Subject: Same old threats to privacy
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 11:10:31 -0400
From: JBJ

[The Federal Reserve Board could move to overturn our colorblind Reg B non-mortgage credit application policy at any time.  The House banking cmte will consider another election year assault on financial privacy in the name of the War on Drugs next week (that's how we got Know Your Customer two years ago).  At the same time, the Canadians are dismantling their database on citizens for privacy concerns!  Thoughtful observers are speaking out against the blind excesses of this war on our own citizens.  The Greeks  (finally) admit that religion on their national IDs was a Nazi legacy and are correcting it - JBJ]

The House Committee on Banking and Financial Services (James A. Leach, Chairman) will mark up H.R. 3886, the "International Counter-Money Laundering Act of 2000, " on Thursday, June 8, at 11:00 a.m. in room 2128 of  the Rayburn House Office Building.  A section-by-section analysis is attached.  <<HR 3886 section by section.doc>>

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THE WAR ON DRUGS:  JUST SAY `NO MORE'
By Arianna Huffington,  Freematt's list,  6/1/00

You won't find the latest good news about our war in the foreign-news section of the paper. That's because this war is being fought at home. But you won't find it in the domestic-news section, either. That's because the media are barely reporting anything outside the talking points of the presidential candidates. And George W. Bush and Al Gore would rather talk about drugs they did or didn't  take than mention America's ongoing drug war -- unless to say that we need to get tougher. Elected officials are usually the last to agree with the little boy crying out that the emperor wears no clothes -- or, in this case, that the drug war has been a disaster. But yesterday's heresies are becoming today's wisdom.

``The most common reaction I get from my colleagues,'' Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Calif.), in the vanguard of drug-policy reform, told me, ``is `You're absolutely right, but, boy, I'm not going to take that risk.' '' Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) is one who has decided to take the risk. `` `A fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts when he's forgotten his purpose,' '' he told me, quoting Santayana. ``We need to question policymakers' sanity when the purpose -- in this case protecting people's health -- is forgotten in favor of a fanatical pursuit of the drug war.''

``We're on the cusp of this debate bursting wide open,'' said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a leading drug-policy institute. ``Drug-policy reform is rapidly emerging as (ital) the (unital) movement for political and social justice of the new decade.''

An overwhelming majority of Americans now feel that it's time to mobilize new thinking on our drug problem. According to a recent  Zogby poll, 74 percent favor treatment over prison for those convicted of possession. And when given the chance to express their feelings at the ballot box, voters across the country -- the ground troops on the side of common sense -- have repeatedly shown their support for reforming drug policy. In Arizona, voters have twice approved a measure replacing mandatory incarceration with treatment, while ballot initiatives making marijuana available for medical use have been passed in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Maine and Washington, D.C.

State legislatures are following suit. Hawaii recently became the first state to approve medical marijuana through the legislative process. And last year, Missouri passed a bill encouraging judges to sentence certain drug users to community service and treatment facilities rather than jail.

Indeed, it is at the state level that the critical mass for bipartisan drug reform is emerging. In November, Massachusetts and California ballots will have groundbreaking initiatives.  The Massachusetts initiative requires that any properties forfeited in drug cases go to education or drug treatment rather than to police coffers -- a critically important reform if we are to end our distorted law-enforcement priorities. Meanwhile, in California, the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act requires that nonviolent drug offenders be sent to treatment rather than prison the first two  times they're arrested. Its backers point out that the average cost of maintaining a prison inmate is $23,406 a year, while the average annual cost of a drug-treatment program is $4,300.

 More evidence of this emerging critical mass comes, surprisingly, from a growing number of law-enforcement officials and judges.  Although, on second thought, it's not that surprising since these front-line conscripts have seen the ravages of the war up close: overflowing prisons, devastated inner-city neighborhoods, the  militarization of our nation's peace officers, ruined lives. ``We look back now at things like judicial enforcement of the fugitive slave laws and wonder how we could have let that happen,'' a U.S. District Court judge told me. ``I think many years from now people will look at our current drug laws that require very long, mandatory  minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders and think this is a comparable kind of injustice.''

Even tough-on-crime conservatives like Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist are rethinking the mandatory minimum sentences fostered by the drug-war mind-set. Such sentences ``impose  unduly harsh punishment for first-time offenders,'' said Rehnquist, ``and have led to an inordinate increase in the prison population.''

Finally, families of those doing time for drugs have begun to organize. ``The loved ones of the drug war's victims shouldn't be ashamed,'' said Nora Callahan, who in 1997 founded the November Coalition to give families of those serving draconian drug sentences a voice. ``The government should be ashamed because our nation's drug laws are the real culprit.'' Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which now has branches in 21 states, was founded by Julie Stewart after her brother got five years in a federal prison for possessing three dozen marijuana plants.

College students have opened yet another front in the fight to end the drug war: battling against an outrageous provision in the 1998 Higher Education Act that disqualifies young people for federal aid for college if they've ever been convicted of marijuana possession but not if they've been convicted of rape, robbery or  manslaughter. ``It was this bill that got students active on the drug issue,'' said Kris Lotlikar, national director of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. ``They resent having their education dragged into drug-war politics.''

``There is a growing acknowledgment,'' Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) told me, ``that the drug war hasn't worked.'' Or as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) put it: ``The war on drugs is a total failure. It does more harm than good.'' Campbell, Nadler, Schakowsky and Paul are still in the minority -- a minority that includes some pretty high-profile pols, including New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. But common sense finally seems to be gaining the edge on demagoguery and pandering. The government's war on drugs has become a war on its own citizens. It's heartening to see more and more people crying out that it's time to sue for peace.
 

(Arianna Huffington's e-mail address is arianna@ariannaonline.com. Her new book, ``How to Overthrow the Government,'' is published by HarperCollins.) (c) 2000, Arianna Huffington. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate For Immediate Release (Distributed 6/1/00) END

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From Declan's politech list: PRESS ADVISORY

"The Internet, Privacy and the Open Source Movement"

WHAT: Panel discussions at the National Press Club to celebrate the publication of three important new books: Jeffrey Rosen, "The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America"; Robert Ellis Smith, "Ben Franklin's Web Site: Privacy and Curiosity from Plymouth Rock to the Internet"; and Peter Wayner, "Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans."

WHO: The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and distinguished speakers (see program details below).
WHERE: National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, Washington, DC 20045
DATE: Monday, June 5, 2000   TIME: 8:00 - 11:00 a.m.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) will host a two-panel event at the National Press Club to discuss privacy and the open source  movement and to celebrate new publications in these areas.  The panels  feature distinguished authors, technical experts, professors in law and public policy, and public interest advocates.

The Program is as follows.
8:00           Registration
8:45 - 9:00    Welcome: Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director,  EPIC
9:00 - 10:00   Panel I: "From Ben Franklin's Web Site to the Destruction of Privacy in America"
    Moderator: Deborah Hurley, Kennedy School of Government
    Speakers:   Professor Anita Allen Castellito, University of Pennsylvania Law School
    Professor David Flaherty, Former Information and Privacy Commissioner, British Columbia
    Professor Gary Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Professor Jeffrey Rosen, author, "The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America"
    Robert Ellis Smith, author, "Ben Franklin's Web Site"
10:00 - 11:00  Panel II:   "The Free Software Movement"
    Moderator:  Professor James Boyle, American University Law School
    Speakers:   Professor Julie Cohen, Georgetown University Law Center Whitfield Diffie, Distinguished Engineer, SunMicrosystems
Austin Hill, President, Zero Knowledge Systems
Barbara Simons, President, Association for Computing Machinery
Peter Wayner, author, "Free For All: How Linux and the  Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans."
For more details and purchase information on these publications visit  the EPIC Bookstore (www.epic.org/bookstore/)
Contact: Sarah Andrews, EPIC Policy Analyst,  (202) 483 1140, <andrews@epic.org>

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Coalition for Constitutional Liberties (abridged) Weekly Update for 6/1/00 Volume 3, Number 22
Brought to you by the Center for Technology Policy of the Free Congress  Foundation
Lisa S. Dean, Julie McIntire

CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY APPROVES INTERNET TAX MEASURE
Updated 9:58 PM ET May 30, 2000

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - The California Assembly narrowly approved an Internet tax measure Tuesday that could rake in tens of millions of dollars for a state whose economic good times have been largely driven by high-tech.  The bill, which clarifies state law regarding the taxation of Internet purchases, comes as lawmakers across the country are grappling with similar issues regarding online sales.  The proposal must still go through the state Senate and Gov. Gray Davis, whose office has said the Democrat is generally opposed to the idea of Internet taxation.

"This bill is a clarification of existing law, and it's about fairness," said Democrat and Silicon Valley Assemblyman Ted Lempert, whose district includes many of the state's leading high-tech firms.  The proposed legislation would not tax sales from companies that have no bricks and mortar stores or warehouses in the state.  But for firms that do, some sort of tax would apply.  This would affect businesses like book retailers Borders Group Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc., which currently charge online customers no state sales tax in California, according to an analysis of the proposal.

Many high-tech businesses in the nation's most populous state have opposed the bill and it passed the Assembly with only the bare minimum 41 votes. No Republicans voted for the measure and nine Democrats abstained. Republican Keith Olberg said the measure was especially onerous given that California is enjoying a state budget surplus of more than $12 billion. "This bill will be a substantial tax increase on the people of the state of California," Olberg said.

SNIFFING OUT YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS
by John W. Whitehead,  The Ashville, N.C., Tribune

It's happened to everyone.  A traffic police officer pulls you over and approaches your car window, carrying a flashlight.  Shining the light into your eyes, the cop asks for your license and registration.  But these days, that same officer may be carrying a new crime-fighting tool known as "the sniffer."

The sniffer is a small device that attaches to the end of a flashlight and is used to detect the presence of alcohol in a car.  It works by sucking in the air in a vehicle and analyzing it for alcohol fumes.  If it registers the presence of alcohol, the officer then conducts a further investigation to determine the source of the fumes.

According to its makers, the sniffer is being used by thousands of police departments around the country.  This latest weapon in the fight against drunk driving, however, is actually a threat to more than merely intoxicated persons who take the wheel - it's also threatening drivers' constitutional rights.

The producers of the sniffer, PAS systems of Fredericksburg, Virginia, aren't unaware of the threat.  They've even devoted a portion of their website (www.sniffalcohol.com) to dealing with the constitutional issues raised by their product.  Their argument is essentially that the sniffer is no different than an officer using his own nose to detect the presence of alcohol.  PAS contends that citizens don't have an expectation of privacy in the smells around them and  thus have no constitutional basis to challenge the use of the sniffer.

This argument, however, is based on a false premise.  Many different states, for example, have found that police officers' use of a thermal scanner to detect unusual heat emanating from a home is a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.  Analytically, situations in which police use a thermal scanner are no different from  those where they use the sniffer.  In both instances, they are using technology to significantly enhance their physical senses in a way that invades the expectation of privacy that a person has in their home or vehicle.  And in  both instances, officers should be required to obtain a warrant - or, in the vehicle scenario, have a reasonable suspicion that the driver is drunk - before using the devices.

There is also a larger constitutional issue at stake in these situations.  The man who was one of the primary drafters of our Constitution, James Madison, once warned that we should take alarm at the first experiment with our liberties.  While the sniffer may not seem like an egregious civil  rights violation on its own, the implications of its widespread use are far-reaching.  As technology becomes more powerful, and thus more invasive, precedents allowing devices such as the sniffer could be used to justify their use.

Even without this slippery slope argument, there is still something very troubling about giving the government another avenue to invade our daily lives.  Privacy is clearly the most endangered right in modern life.  We are under surveillance almost every minute of our daily lives, whether it's from cameras mounted at traffic intersections, corporate marketers on the other end of our internet connections or even satellites circling the planet hundreds of miles above us.

Each one of these invasions begins incrementally - almost always justified as a way to prevent crime or catch more criminals.  But then one day we wake up, and George Orwell's dystopia of 1984 has become a reality - Big Brother  is monitoring our every move, all because we didn't heed Madison's adviceand take alarm at the first sniffing out of our civil rights.

FLIERS MAY FACE SECRET SEARCHES
NEW TECHNOLOGY EXPECTED TO WEED OUT CRIMINALS
By Jim Krane  May 29, 2000

NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- In the near future, travelers entering or leaving the United States could unknowingly be subject to a stealthy government inspection that can detect minute traces of drug or bomb residue on travel documents.

At McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville, Tenn., security personnel are readying  to test a sophisticated scanning machine that can examine boarding passes of departing passengers for evidence of bomb-making chemicals.  "We can determine if there's an explosive and what type of explosive it  is," said Thomas Chamberlain, who directs the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) development of explosives detection technology.

And at Los Angeles International Airport, U.S. Customs Service inspectors are using an identical document scanner to detect traces of illegal drugs on Customs declaration forms and other travel documents.

Airports may soon see scanners

Although Customs has yet to make an arrest with the help of the scanner, the machine already has proven accurate. In one of several recent incidents, a scan of entry forms presented by two young men arriving from Mexico turned up a strong indication of cocaine, said David Gates, a senior Customs inspector at the airport. "We checked their luggage, but it was negative," Gates said. "But they both admitted to snorting a line of cocaine right before boarding the airplane."

FAA and Customs officials said they are testing the document scanners to learn whether they might be useful in ferreting out would-be terrorists attempting to sneak a bomb aboard a plane, or drug couriers trying to import narcotics. In the FAA's case, successful trials of the scanners could seethem installed in major U.S. airports by October, Chamberlain said.

Researchers believe that when terrorists and drug couriers touch explosives or drug-laden packages, their hands pick up chemical residue. The residuecould then be transferred to travel documents such as passports, Customs forms or boarding passes. Depending on the type of chemical, residue can  remain on hands from a few days to a few weeks. The machines are sensitive enough to detect just a fraction of a fingerprint containing traces of explosive or narcotic, researchers say.

Seven-second scan

In Knoxville, the experimental scanner will be integrated into the airport's main security checkpoint, where passengers and their luggage undergo X-ray scanning. Chamberlain said passengers will be asked to insert their boarding passes into the scanner for the voluntary, seven-second check.

 The document scanners being analyzed by the FAA and Customs were built by Ion Track Instruments (ITI) of Wilmington, Mass., one of a number of  manufacturers of sophisticated particle scanners used by government agencies in the United States and abroad. The scanner is designed to detect electronically charged atoms, or ions, of chemical traces left on travel documents, ITI spokesman Paul Eisenbraun said.  [...]

The new document scanner is much less conspicuous than earlier wand  machines and can be used without passengers realizing their documents are being analyzed.

"The document scanner was developed as a way to screen people unobtrusively, without physically wiping a person down to get a sample," Eisenbraun said.  [...]

Ion-scanning in Canada, Britain, Australia

The FAA's tests come as similar machines are being readied for testing in Britain and Canada. In England, press reports have quoted the nation's top drug-enforcement official as saying the particle scanners should be installed in airports to help locate arriving drug couriers.

Customs officials in Australia and Canada have been using wand-type ion scanners to detect drugs on arriving passengers documents and luggage for a few years, said Mark Elliott of Barringer Instruments Inc., another manufacturer of the machines.

In Canada, customs officers use wand-type ion scanners on passengers at border crossings and airports, said Michael Crichton, chief of intelligence for Canada Customs. Crichton said the scanners are used to detect narcotics headed into Canada.  [...]

Jim Krane is APBnews.com special projects editor (jim.krane@apbnews.com)  For the full article go to:
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2000/05/29/documentscanner0529_01.html

FOURTH AMENDMENT SNEAK ATTACK
RENO'S OUTRAGEOUS SECRET SEARCHES MEASURE.
By Dave Kopel, of the Independence Institute

The Reno Department of Justice is very good at being sneaky. The DOJ's lobbyists are on the verge of successfully sneaking into law a provision which will authorize federal agents to stealthily enter people's homes, search the homes, and not tell anyone.

The Secret Searches measure is so outrageous that it would have no chance of being enacted as a bill on its own, when subjected to public scrutiny and debate. So instead, the DOJ has nestled the Secret Search item deep inside a long bill dealing with methamphetimines. The measure is further disguised with the innocuous title of "Notice Clarification."

Subject to virtually no public discussion, the Secret Searches item has already passed the Senate, hidden inside the methamphetimine giant S.486.  Next week, the House Judiciary Committee will take up H.R. 2987, the House version of the Senate bill, which also contains the buried clause on Secret Searches (section 301). The federal bankruptcy reform bill (which has passed both houses, and is currently in a conference committee) likewise has the hidden Secret Searches language.

If the Secret Searches provision became law, it would apply to all searches conducted by the federal government, not just searches involving methamphetimines or bankruptcy.  When conducting searches, federal agents are currently required to announce their presence before entering, and to provide an inventory of any items they take. Because the person whose home or business is being searched knows about the search, he can exercise his Fourth Amendment rights, and make sure that the police have a properly-issued search warrant. He can also see if the search is being conducted according to the warrant's terms, i.e., the police are searching only for items authorized by the warrant, they are searching the right address, etc.

But under a Secret Searches law, federal police could enter a person's home surreptitiously, conduct a search, and not tell the homeowner until months later.

Even months later, the police would not have to provide an inventory of "intangible" items which were taken in a search. So if the police entered your home secretly, and photocopied your diary or made a copy of your computer hard disk, they would never have to inform you of their actions.

Should the Secret Searches item be deleted from the methamphetimine and bankruptcy bills, it is likely that Clinton will try to sneak the item into a gigantic budget bill, during the Congressional Republicans' annual fall appropriations surrender. Take note: In a previous Congress, Clinton was able to obtain authority for warrantless wiretaps which had been defeated after public debate earlier in the year by hiding the authority in the year's omnibus budget bill.

FILTERS KOWTOWING TO HATE?
by Declan McCullagh,  Wired News, May 27, 2000

Blocking software, long criticized for mislabeling innocuous websites as pornographic, now has a new problem: accusations of double standards.  The most popular filtering programs allow their users to freely visit the websites of arch-conservative groups like Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America, which feature strident denunciations of homosexuality.

But when those identical fulminations against lesbians and gays were duplicated and placed on personal Web pages, Cyberpatrol, Surfwatch, and four other programs quickly added the addresses to their off-limits blacklists.  As a test, anti-filtering activists at Peacefire copied anti-gay excerpts from conservative publications to four websites on Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire, and TheGlobe.

After the links were submitted to the companies, each of the four sites was blocked as "hate speech" or otherwise labeled as verboten.  "I can see why it would be called be called hate speech," said George Jelatis, senior technical architect at Secure Computing, which sells Smartfilter to corporations.  Referring to the second paragraph of Geocities' "Straight Talk on 'Gay Rights'", which is excerpted from a Concerned Women for America publication and says "the truth of the matter is that homosexuality is an immoral behavior that can be changed," Jelatis admitted that "there are people who would consider this (a) speech that would produce a hostile atmosphere in the workplace."

But Jelatis couldn't explain why the original document at Concerned Women for America was readily available to Smartfilter users.  "I'd have to go back and review the polices. But I think what you'd find that we do is that we don't necessarily take controversial sites where we get one request and make a very painful decision without discussing it.  We look at is this coming in multiple times," Jelatis said.  But the Geocities site was never publicized, and only one Peacefire member -- using a pseudonym -- complained to Secure Computing about it.

The other conservative sites excerpted were the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and portions of speeches by radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger.  One reason why some manufacturers of blocking software are hesitant to block powerful conservative groups is financial: They have similar goals and even, occasionally, marketing alliances. NetNanny, for instance, says it has a relationship with Focus on the Family.  Conservative organizations have long lobbied to install the products in public schools and libraries. In one case in Loudoun County, Virginia, a federal judge ordered the public library to remove X-Stop, saying it banned innocuous materials.

Another reason not to block is the strongly negative reaction from blockees:  Nobody likes to be told their publications are "hate speech" and are therefore unsuitable for employees or minors to read.  "Look, I'll say straight out that we do not promote hate.  Anyone these days who speaks out against a homosexual lifestyle is said to be speaking with hate," says Wendy Wright, spokesperson for Concerned Women for America.  "We're a Bible-based organization, based on the life and admonitions of Jesus Christ. Anybody that wants to visit our website will see that we do not promote hate," Wright said.  When told that CWA materials reposted elsewhere were blocked, Wright said she could not respond until she "can look a little more into this."

Bennett Haselton, the young founder of Peacefire, said that his experiment conducted over the last few months shows the companies are inconsistent, or even hypocritical.  "If they don't block the original source site, that proves that they're applying their criteria inconsistently depending on whether the organization has lots of lawyers and fax machines and ability (to create) a high-profile backlash," Haselton said.  "In a case where the blocking company does not block the original site, then we've exposed an inconsistency in their criteria that should get them thrown out of any public institution," he said.

During interviews with blocking software companies, all made a similar point: When weighing whether something is acceptable or not, they consider the tenor of the site. That's not enough to satisfy Haselton, though, who says they're applying double standards.  "They will block the home page of the Klan even though there are probably no objectionable quotes on the front. The David Duke home page doesn't have anything explicitly racist on the front page," said Haselton, who has spent the last three years as an anti-blocking software activist.

Part of the problem in deciding what sites to block or not is that it's necessarily a subjective process, and the vast number of websites sprouting on the Internet every day makes it difficult for one company to sort them into reasonable categories. NetNanny representatives said that they would likely unblock the sites that their marketing coordinator, Amanda Geyer, had ruled in March and April to be off-limits.  "Based on what those words were, it doesn't constitute something that's dangerous to kids. Amanda does not have that authority to make that decision. That was an error," said NetNanny Vice President Nika Herford.  "A judgment call was made and I back up my employee for what we did. We need to make sure our process is a little more streamlined and a little more open," said Herford, who added that the open nature of the NetNanny list allows parents to review sites and delete entries.

Geyer said, however, that her company's process is very precise, and noted that NetNanny's list of off-limits sites is available for parents to peruse.  "We distinguish between opinion sites and hate sites. We really try to make sure it's very, very graphic, violent hate for us to declare it as violent content because we don't want to block anyone's opinion," Geyer said. "We don't block the National Rifle Association, the Christian Coalition, things like that. We don't consider that hate. We consider that opinion.  We're very free-speech oriented," said Geyer.

Why, then, does NetNanny consider the four excerpted sites to be inappropriate for minors?  "The words are clearly words that we include in our list as adult words.  If these words are on the site, it's our job to (deem) that 'adult,'" Geyer said.  The site, quoting CWA, says: "The society has seen fit to withhold its blessing and special protection from other shared behaviors -- murder, theft and fraud, and sexual orientations like necrophilia, bestiality, and pedophilia. When people act out these behaviors, society reacts with revulsion and punishment."

A spokesman for NetNanny later said he could not say if CWA's site would be added to the product's blacklist. Alexandra Salomon, director of content services for SurfWatch, said her company came across a similar problem with sites that excerpted Holocaust-related information for purposes of commentary.  She said Surfwatch's approach is subjective by design, and a decision about whether or not to block a site depends on what the overarching theme is.  "It comes to what is the overall message that's being communicated in the whole of the site," Salomon said.  "We've tried to stay pretty tolerant in terms of organizations that exist in America, quite frankly because it's the whole marketplace of ideas. They're already so public on television and the Internet that blocking it on the Internet (doesn't do much)," she said.

Phil Hill, a spokesman for Websense, which claims over 5 million corporate users, said he would have to investigate why Tripod.com is blocked but Focus on the Family is not.  "I believe these two sites are categorized fairly correctly. The 'family' site does appear to be a very positive site with a religious theme," Websense officials said in an email. "The (Tripod) site's theme seems to be fairly negative about the lifestyle of homosexuality with strongly written quotes explaining the author's feelings.  The hate/racism category fits here, however, after further review, we believe 'activist' is more appropriate."

When asked to explain why Websense treats smaller sites differently from large sites -- even if the content is excerpted -- Hill did not reply.  Filtering software is also notoriously buggy. Mattel, which sells Cyberpatrol, did not respond to a request for comment.  But Cyberpatrol did determine that all four of the conservative-quotation sites were inappropriate for its users.

Mattel also sued two programmers who released a utility that allows customers to view Cyberpatrol's secret blacklist of verboten sites.  The program revealed that Cyberpatrol doesn't just block porn: Student organizations at Carnegie Mellon University and Usenet discussions such as alt.journalism, soc.feminism, and, inexplicably, fj.rec.food, also were restricted.

Nicholas Morehead contributed to this report.

CONCERNS RISE OVER RIGHT TO ANONYMITY ON THE INTERNET:
MIAMI COURT REFUSES TO BALANCE INTERESTS
Dateline: 05/30/2000

Do you use a pseudonym on the Web? Does the anonymity help you feel free to speak your mind? Your identity may not be as safe as you think.  Growing concerns about the disclosure of Internet identities by Web sites and ISP's in response to every subpoena in sight is leading to resistance by privacy groups, such as the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Apparently, however, a Miami court doesn't buy the idea presented by the ACLU, in a state lawsuit, that a plaintiff's interests in suing alleged libelants should be balanced against a general constitutional right to privacy on the Internet.  The court's ruling requiring Yahoo! and America Online to divulge the identity of one or several potential defendants alleged by a private complainant, Fort Lauderdale businessman J. Erik Hvide, to be libelants was reported by the Miami Herald last week (apparently two identities were known to trace to one AOL email address). This particular case involves the alleged libel of a company and its owner by an anonymous poster, or several of them, on Yahoo! and AOL bulletin boards or chat rooms.

The disclosure of hidden identities by Web site operators and ISP's in response to subpoenas has become fairly commonplace in the past couple years. Privacy groups are concerned that these service providers are disclosing identities too often without even notifying the person sought, to give him or her the chance to challenge subpoenas that may be brought without sufficient cause or that should be quashed for other reasons.

For the full article go to: http://law.about.com/newsissues/law/library/weekly/aa053000a.htm

BIG LEAP FORWARD FOR LEGALLY BINDING IDS
By Rutrell Yasin, InternetWeek, May 30, 2000 (10:18 AM)
URL: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000530S0005

First faxes were deemed legal documentation. Now digital certificates are poised to become the legal stamps that secure documents must bear in the e-commerce era. Starting Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission will let U.S. companies submit their filings over the Internet, using public key infrastructure (PKI) technology.

Users of the SEC Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system will be able to digitally sign and securely transmit legally valid filings over the Internet. Currently, filings are transmitted over low-speed modem links. EDGAR automates the collection, validation, acceptance and forwarding of SEC submissions.

The Internet capability will let companies integrate SEC forms with Web applications and take advantage of higher-speed connections. The SEC is using digital certificates to validate the identity of the individual filing the form.  The commission's stamp of approval could spur the use of PKI as a way to streamline operations in a host of other segments, including legal, investment banking and financial services, industry experts said.  "Enabling filers to post filings and correspondence through the Internet is a significant move for the SEC," said Roy Van Brunt, a director at Ten-Eyck Associates, a litigation and investigative accounting firm. Van Brunt, an original EDGAR staff member, said the SEC doesn't advocate anything that isn't a proven technology.

Companies are "leveraging technology to put trust into the electronic version of the business. We'll see that more and more," said Burton Group analyst Phil Schacter.  Schacter and EDGAR program manager Rick Heroux predicted the SEC's imprimatur will encourage businesses and other government agencies to adopt PKI.

For its part, the SEC is integrating VeriSign's (stock: VRSN) managed digital certificates and certificate payment services with the EDGAR system, Heroux said.  Through the new service, a user can click on a secure icon on the EDGAR Web page (http://www.edgar-online.com), enter a password and download the necessary documents desired. In tandem, EDGAR notifies VeriSign to send a digital certificate to validate the user. After the user completes the form, he or she re-submits it with the filing data using the same digital certificate, which is valid for future filings.

Initially, the SEC doesn't plan to force everyone to use the Internet for filing financial documents, offering users the choice to access the system via passwords or the modem dial-up.> More from InternetWeek

GREECE SAYS NAZI FIRST PUT FAITH-DESIGNATION ON ID CARDS

ATHENS, May 29 (AFP) - Greece has officially acknowledged for the first time that the practice of designation religion on its national identity cards, a practice which is soon to be phased out, was first introduced by the Nazis. "It is an historic point which has been written about several times," said government spokesman Dimitris Reppas, breaking an official silence over articles by a series of recent articles by several historians.

The historians wrote that the mention of faith began under the German occupation of Greece between 1941 and 1944.  On Wednesday Prime Minister Costas Simitis officially endorsed a May 15 decision by the state Authority for the Protection of Personal Information to act on a 1997 law and remove any mention of religion from identity cards.  The government will also drop details of the holder's profession, spouse's name and fingerprints in the move.

The changes over religion have infuriated the Greek Orthodox Church, which called Sunday for a "merciless battle" against the decision.  Church leaders have mounted a high-profile media campaign, threatening a wave of demonstrations and social unrest.  The head of the Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, said in a sermon Monday that the abolition of the mention of faith was "a coup d'Etat."

Christodoulos, who is archbishop of Athens, has regularly denounced the move, in his sermons and on radio broadcasts, as "a wild war" formented by intellectuals and foreign countries against the church.  He claims the aim is to deprive Greeks of their identity and national pride and has called for a referendum on the issue "to see at last what the people want".

Nikos Alevizatos, a professor of constitutional law at Athens University, upped the ante in the latest newspaper article on the issue, in Monday's edition of the pro-government daily Ta Nea.  He reproduced his parents' identity cards to prove that the Nazis had introduced the practice as a way of distinguishing Jews from Christians.  More than 70,000 Greek jews, out of a total number of 80,000, were murdered by the Nazi's.  Church and state are not separated in Greece, where 97 percent of believers are Orthodox and where the constitution stipulates the Orthodox religion is dominant.

In 1993, urged by the European parliament to remove all mention of religion, and encouraged by the country's minority Jews, Catholics and Protestants, the then conservative governement proposed that the mention of faith be made voluntary.  But stiff opposition from the church succeeded in having the proposition thrown out.

CANADA PLEDGES TO DELETE "BIG BROTHER" FILES
Updated 2:03 PM ET May 29, 2000

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government, responding to a public outcry that it was acting like Big Brother, said Monday it was dismantling a vast database containing up to 2,000 pieces of information on each citizen.  Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart announced the about-face after being hammered by members of Parliament, Privacy Commissioner Bruce Phillips, private citizens and the media.

"Given public concerns about privacy issues in this era of advanced and constantly changing technology, I have chosen an approach that addresses future threats to privacy," Stewart said in a statement.  Phillips raised his concerns two weeks ago in an annual report that said Stewart's department had quietly received from other departments existing files detailing Canadians' tax, health and other records and combined them with its own jobs and welfare data.

Stewart said her staff had now returned information to the federal tax authorities, had eliminated the computer program that linked the various databases and would ensure that all databases remain separate files.
 

UPDATE 1 - CANADA PLEDGES TO DISMANTLE "BIG BROTHER" FILES
Updated 3:19 PM ET May 29, 2000
By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian government said Monday it was dismantling a vast database containing detailed information on nearly every citizen amid accusations that it was acting like George Orwell's Big Brother.  Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart announced the about-turn after facing sharp criticism from members of Parliament, Privacy Commissioner Bruce Phillips, citizens and the media.

"Given public concerns about privacy issues in this era of advanced and constantly changing technology, I have chosen an approach that addresses future threats to privacy," Stewart said in a statement.  Phillips raised his concerns two weeks ago in an annual report that said.  Stewart's department had collected files from the federal tax agency and from most provinces and linked them with its own data for research purposes.

The files -- which included data on taxes, jobs, health, immigration and welfare payments -- covered 33.7 million people.  There are only some 30 million citizens in Canada today so one of Phillips' concerns had been the lack of provisions to purge old data.  Stewart said her staff had now returned information to the federal tax agency, had eliminated the computer program that linked the various databases and would ensure that all databases remain separate.  "We accept and support these measures.  They satisfy all the recommendations and observations that were outlined in my 1999-2000 Annual Report," Phillips said in a May 27 letter released by Stewart on Monday.

A truck carted the tax computer files back to the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency on Monday morning, and a member of Phillips' staff watched the deletion of the program linking the databases, Stewart spokeswoman Brigitte Nolet told Reuters.  The department now faces the difficult job of convincing Canadians that it had not made any backup files -- even for the benign purpose of ensuring against computer crashes.

But Nolet said every backup file and derivative file or program had been or was being deleted or returned.  "Why does it take constant hounding from Canadians before this minister does the right thing?" the leader of the official opposition, the Canadian Alliance's Deborah Grey, said in Parliament Monday. "Why was her database essential last week but it's a security risk this week?"

Encouraged by the media, at least 18,000 Canadians have submitted requests in the past two weeks demanding to see their files.  "Access requests certainly confirm that this is the right decision, confirm that Canadians are concerned about the comprehensiveness of the database," Nolet said.

The department started its "Longitudinal Labor Force File" back in 1985 and steadily expanded it with new sources of data.  "Successive privacy commissioners have assured Canadians that there was no single federal government file, or profile about them. We were wrong --  or not right enough," Phillips said in his May 16 report.

BRITAIN JOINS INTELLIGENCE-SHARING SYSTEM TO CATCH CRIMINALS
By Stephen Castle in Brussels, 30 May 2000

Britain opted into a wave of Europe-wide co-operation yesterday, joining an intelligence-sharing network to combat crime and agreeing measures to help get evidence from authorities in one EU country to courts in another.  The decision to opt into the Schengen Information System, finally agreed yesterday after a lengthy diplomatic dispute with Spain over Gibraltar, will give British police access to a powerful crime-fighting system.

That will now play an important part in a government strategy of combating international organised crime by cooperating more closely with other EU member states.  Even if the political symbolism of maintaining passport checks at British ports and airports remains too much to sacrifice, Britain's fight against crime and its attempt to control bogus asylum applications is becoming increasingly integrated into that of the continent.  This internationalisation of the fight against crime and illegal immigration mirrors the growing sophistication of the cross-border gangs.

So far-reaching is the Schengen intelligence database, housed in a computer in Strasbourg, that already, on any one day, 8.8 million pieces of information will be circulating through the system, records relating either to an individual or to a specific crime.  This extensive web of documentation can be accessed from 44,700 points by police or other law enforcement officers through the continent, and the categories of information covered are broad. Items which appear on the Schengen Information System relate to missing persons, stolen vehicles, firearms or documents that have been stolen or lost, or persons wanted for extradition.

Although Schengen countries have arrangements for "hot pursuit" allowing police to cross borders in some countries, these will not yet apply to Britain because of the lack of a land frontier with other states, apart from Ireland.  An agreement on the Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance, signed yesterday, simplifies procedures under which UK courts can deal with criminals in the EU, in some circumstances allowing greater use of video links in trials.  Evidence requested from abroad will have to be presented in a form acceptable to the country making the prosecution.

Schengen is at the heart of European co-operation, and five years after it came into force Schengen covers citizens of Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Austria, Italy and Spain.  Faced with the internationalisation of crime, Schengen is to be joined by a group of Nordic countries, possibly by the end of the year.  In Brussels yesterday, Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, insisted that there is no question of the UK doing likewise and joining the full system, thereby relinquishing passport controls.

That means London will remain outside one element of the information system, the part that refers to immigration, asylum and visas. As a result Britain could find itself in the embarrassing position of admitting asylum-seekers already listed by other EU countries as unsuitable for entry.

The European Commission believes such a position will, eventually be unsustainable, as the link becomes clearer between organised crime and the gangs which bring in bogus asylum seekers. It thinks in the medium term, the UK may sign up in full. The UK is already a full member of the fledgling European police force Europol and is committed to joining the Eurodac initiative under which the fingerprints of every person who applies for asylum are collected in a shared data base.  Work on a Europe-wide DNA anti-crime database is less far advanced but the initiative is expected to include the UK when it comes into play.

The Government is also pressing hard for progress on mutual recognition of judicial decisions through the EU, and on a Europe-wide task force for police chiefs.  The detail behind this has raised concerns among civil liberties groups, one of which is concerned that, while the convention on mutual legal assistance has been billed as a mechanism to tackle large-scale crime, its terms, in fact, apply to any offence. Tony Bunyan, editor of Statewatch magazine which monitors civil liberties, said: "There is a lack of accountability. For example, you should have proper data protection provision and a complaints procedure for people who find themselves on lists, as well as scrutiny by the European Parliament.

"You need to counter-balance these measures. It does the police no favours to give them unregulated powers." Whether the Government listens to those who make the case for more safeguards, a strategy of looking increasingly to Europe to combat crime is firmly in place.  Mr Straw said this is one area where the Government believes there are "clear benefits to engaging with our European partners", and has no compunction in saying it.

JOIN THE COALITION FOR CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTIES
The Coalition for Constitutional Liberties is looking for organizations throughout the country to network together for the preservation of our liberties against the attacks by government agencies and institutions.  The coalition has been designed to help keep grassroots organizations aware of legislation and regulatory action concerning privacy and technology issues, and to provide materials on those topics for distribution to member organizations that can then be forwarded to their constituents and members.  This e-mail Weekly Update is the main tool for communication, as well as our Legislative Reports, Issue Briefs, and our topical series, The Privacy Papers.

If your organization would like to become a member of the Coalition, the membership form can be found at:
http://freecongress.org/centers/technology/ccl  If you want to fax the membership form to us, please fax it to (202) 544-2819.  If you would like to speak with someone to find out more about the Coalition and its activities please contact Julie McIntire our Coalition Coordinator at jmcintire@freecongress.org or she can be reached by phone at (202) 546-3000 ext. 332.  We thank you for your interest in our organization and look forward to hearing from you.