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Attorney General Ashcroft promotes antiterrorism law: Speaking at a homeland security conference on Monday, “Ashcroft said the USA PATRIOT Act preserved traditional checks on library, bookstore and business records because a “federal judge must first issue a warrant” and because it is for “foreign intelligence that doesn’t affect U.S. persons.” Statement of Barbara Comstock, Director …
Diverging Estimates of the Costs of Spam: “Spam is costing the U.S. economy billions in network resources, diminished productivity and forgone Internet sales. But how many billions?” See also Spam Battle Plans– “Companies are relying on multilevel spam-fighting strategies that include e-mail filtering tools, blacklist services and employee education.”
Judge Orders UBS to Pay to Retrieve E-Mail – “A federal judge ordered UBS to pay the majority of the costs involved in restoring e-mail evidence sought by a former employee who is accusing the bank of sex discrimination.”
From Government Computer News: “Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia late this afternoon issued a preliminary injunction requiring the Interior Department to disconnect its IT systems from the Internet, with some exceptions.” Elouise Pepion Cobell v. Gale A. Norton, Secretary of the Interior Civil Action No. 96-1285; …
IRS Again Delays Modernized Taxpayer Database: “The system, the Customer Account Data Engine (CADE), will be a modern database that will house tax information for more than 200 million individual and business taxpayers and replaces the antiquated, magnetic tape-based system that came into use four decades ago.”
House Panel Approves Deep E-Gov Funding Cuts – “The U.S. House Appropriations Committee is calling for only $1 million in 2004 funding for the Electronic Government Act (E-Gov), which invests in inter-agency projects with government-wide applications. The Bush Administration had requested $45 million for the program.” This act “uthorizes funding for improvement of the federal …
Interesting article discussing online book piracy from “South India’s Leading News Site.” With so much focus generated by the RIAA’s increasingly aggressive pursuit of individuals who download and “share” or “pirate” music files, the burgeoning enterprise of downloading books, from the latest best sellers to older but no less popular works, has not been the …
ABA Survey of Technology Use by Law Faculty – ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Technology Committee (636 law faculty responded.) Posted today on technoids.
From Elmer R. Masters, news that Technoids has a new design, and is now powered by Geeklog.
Despite the efforts of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) to prohibit funds appropriated under H.R. 2555, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act 2004, from being used by any advisory committee (Homeland Security Advisory Council) that has been exempted from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the amendment was defeated on July 24. (via Secrecy News)
Enforced Standards Versus Evolution by General Acceptance: A Comparative Study of E-Commerce Privacy Disclosure and Practice in The U.S. and The U.K. “compares U.S. and U.K. e-commerce Web sites’ notice and disclosure practices, their adherence to promises about secondary uses of e-mail addresses, and the state of the market for privacy assurance programs in the …
File Sharers: See If the Recording Industry Is After You: “EFF is assisting Internet users by offering a mechanism for people to check the username they use on a file sharing service against a database of those usernames specified in hundreds of subpoenas the RIAA issued this month to Internet Service Providers (ISPs).” Concerned that …