would that hit you? The EU was borne of protectionism (it was originally about protecting coal and steel industries) and the Euro was borne out of political fudging (the Euro was originally drafted as a "common currency", Maggie Thatcher got some things changed in the negotiations for the Treaty and for that some other leaders changed "common" to "single" for the currency, so instead of just having a common currency that could be used as alternative to national currencies it became a single one that all had to bow down to).

Reasoning by analogy?

[SimCash]

Seems to me that the question is similar to what happens if you have a safe in your basement. If the government thinks you've done something illegal, they get a search warrant and you open the safe or they do. A password encrypted file is different only in that they cannot open it without your cooperation. Failure to cooperate would be like having a tamper-proof safe (e.g., one that destroyed the contents if opened without the right combo).

Now, IANAL, but I bet these cases (physical safes) have already been confronted, and I bet that if these password cases show up in USA courts, the laws will be interpreted in a similar manner.

As for 5th ammendment issues, I would be interested in a knowledgeable person telling me if you can use this to keep the govt out of your diary, or other physical stuff you have produced. I think not, as the 5th is designed to keep the govt from torturing prisoners -- not protect the individual's right to commit crimes if they can be clever about hiding, encrypting or otherwise documenting their crime. Now, if the only way into your safe (or your file) requires violating the 5th ammendment (torturing you for your password), then can we suggest that refusing to reveal the password is prima facia evidence of obstructing justice -- which is a different crime than (perhaps) that covered by the original search warrant? Where are the /. lawyers (you know, the ones that can write "IAAL" when you need them?).