[Aswdwdfg]

Microsoft-loving (former) security czar calls for closed internet

By Cade Metz in Santa Clara
Published Tuesday 2nd October 2007 22:24 GMT

Richard Clarke, the man who served President Bush as a special adviser for cyber security, has a five-point plan for saving the internet.

Speaking at a Santa Clara University conference dedicated to "trust online," Clarke called the net "a place of chaos in many ways, a place of crime in many ways," but laid out several means of righting the ship, including biometric IDs, government regulation, and an industry wide standard for secure software. He even embraces the idea of a closed internet - which seems to have sparked a death threat from net pioneer Vint Cerf.

"A lot of these ideas go against the grain. A lot of these ideas are ones people have already objected to - because of certain shibboleths, because of certain belief systems, because of certain idealogical differences," Clarke said. "But if we're going to create trust in cyberspace, we have to overcome some of those shibboleths, overcome some of those ideological differences, and look anew at these ideas."

According to Clarke - who was also a special assistant to the President for global affairs and national coordinator for security and counter-terrorism - about 35 per cent of all U.S. citizens would rather shoot themselves than carry a national ID card. But he thinks they're being silly. He believes biometric IDs are an essential means of fighting online crime.

"One thing you could do with a biometric ID card - if you wanted to - is prove your identity online," he said, as if taunting his critics.

Yes, he realizes that internet mavens value online anonymity. But he insists this has nothing to do with biometric internet IDs. "One of the ideological underpinnings of the internet is that we're anonymous," he said. "Well, guess what? We're not anonymous. Amazon and DoubleClick and all those other companies already know everything about what you're doing online." ID cards don't eliminate anonymity, he explained, because anonymity is already gone. Then he added that Bill Gates agrees with him.

Next, Clarke called for more government oversight of the net. According to his rough calculations, 75 per cent of all U.S. citizens are against government regulation of any kind. But he thinks they're being silly too. "You don't want government regulation? Then just let your kids eat all that lead off their toys."

In short, he believes the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should force ISPs to crack down on cyber-crime. "[The FCC] could, for example, say to all the ISPs, 'You will do the following things to reduce fraud, bot nets, malicious activity, etc."

Isn't the government one of the problems where online privacy is concerned? It is, as Clarke pointed out. He also called for a nonpartisan organization dedicated to fighting abuses of government power. "What if we had a champion in the government who we trusted on privacy rights and civil liberties? What if we had a government advocate with real power to ensure that the government doesn't violate privacy rights."

That's three points from the five-point plan. Two more to go.

Number four: A secure software standard. "We should look, as an industry, at improving the quality of secure code, so that we don't need to issue software patches, so there aren't trap doors - intentional or otherwise," he said. "This is not a revolutionary idea. We put this in place a long time ago for electrical appliances."

This is Clarke's least controversial notion, but you have to wonder how effective it can be. Removing all bugs from electrical equipment is one thing. Removing them from software code - some of the most complex stuff ever invented - is another.

In discussing secure software standards, Clarke slipped in another plug for Microsoft. "This is an idea Microsoft has already championed," he said. And then he said it again. Bill and gang sponsored the conference.

And, yes, Clarke's fifth and final idea is a less than open internet. "Another idea that's already been rejected that I think we should look at again is the idea of a closed internet," Clarke said. "Why should the part of the internet that's connected to the power grid be open? Why should that part of the internet that runs nuclear laboratories be open? Why shouldn't there be a closed internet? There are already relatively closed internets - and now we need to think seriously about expanding them."

Several years ago, when Clarke suggested the idea to Vint Cerf, the internet founding father had a fit. "[He] implied he was putting together a firing squad to take me out," Clarke said.

*****

You won't know what you've got till it's gone.

BE VERY AFRAID OF THESE AUTHORITARIAN MANIACS!

They want to be able to 'crash' the 'public' web and leave everyone in the dark so we'll have to rely on old media in a time of emergency. The writing is on the wall.

A free and unregulated internet is the remaining lifeblood of contemporary civil society. (No, talk radio doesn't count).

[BodeOmissemia]

I don't know about you, I am just afraid of lead-coated terrorist shibboleths!!!

[AntonioXYZ]

i thought shibboleths were extinct!

[Yarikoff]

Isn't it interesting how those in power will suggest any means, fair or foul, to restrict our freedom? Of course its all wrapped up in a "its-good-for-you" package which they try to sell us, but what they're really seeking is ultimate control over us - what we do, what we think, what we say, where we go, etc etc. I don't know about you folks in the US but already in the UK many people feel their hard-won freedoms are being slowly but surely trampled under foot by the jackboots of our Labour government.

One book everyone should read before they die is Orwell's 1984, it's all there, starkly laid out, we deny it or ignore it at our peril.

• "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
  - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

• "Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
  - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

• "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
  - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

[BenWired306]

I don't know about you folks in the US but already in the UK many people feel their hard-won freedoms are being slowly but surely trampled under foot Yes Capn, it's a dire situation here in the US also. Perhaps even worse that what you have over there. Not enough people are truly awake, many are brainwashed and silenced by fear.

[Dr. Shon Thomson]

SHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

[daasayse]

Isn't it interesting how those in power will suggest any means, fair or foul, to restrict our freedom? Of course its all wrapped up in a "its-good-for-you"[/LIST]

I have recently read some of the political philosophy of a british scholar named Sir Isaiah Berlin: it seems to me that much of the Labor Party Policy and the subsequent "loss of liberty" stems from a political philosophy similar to that of Sir Isaiah Berlin.

Basically (from what I gather) the idea is that "true liberty/freedom" is only possible by some "restriction of freedom/liberty" - I think it is what he refers to as "Positive Liberty".

Have you read his work, and if so: any opinions about his political philosophy.

[bs44MhUW]

You mean the freedom to walk down the street, or say what you want without being arrested.

But not the freedom to go running around town hitting people.


At least that is what I gather from your post.....

[estheticianI]

Experts: Terrorists Exploit Internet to Recruit, Spread Ideology

By Margaret Besheer
Washington
08 November 2007

Besheer report (mp3) - Download 758k
Listen to Besheer report (mp3)

Experts say that the weapons of terrorism today are not limited to bombs and guns, but include all the components of technology, and in particular, the Worldwide Web. They warn that extremists are using the Internet to promote violence, spread ideology and recruit. From Washington, VOA's Margaret Besheer has more.

When authorities raid terrorist hideouts these days they come away not only with components for bombs and other weapons, but they usually cart away computers, cellular phones, video equipment and other tools used for creating and spreading extremist ideology over websites and chat rooms, drawing the disenfranchised and the easily influenced into their cause.

Several experts testified this week before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security about how the Internet has become the weapon of choice for terrorists and other radicals. Their testimony comes in the wake of the passage in the House of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 [aka. Thought Crime Bill]. The centerpiece of that legislation is the creation of a National Commission to study violent radicalization and to determine the best way to combat it.



Click image to watch an archived CSPAN broadcast
of the subcommittee hearing of the U.S. House
Committee on Homeland Security.


Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University says the near limitless communications options the Internet provides such groups is essential to their survival. "Without an effective communications strategy, a terrorist movement would be unable to assure a continued flow of new recruits into its ranks, motivate and inspire existing members as well as expand the pool of active supporters and passive sympathizers from which terrorism also draws its sustenance," he said.

Rita Katz of the private SITE Institute, which tracks terrorist websites, says the Internet enables terror groups such as al-Qaida to exist despite the money the United States and other nations spend to fight them on the ground. "Though guns, IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and other weapons are necessary for terrorists to remain dangerous, the Internet is what enables them to coordinate, share information, recruit new members and propagate their ideology. If we do not treat the Internet as a crucial battleground in the war on terror we will not be able to defeat the jihadist threat. The virtual jihadi network has replaced al-Qaida training camps," she said.

The Internet is a tool not just for Islamic radicals, but for all types of extremists.

Parry Aftab, an attorney who specializes in Internet issues that affect children, says these groups are using the Web to recruit bored, middle-class young people with access to technology. "Kids who would have never been exposed to this otherwise - who are not Muslims, who are not normally interested in radical groups, who see it as a way to become included, a way to become famous, a way to become "in" [popular], a way to find a place to belong," she said.

So what can be done to take this weapon out of the hands of radicals and terrorists?

Katz says the first step is for intelligence officials and law enforcement authorities to infiltrate these chat rooms and message boards and study them so they can target these groups' weaknesses.

Other recommendations from the experts include educating young people about radical groups and how they use the Internet to recruit, and increasing cooperation internationally to lessen the impact of the Internet as an inexpensive and easily accessible resource for extremists.

[HRS1H7gO]

While I agree it is a problem, the term "Thought Police" is coming to mind.

IF anything like this comes to bear, we have to make DAMN sure it stays transparent. As soon as our windows get foggy or the shades drawn, we are all going back to 1984.

[onelovemp]

Washington Prepares for Cyber War Games
Week-Long Simulation Tests Agencies', Companies' Response to Online Attacks

By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, March 7, 2008; 7:44 AM

The U.S. government will conduct a series of cyber war games throughout next week to test its ability to recover from and respond to digital attacks.

Code-named 'Cyber Storm II,' this is the largest-ever exercise designed to evaluate the mettle of information technology experts and incident response teams from 18 federal agencies, including the CIA, Department of Defense, FBI, and NSA, as well as officials from nine states, including Delaware, Pennsylvania and Virginia. In addition, more than 40 companies will be playing, including Cisco Systems, Dow Chemical, McAfee, and Microsoft.

In the inaugural Cyber Storm two years ago, planners simulated attacks against the communications and information technology sector, as well as the energy and airline industries. This year's exercise will feature mock attacks by nation states, terrorists and saboteurs against the IT and communications sector and the chemical, pipeline and rail transportation industries.

Jerry Dixon, a former director of the National Cyber Security Division at the Department of Homeland Security who helped to plan both exercises, said Cyber Storm is designed to be a situational pressure-cooker for players: Those who adopt the proper stance or response to a given incident are quickly rewarded by having to respond to even more complex and potentially disastrous scenarios. Players will receive information about the latest threats in part from a simulated news outlet, and at least a portion of the feeds they receive will be intentionally misleading, Dixon said.

'They'll inject some red herring attacks and information to throw intelligence analysts and companies off the trail of the real attackers,' Dixon said. 'The whole time, the clock keeps ticking, and things keep getting worse.'

At a cost of roughly $6.2 million, Cyber Storm II has been nearly 18 months in the planning, with representatives from across the government and technology industry devising attack scenarios aimed at testing specific areas of weakness in their respective disaster recovery and response plans.

'The exercises really are designed to push the envelope and take your failover and backup plans and shred them to pieces,' said Carl Banzhof, chief technology evangelist at McAfee and a cyber warrior in the 2006 exercise.

Cyber Storm planners say they intend to throw a simulated Internet outage into this year's exercise, but beyond that they are holding their war game playbooks close to the vest.

Individuals who helped plan the scenarios all have signed non-disclosure agreements about the details of the planned attacks. They will act as puppeteers apart from the participants, injecting events into the game from a command center at U.S. Secret Service headquarters in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, players will participate via secure online connections from around the world.

At its most basic, organizers say, the exercise tests the strength of relationships and trust between government officials and the private sector companies that control more than 80 percent of the nation's critical physical and cyber infrastructure. In Cyber Storm I, the Department of Homeland Security and the participating companies largely kept the exercise a secret until it was virtually completed. In fact, most of the companies that participated in Cyber Storm I did so anonymously, so that that private sector players only knew each other's respective companies by fictitious business names.

The fact that so many companies have chosen to trumpet their participation in this year's exercise is a testament to how those trust relationships have grown in the intervening years, said Reneaue Railton, manager of critical infrastructure response for Cisco Systems, a company whose hardware devices help direct a large portion of the traffic on the Internet.

'All the companies that played did so anonymously,' Railton said. 'We didn't always know who we were contacting.'

Railton, who helped plan the attack scenarios in this year's exercise, said Cyber Storm II promises to keep all participants on their toes, like an episode of the television show '24,' only for an entire work week at a time. Dozens of companies and government agencies from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom will also participate in the war games and will keep the game in flux around the clock, she said.

The war games will be far more realistic and inclusive for Australia, whose participation in the first Cyber Storm amounted to what a spokesperson for the Australian Attorney General's department called "a desktop exercise" that did not include any private sector companies.

"This year, we're setting up an exercise control room and will be sending out injects to the players in both the private sector and the government," said Daniel Gleeson of the Australia's Attorney General's office. "So we'll be involved in this as it unfolds in real time, rather than just talking about what we'd do in those situations."

[Emalodoulouts]

Every Click You Make
Internet Providers Quietly Test Expanded Tracking of Web Use to Target

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2008; D01

The online behavior of a small but growing number of computer users in the United States is monitored by their Internet service providers, who have access to every click and keystroke that comes down the line.

The companies harvest the stream of data for clues to a person's interests, making money from advertisers who use the information to target their online pitches.

The practice represents a significant expansion in the ability to track a household's Web use because it taps into Internet connections, and critics liken it to a phone company listening in on conversations. But the companies involved say customers' privacy is protected because no personally identifying details are released.

The extent of the practice is difficult to gauge because some service providers involved have declined to discuss their practices. Many Web surfers, moreover, probably have little idea they are being monitored.

But at least 100,000 U.S. customers are tracked this way, and service providers have been testing it with as many as 10 percent of U.S. customers, according to tech companies involved in the data collection.

Although common tracking systems, known as cookies, have counted a consumer's visits to a network of sites, the new monitoring, known as "deep-packet inspection," enables a far wider view -- every Web page visited, every e-mail sent and every search entered. Every bit of data is divided into packets -- like electronic envelopes -- that the system can access and analyze for content.

"You don't want the phone company tapping your phone calls, and in the same way you don't want your ISP tapping your Web traffic," said Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group. "There's a fear here that a user's ISP is going to betray them and turn their information over to a third party."

In fact, newly proposed Federal Trade Commission guidelines for behavioral advertising have been outpaced by the technology and do not address the practice directly. Privacy advocates are preparing to present to Congress their concerns that the practice is done without consumer consent and that too little is known about whether such systems adequately protect personal information.

Meanwhile, many online publishers say the next big growth in advertising will emerge from efforts to offer ads based not on the content of a Web page, but on knowing who is looking at it. That, of course, means gathering more information about consumers.

Advocates of deep-packet inspection see it as a boon for all involved. Advertisers can better target their pitches. Consumers will see more relevant ads. Service providers who hand over consumer data can share in advertising revenues. And Web sites can make more money from online advertising, a $20 billion industry that is growing rapidly.

With the service provider involved in collecting consumer data, "there is access to a broader spectrum of the Web traffic -- it's significantly more valuable," said Derek Maxson, chief technology officer of Front Porch, a company that collects such data from millions of users in Asia and is working with a number of U.S. service providers.

Consider, say, the Boston Celtics Web site. Based on its content, it posts ads for products a Celtics fan might be interested in: Adidas, a Boston hotel and so on.

With information about users from deep-packet inspection, however, advertisers might learn that the person looking at the Celtics Web site is also a potential car customer because he recently visited the Ford site and searched in Google for "best minivans." That means car companies might be interested in sending an ad to that user at the Celtics site, too.

For all its promise, however, the service providers exploring and testing such services have largely kept quiet -- "for fear of customer revolt," according to one executive involved.

It is only through the companies that design the data collection systems -- companies such as NebuAd, Phorm and Front Porch -- that it is possible to gauge the technology's spread. Front Porch collects detailed Web-use data from more than 100,000 U.S. customers through their service providers, Maxson said. NebuAd has agreements with providers covering 10 percent of U.S. broadband customers, chief executive Bob Dykes said.

In England, Phorm is expected in the coming weeks to launch its monitoring service with BT, Britain's largest Internet broadband provider.

NebuAd and Front Porch declined to name the U.S. service providers they are working with, saying it's up to the providers to announce how they deal with consumer data.

Some service providers, such as Embarq and Wide Open West, or WOW, have altered their customer-service agreements to permit the monitoring.

Embarq describes the monitoring as a "preference advertising service." Wide Open West tells customers it is working with a third-party advertising network and names NebuAd as its partner.

Officials at WOW and Embarq declined to talk about any monitoring that has been done.

Each company allows users to opt out of the monitoring, though that permission is buried in customer service documents. The opt-out systems work by planting a "cookie," or a small file left on a user's computer. Each uses a cookie created by NebuAd.

Officials at another service provider, Knology, said it was working with NebuAd and is conducting a test of deep-packet inspection on "several hundred" customers in a service area it declined to identify.

"I don't view it as violating any privacy data at all," said Anthony Palermo, vice present of marketing at Knology. "My understanding is that all these companies go through great pains to hash out information that is specific to the consumer."

One central issue, of course, is how well the companies protect consumer data.

NebuAd promises to protect users' privacy in a couple of ways.

First, every user in the NebuAd system is identified by a number that the company assigns rather than an Internet address, which in theory could be traced to a person. The number NebuAd assigns cannot be tracked to a specific address. That way, if the company's data is stolen or leaked, no one could identify customers or the Web sites they've visited, Dykes said.

Nor does NebuAd record a user's visits to pornography or gaming sites or a user's interests in sensitive subjects -- such as bankruptcy or a medical condition such as AIDS. The company said it processes but does not look into packets of information that include e-mail or pictures.

What it does do is categorize users into dozens of targeted consumer types, such as a potential car buyer or someone interested in digital cameras.

Dykes noted that by a couple of measures, their system may protect privacy more than such well-known companies as Google. Google stores a user's Internet address along with the searches made from that address. And while Google's mail system processes e-mail and serves ads based on keywords it finds in their text, NebuAd handles e-mail packets but does not look to them for advertising leads.

Such privacy measures aside, however, consumer advocates questioned whether monitored users are properly informed about the practice.

Knology customers, for example, cull the company's 27-page customer service agreement or its terms and condition for service to find a vague reference to its tracking system.

"They're buried in agreements -- who reads them?" said David Hallerman, a senior analyst at eMarketer. "The industry is setting itself up by not being totally transparent. . . . The perception is you're being tracked and targeted."

[doksSirmAdods]

Now the question rises, is there a program or service that allows encryption of your internet traffic? Either by deliberately funneling through a, is the right name, Proxy server? Either by doing that or simply making it impossible to read what you have sent.

Bad stuff though, but predictable. In order to "better serve you" they need to find out more about you, whether you want them to or not.

How else would they know you needed Prep H unless they found you searching for Hemorrhoids on Google?

[Azzi_Kahlila]

Transcript: FBI director on surveillance of 'illegal' Internet activity

April 23, 2008 5:57 PM PDT
Posted by Declan McCullagh


FBI director Robert Mueller, shown here at Wednesday's
hearing, says 'legislation has to be developed' that would
'identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give
us the ability to preempt that illegal activity.'
(Credit: Anne Broache/CNET News.com)

When the FBI suggested that it should be able to perform wide-scale Internet monitoring to detect "illegal activity" on Wednesday, the bureau raised more questions than it answered.

To help clear things up, we're providing the transcript of FBI Director Robert Mueller's exchange at a House of Representatives hearing with Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican. Issa made his fortune by founding Directed Electronics, a publicly traded company that sells car alarms and home theater loudspeakers.

Issa also is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which is holding a closed hearing on Thursday devoted to the Bush administration's so-called Cyber Initiative. In January, President Bush signed a pair of secret orders--National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23--that apparently deal with detecting and preventing Internet disruptions.

Here's the relevant section of the transcript from the House Judiciary hearing on Wednesday:

Rep. Issa: Director, there isn't enough time in five minutes to open and close the subject of the Cyber Initiative, but this committee, in my opinion, is going to be the lead committee on, ah, the actual effectiveness of that initiative. As we both know it's compartmented, highly classified. But I'd like to concentrate just on what laws or changes that you would need from this committee if you were to do the following, and I'll set out a scenario.

If you go into a place and there's a crime actively being committed, let's say there's a bookie joint, and there's tens of thousands of illegal transactions going on every minute. And you know that. And you have proof of that. You don't question your ability to go in and to harvest the fruit of all the activities in there, is that correct?

Mueller: That's correct.

Mueller: With a search warrant, quite honestly.

Rep. Issa: With a search warrant. Today every ISP is being maliciously attacked--this goes beyond the .mils and .govs--but I think that's the important reason that we approach it today. Every ISP is being attacked, maliciously both from in the United States and outside of the United States, by those who want to invade people's privacy. But more importantly they want to take control of computers, they want to hack them, they want to steal information. This is also true of the .mils and .govs. Every one of our congressional offices, every day, is under attack.

Every portal leading out of the United States, some of them going in and out of the United States, but talking only about your jurisdiction in the United States. Every portal coming into this country is being attacked by those who would harvest information, both national security secrets and just the common information of private individuals and private individuals.

That crime is going on, every day, on a single entity known as the Internet. What authorities do you need to monitor, looking for those illegal activities, and then act on those, both defensively and, either yourselves or certainly other agencies, offensively in order to shut down a crime in process?

Now, I'm a civil libertarian. I was with Bob Barr arguing some of the elements of the Patriot Act that we still don't agree should have been there. But when I set up the crime scenario, how is it that you're going to get the right to react when today, people would say that if they, if you're addressing an action from an American person, you don't have that right? How are you going to do it, and how can we help you do it appropriately and constitutionally?

Mueller: I think legislation has to be developed that balances on one hand, the privacy rights of the individual who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the Internet.

And it is a question of the legislation catching up to the technology. Understanding that these crimes are being committed every moment. But then identifying our ability to focus on the particular criminal element as it's coming through and preempt that criminal element, whether it be .mil, .gov, .com, whichever network you're talking about.

Rep. Issa: OK, and one follow-up question, or two follow-up questions, because I know we're not going to get it all resolved today. One, can you have someone on your staff designated to work with members of Congress on trying to craft that legislation? I'd appreciate being able to work with that person.

And secondly, and this goes to a legal opinion you may or may not be able to help us with today, but I'd like you to try to work on it. If ISPs or other private entities, a Lockheed Martin on one hand, and my old company, Directed Electronics on the other, if they consented to participation voluntarily in being, in fact, defended in a Cyber Initiative--and that includes ISPs that hypothetically got consent from every single person who signed up to operate under their auspices.

If that consent were granted, do you believe that current laws either can or reasonably easily could be made to protect them? In other words, a voluntary program that would begin allowing federal agencies to counter-attack and to defend on behalf of those who waive current possible restrictions in that sense. And that's probably my most important question to get this committee thinking of.

Mueller: I think that's going to require some thought because an individual company can say "OK, I consent to have somebody protect me." But if the filter is inappropriately placed just protecting that particular company, it may have to be one or two or three institutions or ISPs off, and that's where you would have a problem. whether it would be, i forget what company you mentioned, but Lockheed Martin saying," I'm willing for somebody to protect me," but the protection may be two or three companies off. Lockheed Martin has no mechanism in order to affect the company that's two or three off, if you see what I'm getting at.

Rep. Issa: Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hopefully 163.33.33.0 will be protected if they ask to be, whoever they are. (Editor's note: 163.33.33 seems to be an Internet protocol address near San Jose, Calif.)

Rep. Conyers: As you wish, Mr. Issa.

Rep. Issa: Mr. Chairman, I do hope that when we look at the Cyber Initiative, we view ourselves as the primary committee that has to clear the way for appropriate action on behalf of our government, all branches.

Rep. Conyers: (Nods)
*****

So Fatherland Security wants internet "choke points" with total traffic monitoring "utilizing filters" searching for "illegal activity" with the goal being to "preempt" the activity.

Some questions this raises:

• Don't intentional choke points defeat the purpose of the decentralized diffuse internet?
• Can the government be trusted to not shut down or restrict content for the entire internet if given the ability, i.e. act like China?
• Presuming the "preemption" described restricts the violators access to the greater internet what recourse will there be for erroneous preemption?
• Will ISPs be required to execute any aspect of such a "preemption?"
• Will the accused be victims of pre-conviction property confiscation, like suspected drug criminals?
• Will thought crimes, e.g. gov't sanctioned free speech, and limits placed upon free association, with the purpose of limiting the free exchange of ideas - political and otherwise, be part of the forbidden "illegal activity?"
• Will there be any oversight of intelligence agencies' information gathering that will undoubtedly result from these "choke points?"

[formobilagsw]

FBI's Net surveillance proposal raises privacy, legal concerns

April 25, 2008 12:25 PM PDT
Posted by Declan McCullagh

The FBI director and a Republican congressman sketched out a far-reaching plan this week for warrantless surveillance of the Internet.

During a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, the FBI's Robert Mueller and Rep. Darrell Issa of California talked about what amounts to a two-step approach. Step 1 involves asking Internet service providers to open their networks to the FBI voluntarily; step 2 would be a federal law forcing companies to do just that.

Both have their problems, legal and practical, but let's look at step 1 first. Issa suggested that Internet providers could get "consent from every single person who signed up to operate under their auspices" for federal police to monitor network traffic for attempts to steal personal information and national secrets. Mueller said "legislation has to be developed" for "some omnibus search capability, utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to pre-empt" it.

These are remarkable statements. The clearest reading of them points to deep packet inspection of network traffic--akin to the measures Comcast took against BitTorrent and to what Phorm in the United Kingdom has done, in terms of advertising--plus additional processing to detect and thwart any "illegal activity." (See the complete transcript here.)

"That's very troubling," said Greg Nojeim, director of the project on freedom, security, and technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "It could be an effort to achieve, through unknowing consent, permission to monitor communications in a way that would otherwise be prohibited by law."

Unfortunately, neither Issa nor Mueller recognized that such a plan is probably illegal. California law, for instance, says anyone who "intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication" conducts electronic surveillance shall be imprisoned for one year. (I say "probably illegal" because their exchange didn't offer much in the way of details.)

"I think there's a substantial problem with what Mueller's proposing," said Al Gidari, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm who represents telecommunications providers. "He forgets the states have the power to pass more restrictive rules, and 12 of them have. He also forgets that we live in a global world, and the rest of the world doesn't quite see eye to eye on this issue. That consent would be of dubious validity in Europe, for instance, where many of our customers reside."

For its part, the FBI isn't talking. After we made repeated attempts to get the bureau to explain what Mueller was talking about, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson responded by saying, "At this point, I'm going to let the director's comments, in the context of the exchange with Rep. Issa, speak for themselves."

What step 1 appears to involve is persuading Internet providers to amend their terms of service and insert an FBI-can-monitor-everything clause. Informed consent is one thing. But does anyone actually read the fine print on their contracts with their broadband or wireless provider? If not, is that fine print good enough?

Informed consent is important because of the wording of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA, which says providers may share the contents of customers' communications only "with the lawful consent" of the user. Otherwise, providers are breaking the law and can be sued for damages. And without consent, the FBI would bump up against the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches.

Originally, Congress seemed to take a liberal view of what constituted "lawful consent." When ECPA was enacted in 1986, a House committee report said "consent may be inferred from a course of dealing," and if "those rules are available to users," consent can be implied.

But that was written way back in the early, pre-Internet days of Compuserve and bulletin board systems. More recently, courts have interpreted ECPA more strictly.

The 2003 In Re Pharmatrak decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit offers one useful measuring stick. The court ruled in a case involving Web tracking "that it makes more sense to place the burden of showing consent on the party seeking the benefit of the exception." The judges approvingly cited a second case, which said "consent can only be implied when the surrounding circumstances convincingly show that the party knew about and consented to the interception."

The Federal Trade Commission, too, has taken a relatively strict view of informed consent. In its lawsuit filed against Odysseus Marketing, the FTC argued that it was unlawful for a company not "to adequately disclose" to customers that it was sharing information with third parties. The case ended in a settlement.

Translation: Obtaining "lawful consent" for FBI monitoring means making sure that your customers actually know what's going on and agree. Hiding it in the terms of service doesn't qualify.

But assume that the FBI can persuade Internet providers to include a prominent notice in every monthly bill, or some other mechanism that would be legally sufficient. Another problem is that even if the person who pays the bills consents to monitoring, other people may use the connection--think homes with open wireless connections. ECPA's legal protections follow individual people, not customer accounts.

Rewriting U.S. surveillance laws
Because the FBI would run into serious problems doing wide-scale Internet surveillance under existing state and federal law, step 2 may be necessary. That means rewriting U.S. surveillance law.

Issa said he wants to "craft" legislation that would give the FBI the power to look "for those illegal activities, and then act on those, both defensively and, either yourselves or certainly other agencies, offensively in order to shut down a crime in process." He worried about "national-security secrets and just the common information of private individuals" being at risk. In his response, Mueller said he wants Congress to "give us the ability to pre-empt that illegal activity."

"Looking for" a crime in process on the Internet can take multiple paths. If it's a denial-of-service attack against eBay or Amazon.com originating from Russian servers, it can be detected by measuring the amount of traffic without inspecting the contents each packet. But to detect fraud and "national-security secrets," as well as personal information being transferred, deep packet inspection would be necessary--roughly on a scale of the Great Firewall of China.

Needless to say, detecting "illegal activity" would soon be extended to copyright infringement and peer-to-peer networks. Under the No Electronic Theft Act, swapping music or video files is a federal crime, if the total value of the files exceeds $1,000. If the value tops $2,500, the penalties jump up to not more than five years in prison. And as Jammie Thomas found out last year, allegedly sharing 24 files can lead to $222,000 in civil penalties.

"I think you bump squarely into the Fourth Amendment when you get into the required waiver of constitutional protections to use a service," said Gidari, the attorney at Perkins Coie. "Why don't we extend it to include not criticizing the government? Which right is next? 'You may use our service, as long as you don't disparage Verizon?' Why not that one?...You've still got to have, at the end of the day, a constitutionally supportable legal process to get access to anyone's communications. This cannot be an end run around that."

The problem of how to "shut down a crime in process" and "pre-empt that illegal activity" is more difficult and, perhaps, more worrisome.

Here's what Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, had to say when I asked him to read the transcript of Wednesday's hearing:
It certainly is Mueller's responsibility to explain what it is that he's looking for. But it seems that he's saying, essentially, that the surveillance society is the best society. A society in which the government has complete information about illegal activities and is able to enforce that. Throughout our country's existence, we've lived in a society where the government doesn't have perfect information.

Is (Mueller) suggesting that there's a search capability using filters that would identify an infringing work and fail to deliver a message containing that work? Is that the choke point? If that is the case, how can that be done well? How about fair uses? How will the government tell whether a copyrighted work is sent pursuant to a license? Will it have a centralized database of licenses? How does he propose to have this work, so it only identifies illegal activities and doesn't overly choke?

The FBI has some obligation to explain: what is it going to focus on here? Once you have the technology in place, will it then be used for more and more?If you thought the tussles over Net neutrality were heated before, imagine a broadband provider throttling certain applications--and being able to blame that throttling capability on law enforcement. At the very least, it would be a wonderful excuse.

Which is why it's a shame, and somewhat troubling, that the FBI has chosen not to say what its director is proposing (and apparently will be working with Congress to write into law).

Odds of FBI-filtering legislation: Zero?
One possible germ for this Internet-monitoring idea lies in Homeland Security's so-called Einstein program, which is designed to monitor Internet mischief and network disruptions aimed at federal agencies. Not much about Einstein is public, but a privacy impact assessment offers some details.

Homeland Security Spokeswoman Laura Keehner said in a telephone interview that the primary focus of Einstein at the moment is protecting federal-government networks. "Obviously, the FBI could clarify or elaborate on what they said," Keehner said. "I do know that (from Homeland Security's perspective) we now first need to get our .gov in order. We need to concentrate on our federal networks...We're also bringing in the private sector to open those lines of discussion and figure out ways that the private sector can better equip themselves to stop any cyberincursions."

Another possibly related effort is the Bush administration's so-called Cyber Initiative. In January, President Bush signed a pair of secret orders--National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23--that apparently deal with detecting and preventing Internet disruptions. Issa is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which held a closed-door hearing on Thursday devoted to the Cyber Initiative--and, during the exchange with Mueller a day earlier, he said his monitoring idea was related.

The House Intelligence committee didn't want to talk. But a representative of the House Homeland Security committee chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) sent us three bullet points in an e-mail message:
1. Chance of a legislative initiative that would allow FBI to place filters to identify illegal activity at choke points on the .com space: 0

2. We still have concerns and questions about the initiative, and we continue to do oversight.

3. Legislation is not being considered for any of the new proposals, outside of the budget requests made by the administration.Point No. 3 seems to relate to the administration's 2009 budget request, which asks Congress for $293.5 million to expand Einstein to the entire federal government.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is headed by Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, also held a classified hearing last month on the administration's Cyber Initiative.

But a committee aide told us, "The idea of filtering for criminal activity has never been discussed with us. Nor has any new statutory authority been discussed. In fact, the administration explicitly said it didn't need any legislation. Furthermore, the idea of monitoring nongovernment domains has never been proposed in briefings the committee has received."

It's true that, at least in the current political climate, legislation of the sort Issa wants to draft isn't likely to slide through Congress unopposed.

Still, it's worth keeping in mind that the FBI has a recent, and not very flattering, history of trying to expand the scope of surveillance methods. Bureau agents used so-called exigent letters to obtain records from telephone companies, claiming that an emergency situation existed.

In reality, there was often no emergency at all. The Justice Department's inspector general found similar abuses of national-security letters. The FBI also tried to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when it denied requests to obtain records.

Perhaps Mueller can provide a convincing argument for why laws giving the FBI "omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity" would be wise. Perhaps not. But when politicians weigh the idea of trusting the FBI with such broad and unprecedented authority, they should consider the abuses that have already taken place with far less powerful tools.

CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this report.

[Trikaduliana]

FCC proposes free Internet... as long as it's censored



05/29/2008 @ 7:47 pm
Filed by Reuters
By Peter Kaplan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. communications regulators are considering auctioning a piece of the airwaves to buyers willing to provide free broadband Internet service without pornography.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is proposing to auction an unused piece of 25 megahertz wireless spectrum, with the condition that the winning bidder offer free Internet access and filter out obscene content on part of those airwaves, a spokesman for the FCC said on Thursday.

"We're hoping there will be increased interest in the proposal; and because this will provide wireless broadband services to more Americans, it is certainly something we want to see," said FCC spokesman Rob Kenny.

Under Martin's proposal, the winner would be allowed to use the rest of the airwaves for commercial services.

The plan would address criticism from some consumer advocates, who say the government has not done enough to get broadband service into more households. It also could win praise from anti-obscenity watchdog groups.

"I think there are a number of features of the plan that would be attractive to various constituencies," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Blair Levin.

But the plan got a lukewarm response from existing wireless carriers. The industry's chief trade group, called CTIA, said auction provisions such as the free-service requirement were too rigid.

"CTIA supports flexible auction rules that allow any and all entities to participate," the group said in a statement.

The winning bidder also would have to build out the system to serve 50 percent of the U.S. population within four years and 95 percent within 10 years.

Further details of the plan have yet to be worked out, but Martin's plan is expected to come up at the FCC's next meeting on June 12.

Martin's proposal is similar to a plan put forth previously by a start-up company called M2Z. Under that plan, which was not approved by the FCC, M2Z would have been given the spectrum at no up-front cost. It would have provided free service, generating revenue partly through advertising.

The 25 MHz spectrum at issue is not viewed as highly attractive to wireless carriers, unlike the 700 MHz spectrum auctioned by the FCC earlier this year. There has been little previous interest in it, aside from the M2Z proposal.

(Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Gerald E. McCormick)

[sensation]

Weird.

First, is that a Mac Classic?

Second, I can see where they would like to offer a section of bandwidth for free access, but restrict pornography and other venues (gambling may be one of them).

This would be akin to the current OTA television channels now being broadcast.

Although our definition of pronography is a little, puritan, when compared to most of the other "western" civilizations, there is way too much that can be seen by youngsters that could mess them up royally without a few years of social buffering.

Anywho, it looks lik ethey are offering a carrot to these guys, but that 95% bit seems like they are trying to get the providers to carry the mule over to get it.

Interesting though...

[cQT6nmEc]

Rights like free speech don't always extend online

By ANICK JESDANUN
AP Internet Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.
Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.
Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services - from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video - become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.[*]

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that - far from promoting smoking - the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.

"I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid," Dors said. "It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete."

There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren't clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny.
[Market driven? Government mandates provider monitoring for certain instances.]

"We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place," said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. "We're obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place."

In Dors' case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo "sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content." Service providers aren't required to police content, but they aren't prohibited from doing so. [A lie. Or a blatant distortion insofar as providers aren't required to police for smoking children.]

While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities - ones where minors may be roaming.

Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy.

Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far.

Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.

"We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up."

But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion.

Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines.

To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a "short code" for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc.'s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints.

Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular.

"As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can't see alternative points of view, if we can't see the things that offend us?" asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities.

First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child.

With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague.

Others believe companies shouldn't police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal.

"Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. "When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules."

But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them "tend to be tone-deaf. They don't see context."

At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, "there's more of a guarantee of due process protections," said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users' rights are limited to the service provider's contractual terms of services.

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet's openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries.

"Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue," Zittrain said. "Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble ... it may not be worth it to them."

Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics.

Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers.

He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children.

Meanwhile, in response to complaints it would not specify, Network Solutions LLC decided to suspend a Web hosting account that Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders was using to promote a movie that criticizes the Quran - before the movie was even posted and without the company finding any actual violation of its rules.

Service providers say unhappy customers can always go elsewhere, but choice is often limited.

Many leading services, particularly online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace or media-sharing sites such as Flickr and Google Inc.'s YouTube, have acquired a cachet that cannot be replicated. To evict a user from an online community would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town.

Other sites "don't have the critical mass. No one would see it," said Scott Kerr, a member of the gay punk band Kids on TV, which found its profile mysteriously deleted from MySpace last year. "People know that MySpace is the biggest site that contains music."

MySpace denies engaging in any censorship and says profiles removed are generally in response to complaints of spam and other abuses. GoDaddy also defends its commitment to speech, saying account suspensions are a last resort.

Few service providers actively review content before it gets posted and usually take action only in response to complaints.

In that sense, Flickr, YouTube and other sites consider their reviews "checks and balances" against any community mob directed at unpopular speech - YouTube has pointedly refused to delete many video clips tied to Muslim extremists, for instance, because they didn't specifically contain violence or hate speech.

Still, should these sites even make such rules? And how can they ensure the guidelines are consistently enforced?

YouTube has policies against showing people "getting hurt, attacked or humiliated," banning even clips OK for TV news shows, but how is YouTube to know whether a video clip shows real violence or actors portraying it? Either way, showing the video is legal and may provoke useful discussions on brutality.

"Balancing these interests raises very tough issues," YouTube acknowledged in a statement.

Unwilling to play the role of arbiter, the group-messaging service Twitter has resisted pressure to tighten its rules.

"What counts as name-calling? What counts as making fun of someone in a way that's good-natured?" said Jason Goldman, Twitter's director of program management. "There are sites that do employ teams of people that do that investigation ... but we feel that's a job we wouldn't do well."

Other sites are trying to be more transparent in their decisions.

Online auctioneer eBay Inc., for instance, has elaborated on its policies over the years, to the extent that sellers can drill down to where they can ship hatching eggs (U.S. addresses only) and what items related to natural disasters are permissible (they must have "substantial social, artistic or political value"). Hypothetical examples accompany each policy.

LiveJournal has recently eased restrictions on blogging. The new harassment clause, for instance, expressly lets members state negative feelings or opinions about another, and parodies of public figures are now permitted despite a ban on impersonation. Restrictions on nudity specifically exempt non-sexualized art and breast feeding.

The site took the unusual step of soliciting community feedback and setting up an advisory board with prominent Internet scholars such as Danah Boyd and Lawrence Lessig and two user representatives elected in May.

The effort comes just a year after a crackdown on pedophilia backfired. LiveJournal suspended hundreds of blogs that dealt with child abuse and sexual violence, only to find many were actually fictional works or discussions meant to protect children. The company's chief executive issued a public apology.

Community backlash can restrain service providers, but as Internet companies continue to consolidate and Internet users spend more time using vendor-controlled platforms such as mobile devices or social-networking sites, the community's power to demand free speech and other rights diminishes.

Weinstein, the veteran computer scientist, said that as people congregate at fewer places, "if you're knocked off one of those, in a lot of ways you don't exist."

© 2008 The Associated Press.

*****

This telecom immunity thing has ISPs over a barrel. They'll continue to do whatever the gov't says, including their dirty work for them under the guise of the unrestrained free market.

Hunting down pedophiles and child pornography will be our tortured path to tyranny. Any coincidence that child rapists aren't given the death penalty?

[oplapofffe]

Army Secretary: We're Falling Behind Online

By David Axe, July 17, 2008

Senior Army leaders have fallen behind the breakneck development of cheap digital communications including cell phones, digital cameras and Web 2.0 Internet sites such as blogs and Facebook, Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a trade conference on July 10. That helps explain how "just one man in a cave that's hooked up to the Internet has been able to out-communicate the greatest communications society in the history of the world -- the United States," Geren said, according to Inside Defense. (Subscription required.)

"It's a challenge not only at home, it's a challenge in recruiting, it's a challenge internationally, because effective communication brings people over to our side and ineffective communication allows the enemy to pull people to their side," Geren continued. He said the Army brass needs to catch up -- fast. But how exactly?

One solution: "Find a blog to be a part of," Geren said.

Young people embrace social media "as a fluent second language," he added. Army leaders have to do the same.
But embracing that high-tech, second language could be hard for the Army, just as it poses challenges for the defense industry.

"I was talking to a senior executive this week, one of our major defense contractors," Geren recounted. "And he said that they've assigned a young person to every senior executive to be like his or her translator and connect with the new information technologies."

This remark triggered laughter throughout the hotel ballroom. This isn't the first time an Army big wig has called for the service to embrace the digital, Do-It-Yourself age. Despite the occasional crackdown on soldier-bloggers in Iraq, the Army is still way ahead of the other military services when it comes to the Internet.

At the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, a tiny office of Web-savvy mavericks is creating Army-specific Web 2.0 tools (blogs, forums, social networks) for soldiers. At the Army's graduate school in Kansas, blogging is a new addition to the curriculum. And just recently the Army launched its own "blogger's roundtable" program to arrange press conference for online journalists.

Meanwhile, the Air Force, the Pentagon's main agency for "cyberwarfare," continues to view the Internet primarily as a battlefield to be "dominated."

[Gazeboss]

I've noticed G-Mail will tailor the banner ads to the subject matter of your e-mail.

An e-mail titled: Australian snake in Tank farm.

brings forth this ad:

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