Danish Law Enforcement Would Like To Outlaw Anonymous Use Of The Internet

Danish Law Enforcement Would Like To Outlaw Anonymous Use Of The Internet: "The Danish Ministry of Justice has put forth a proposal that would effectively make it much more difficult for anyone to use the internet anonymously. Specifically, if adopted, the plan would require that anyone offering open internet access to users would first have to confirm each user's identity, and then (of course!) record all sorts of info such as IP addresses, browser histories and records of who the user interacted with. That data then gets sent to the government... 'to combat terrorism.' Of course, what this means is that there's almost no way to be anonymous online. While it may be true that anonymity can (and at times, is) abused, it's going really far to suggest that there shouldn't be any anonymity. And giving the government that much info just screams out for it to be abused. We're definitely seeing more proposals like this... and, amusingly, any time we mention them, it seems that the 'anonymous' commenters here are the ones who insist that such policies make sense...

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Arrests in Advance of Rally for Electoral Reforms in Malaysia Raise Deep Concerns

Arrests in Advance of Rally for Electoral Reforms in Malaysia Raise Deep Concerns: "The wave of arrests and ongoing intimidation of activists by the Malaysian government in advance of a July 9 rally for clean and fair elections is a blatant attempt by authorities to prevent citizens from exercising their right to peaceful public assembly and free expression and is a clear illustration of the immediate need for democratic reform in Malaysia."

Finnish Court Orders ISP To Kick Accused File Sharers Off The Internet

Finnish Court Orders ISP To Kick Accused File Sharers Off The Internet: "Despite a recent UN report that condemns the idea of kicking people off the internet as a civil rights violation, a court in Finland has agreed with a request by the record labels to kick three accused files sharers off the internet with no notice at all. This isn't three strikes. It's basically one-strike. Record labels accuse... court tells ISP to kick them off. I'm so sure that'll make people start buying music again.

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Why EFF Supports CSISAC's Decision Not to Endorse the OECD Communique on Internet Policy-Making Principles

Why EFF Supports CSISAC's Decision Not to Endorse the OECD Communique on Internet Policy-Making Principles: "

Yesterday we reported that EFF and the other civil society members of the Civil Society Information Society Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (CSISAC) had declined to endorse a draft Communique on Internet policy-making principles produced by the OECD. Since then, the OECD and key government representatives reopened negotiations with civil society, business and the technical industry stakeholders, in an effort to find mutually acceptable text to accommodate our concerns. Unfortunately that was not successful, and EFF and other members of the OECD’s Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council have declined to endorse the full and final version of the Communiqué released on 29 June.

EFF and CSISAC are committed to continuing to participate in the OECD’s multistakeholder policy development process. EFF has been actively involved in providing input into OECD’s policy work through CSISAC for the last two years. We believe that OECD is a vital place for civil society to work and appreciate the genuine commitment of all involved in creating the Communique to engage with civil society and listen to our perspectives and concerns. EFF was involved in CSISAC’s negotiation efforts over the last few weeks to find mutually acceptable text for the Communique’s principles. We, along with all the other parties involved, participated in these discussions in good faith. Given that, EFF’s decision not to endorse the final principles was not taken lightly.

We agree with much that is in the Communique. We support policies for fostering the open Internet, individual empowerment, evidence-based policy-making, and the commitment to multistakeholder policy development. However, we are troubled by the detailed framing of many of the principles, which are not compatible with several core CSISAC values, including respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms and the rule of law, and promotion of access to knowledge.

In our view, the Communiqué over-emphasizes protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights at the expense of fundamental rights and freedoms. At the same time, it fails to acknowledge the importance of balanced IP regimes –- including robust limitations like fair use -- to spur innovation. For EFF, the key concern was that the Communiqué could allow governments to use Internet intermediaries to police their networks and platforms for potential intellectual property infringement, which would impede citizens’ access to information and freedom of expression.

The Communiqué envisages that Internet intermediaries will take voluntary measures to address and deter intellectual property infringement. These could include filtering or blocking of web content, or disconnection of Internet users upon a repeat allegation of copyright infringement under a Three Strikes or Graduated Response policy. The Communiqué provides: 'Sound Internet policy should encompass norms of responsibility that enable private sector voluntary co-operation for the protection of intellectual property. Appropriate measures include lawful steps to address and deter infringement, and accord full respect to user and stakeholder rights and fair process.' Why would they do this? In order to limit their liability. While the Communique recognizes the need for limitations on Internet intermediary liability, that could be read as being conditioned on intermediaries taking particular actions. The Communique provides: 'Limitations play an important role in promoting innovation and creativity, the free flow of information, and in providing the incentives for co-operation between stakeholders. Within this context governments may choose to convene stakeholders in a transparent, multi-stakeholder process to identify the appropriate circumstances under which Internet intermediaries could take steps to educate users, assist rights holders in enforcing their rights or reduce illegal content, while minimising burdens on intermediaries and ensuring legal certainty for them, respecting fair process, and more generally employing the principles identified in this document.'

Various references throughout the text to 'access to lawful content' would also require Internet intermediaries to make determinations about the lawfulness of online content, even though Internet intermediaries are neither competent to do this, nor the appropriate party to do so. Taken together, this could be read as a subtle effort to reopen or at least re-interpret one of the foundational principles that has allowed the Internet to flourish -- limitations on liability of Internet intermediaries who are 'mere conduits' in facilitating Internet communications. This would be at odds with the protection against unbounded liability currently afforded to “mere conduit” Internet intermediaries in US and EU law.

And perhaps most troubling of all, this is taking place in a high-level intergovernmentally-agreed document at a time when there is vigorous ongoing debate in international, regional, and national fora about the appropriate role and responsibilities of Internet intermediaries and the scope of protection against liability afforded to intermediaries in various countries’ laws.

“Because of the impact that Internet intermediaries can have over their users’ freedom of expression online, how countries approach these issues really will determine the future of the single global Internet” noted EFF International IP Director Gwen Hinze. “Any changes to the conditions governing limitations on Internet intermediary liability will have a significant and detrimental impact on Internet users’ ability to seek, receive and impart information, and could harm the Internet’s end-to-end architecture.”

The international context in which this is all taking place is also significant. In his recent landmark report, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion online recommended that censorship measures such as blocking or filtering content should never be delegated to private entities - and that no one should be held liable for content on the Internet which they did not author.

'At the international level, we are watching a lack of policy coherence among countries who are endorsing contradictory Internet governance principles in different international venues including at the Council of Europe, the OECD, the recent G8, and as proposed by European Commissioner Neelie Kroes recently.” says EFF International Rights Director Katitza Rodriguez. “Any principles adopted should ensure the protection of international human rights standards that seek to protect freedom of expression and association on the Internet, as well as the rule of law – rather than supporting overbroad copyright enforcement measures that violate international human rights standards.”

CSISAC’s press release on the 29 June version of the Communique is here. and a complete account of CSISAC’s concerns with the Communiqué is here.

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The Misconceptions Of 'Free' Abound; Why Do Brains Stop At The Zero?

The Misconceptions Of 'Free' Abound; Why Do Brains Stop At The Zero?: "Jim Harper points us to a blog post by a guy named Richard Muscat, supposedly debunking the problems of 'free' as it comes to business models. Frankly his post is pretty weak. It rehashes a bunch of arguments that have been debunked plenty of times before, but since we keep seeing these arguments made, I figured I'd use Muscat's piece to explore why it is that those who don't understand the concept of free are condemned to make such bad arguments against it.



The key problem, it seems, is that people who dislike the concept of free have this weird issue where they stop thinking once the big zero enters the equation. In the past, I've pointed out that it seems like some brains have a divide by zero error problem, where, once they see free as a part of the business model, they stop paying attention to the rest of the business model and just focus on the free part. But here's the thing, no one is claiming that 'free' is the business model. People who discuss the value of free have always been talking about how you use it as a part of the business model. So arguing that 'free' is not a business model is a strawman. No one is claiming that free, by itself, is a business model because that makes no sense. But Muscat takes things even further, by claiming that it's so bad that it's 'harmful':

My contention is that “Free” as described and used in many contemporary web-based businesses is a non-business model that is not only broken, but actively harmful to entrepreneurship. Free rarely works, and all the times that it doesn’t, it undermines entrepreneurial creativity, destroys market value, delivers an inferior user experience and pumps hot air into financial bubbles.

Don't hold back.

Free does not push you to create something evocative that users and customers are willing to commit to in the long term.



Free absconds on the entrepreneur-customer commitment: by asking for nothing you also promise nothing. Both parties can walk away because there is no relationship. On the other hand by asking for money (or some other form of commitment), however large or small an amount, you create a self-imposed drive to produce creative and valuable products because not doing so would mean letting somebody down.

Because no one has committed to Google long-term. And before that no one committed to radio. Or broadcast TV. Huh? Having a product that is 'free to the consumer' does not mean people won't commit to it at all. In fact, if you put together a smart business model, it could be the exact opposite. All of the examples here involve cases where companies use free to bring in people and then sell that attention to advertisers. In those cases, they very much have the incentive to create something that makes people commit, or they don't have the attention to sell. It's only if you stop at the zero and don't follow through that you could possibly claim that business models that use free don't get customers to commit.

As the title suggests, the book argues that software pricing shouldn’t be decided randomly. There are three big reasons for not doing this: first, you might be missing out on revenue; second, your product price says something about the quality and intended audience of your product; third, your price also sets an expectation of how much effort has gone into production and how much value a customer should expect.

Not sure what that has to do with anything. I don't think anyone is suggesting that people randomly choose free as a price either. In fact, we've been quite careful to explain that the whole point of understanding the economics of free is so that you can understand when it's appropriate to use free and when it's not. That many startups don't understand when it's appropriate to use free is not a condemnation of free as a price. It's a condemnation of people not understanding the larger economics and how to put together a good business model.

Choosing Free as your product price runs the risk of attracting entirely the wrong audience for your product or service.

Sure. But that's only an issue if you fail to plan out the rest of your business model. The implicit assumption that Muscat makes here, which is incorrect, is that the whole point of free is to attract an audience which might buy.

Although you may get tens of thousands of users, it is probable that those users are unlikely to ever consider paying you because by definition you have attracted people who are looking for free stuff. Reversing this decision later can be extremely painful: you will piss off your existing user base, potentially generating very negative publicity and you might need to start from scratch in terms of looking for the right audience.

Right, but that's not a criticism of 'free,' that's a criticism of a bad business model built around the idea that free is just a trick to get people to upgrade. If that's your business model, then he's right that it could be a bad business model (though some companies, such as Evernote, have found that it works for them). But that's not a problem with 'free.' That's a problem with the rest of the business model.

At some point or another you will realise that you do need to create a revenue stream. If you end up in the situation I just described above, i.e. encumbered with an audience of people unwilling to pay for what you’re providing, you will be faced with a dilemma: start over and risk the bad press or try to squeeze some pennies out of a reluctant user base.

Again we see the divide by zero issue, in which he implicitly assumes that free is implemented in place of a complete business model. That's not the fault of 'free.' That's the fault of a bad business model.

The latter is a slippery slidey slope that leads towards intrusive in-app advertising, pop-ups, link-baiting, shady affiliate marketing, email spam and a total lack of focus on user experience.

Indeed. Those would be bad decisions built on a bad business model. I'm not sure what that has to do with 'free' however.

The idea that things can be free is behind a lot of financial bubbles. In the late nineties we thought that we could get distribution and infrastructure for free and we got the dot com bubble. A couple of years ago we thought we could get loans and bank credit for free and we got the property bubble. In both cases we left something very important out of the equation: delivery costs in the former and ability to repay mortgages in the latter.

That's an interesting and totally incorrect bit of historical revisionism. First, the dot-com bubble was a result of investors (and many dot-coms, themselves) having no real understanding of web-based business models. Early dot-com successes (some real, some imaginary) created a rush of investors eager to throw money at any company offering something on the web -- without ever looking at whether they even had a business model. And I've never seen a loan or credit -- or internet infrastructure, for that matter -- that was 'free.' Were there some companies that went to extremes during both bubbles? Yes. But there was no direct connection to 'free.'

If you’re putting together a business plan or a slide deck that claims there will be an initial period of “short-term loss” while you establish a user base which you will then monetise, just remember that that is exactly what most of the pre-2000 dot com business plans were like.

And, um, it was also the basic business plan of all sorts of successful businesses going back through history. It was clearly the plan of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, for example. So what? If you have a smart business model behind it, it can work. If you don't, it will fail. Claiming that it is inherently flawed is wrong. Also, it's the very basis of pretty much the entire venture capital industry. The whole reason why startups need venture capital is to fund that initial period in which there are short-term losses. It's called investing in growth. Intel had to build fabs. Apple had to build computers. Those involved 'short-term losses' to build the product. That's how these things generally work.

Almost never. Somebody always pays. If healthcare is free, your taxes pay for it. If the flight is free, the extras aren’t. If the search is free, the advertiser is paying.

Um. That's the whole point of using free as a part of a business model. Of course someone pays. That's what we're describing here. It seems totally ridiculous to go on for paragraph after paragraph discussing how free is awful because no one pays... and then, at the very end, to throw in a 'but someone pays!' Why didn't he consider those points earlier in the article?

The only time when Free can really work for you is if you set your sights on having a specific outcome: acquisition.

Yeah, just like Google. And Facebook. And Twitter. Good grief.



Look, if you understand the economics behind digital goods, you can quickly learn that there are places where free makes sense. It makes sense when, if you don't go free, your competitors will and you'll lose all of your business. But no one has ever suggested that free, by itself, is a business model and if your debunking of 'free' is based on that, it just means you've stopped your analysis too soon. Free is an important part of many, many, many business models these days and that's been true for many years as well. Free isn't bad. It can be used badly, but to condemn it, based on that alone, suggests someone hasn't thought things through.

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Terrific Speech by FCC’s Rob McDowell on “Technology & the Sovereignty of the Individual”

Terrific Speech by FCC’s Rob McDowell on “Technology & the Sovereignty of the Individual”: "

FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell delivered a terrific speech this week on “Technology and the Sovereignty of the Individual” at a broadband conference in Stockholm, Sweden. The speech serves as another reminder that McDowell is one of those ultimate rare birds: a regulator who is a first-rate intellectual thinker and a great champion of individual liberty. It’s a beautiful statement in defense of real Internet freedom. I can’t recall ever seeing another federal official cite the great Bruno Leoni in a speech!

Here’s a sample of what Commissioner McDowell had to say:

To propel freedom’s momentum, policy makers should remember that, since their inception, the Internet and mobile connectivity have migrated further away from government control. As the result of longstanding international consensus, the Internet itself has become the greatest deregulatory success story of all time. To continue to promote freedom and prosperity, regulators should continue to rely on the “bottom up” nongovernmental Internet governance bodies that have a perfect record of keeping the ’Net working and open. We must heed the advice of leaders like Neelie Kroes, who has consistently called on regulators to “avoid over-hasty regulatory intervention,” and steer clear of “unnecessary measures which may hinder new efficient business models from emerging.” I couldn’t agree more. Changing course now could not only trigger an avalanche of international regulation, but it could halt the progress of freedom’s march as well.

With these pragmatic principles in mind, freedom-loving governments everywhere should resist the temptation to regulate in the absence of pervasive market failure. Needless government intrusion into the Internet’s affairs provides nefarious authoritarian regimes with the political cover they desire to justify their interference with the ’Net. To prevent an escalation of international regulation, we should encourage the kind of positive and constructive chaos that only unfettered competition can produce. We should adopt spectrum policies that promote flexible uses, spectrum allocation through fair auction processes and, when appropriate, unlicensed use of the airwaves to spur innovation and adoption. Fueling freedom in this way will turn the world upside down for the better.

Preach it, brother! Read the whole thing.

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What happens when students create their own collaboration tools?

What happens when students create their own collaboration tools?: "

I teach technology and innovation to working professional MBA students who are changing courses and teams every ten weeks. Collaboration tools are critical to our effectiveness. Over the last two years, my courses have served as testing grounds for two locally-grown, student-designed tools: Acceledge and Piazza. These tools, as well as other student-built offerings, such as Coursekit, are the result of a growing student frustration with “old-school” collaboration.

My students come to class straight from their jobs at a variety Silicon Valley firms large and small. They are required to do team projects, and much of the team work is virtual. They tell me they have the following requirements for collaboration tools:

• Privacy. While they are interested in sharing examples from work, they don’t want these examples available publicly.


• Threaded/searchable Q&A with the answers coming from both students and faculty.


• Ability to share relevant links and files for commentary. Basically Facebook for the classroom.


• A simple, clear calendar with readings and due dates available at a glance (in other words, project management tools).

And there’s also my additional requirement: On-line quizzes with a gradebook that supports the U.S. regulations for educational privacy.

While all faculty at my university have access to Angel (a Blackboard course management system), in my classes, I’m happy to beta-test student-built tools, and I find especially interesting the simplicity offered by these solutions. An effective collaboration application is not about how many features the tool has — it’s about getting the task done.

Acceledge

This term I used Acceledge, founded by one of my students, as my main course management tool instead of Angel. It’s a custom-built tool, based on the open-source Moodle learning platform. Its simplicity is what drew me to say “yes” to the trial. Because of the customizations added on top of the Moodle base, the students only saw the features they told me they needed — there was no wiki, and no deep detail around each topic.

Piazza

Pooja Nath, Founder and CEO of Piazza, was still an MBA student at Stanford when she approached me two years ago about trying her Q&A tool. From the Piazza site:

I started Piazza so every student can have that opportunity to learn from her classmates. Whether she’s too shy to ask, whether she’s working alone in her dorm room, or whether her few friends in her class don’t know the answer either.

I want Piazza to be a remedy for students who are not given the intellectual space, freedom, or support to fulfill their educational potential and desire for learning. And I want Piazza to empower instructors to have a positive, personal impact on more students.

Piazza is designed to connect students, TAs, and professors so every student can get help when she needs it — even at 2AM.

Again, the simplicity and student-focus is what made me say “yes” to the trial. The only repeat complaint I’ve had from students is about the quality of some the questions posted by their classmates and the fact that Piazza is not an integral part of the overall course management tool. Both my students and I find huge benefit in the control they have over when and how they see questions.

Coursekit

The University of Pennsylvania is apparently feeling the same push by students to take control of their collaboration space. Coursekit is the result of frustration on the part of Wharton undergraduate Joseph Cohen (cofounder & CEO). From the Coursekit site:

We started Coursekit out of frustration with existing school software.

We’ve re-imagined what a class should look like online. We give instructors and students amazingly designed tools to manage their courses — gradebook, calendaring, file management — and we make it unbelievably easy to interact with one another.

We believe that there’s a lot more to class than lecture. Post links, videos, files. Start discussions. Write a blog post. Ask about an assignment. Classes are meant to be social, but they rarely are. We’re changing that.

There is much to be learned from the priorities of students with multiple courses (projects) functioning in self-managing teams. They aren’t looking for bells and whistles; they are looking to simplify and be effective. We can all learn from these students’ experiences and perspectives: Translate academic team project to basic team work, gradebook to performance appraisal, and you have a web working environment with needs similar to those of most organizations.

Take the students’ perspective for the moment — frankly, we are all students in this quickly-changing environment — how could simplification enhance your projects? What is the minimum viable product for your setting?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Harry Wood

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• Social Media in the Enterprise
• From car to cloud: the future of the in-vehicle app landscape

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OECD Supports Making ISPs Copyright Cops

OECD Supports Making ISPs Copyright Cops: "On the whole, the OECD has been pretty good about recognizing both the importance of freedom and openness of communications online and how certain industries have sought to use questionable claims and stats to push for protectionism. So, earlier this week, when the OECD put together a statement on 'principles for internet policy-making,' people hoped that it would follow along with the UN in focusing on protecting civil rights of individuals... not protecting outdated business models of certain companies.



And yet... it quickly came out that the OECD was considering dangerous language in the principles, seeking to cut back on important safe harbors to protect against misguided third party liability. When the draft language came out, nearly all of the 'civil society' (i.e., consumer rights) groups that were a part of the discussion stated publicly that they could not endorse the language.



Tragically, the final document (pdf) did, in fact, keep the dangerous language.



To be sure, there are plenty of good things in the principles -- and even many of the 'titles' for the principles sound reasonable. For example, among the principles are things like:

• Promote and protect the global free flow of information


• Promote the open, distributed and interconnected nature of the Internet


• Promote investment and competition in high speed networks and services


• Promote and Enable the Cross-Border Delivery of Services


• Develop capacities to bring publicly available, reliable data into the policy-making process


• Ensure transparency, fair process, and accountability


• Strengthen consistency and effectiveness in privacy protection at a global level


• Maximise individual empowerment


• Promote Creativity and Innovation

It's tough to argue with most of those. But the devil is in the details. As KEI points out:

The Internet has actually demonstrated how much creativity is fostered without intellectual property, in fact despite IPR. Intellectual property is not a 'driving' tool of the Internet. The Internet was NOT created by patents or copyright or trademark. Why would intellectual property be such a central theme for such a document? We concede that the Internet must not be a lawless 'place' but this document where words such as 'fair use, limitation and exception for users (it is 'fixed' for the ISPs?), open source, free software, public domain, etc never appear, is wrong in tone and in its focus.

For example, just take a look at the very first item on the list: 'Promote and protect the global free flow of information.' Sounds good. But nearly half of the paragraph to back that up isn't about the global free flow of information, but about making sure there are ways to block the free flow of information:

While promoting the free flow of information, it is also essential for governments to work towards better protection of personal data, children online, consumers, intellectual property rights, and to address cybersecurity. In promoting the free flow of information governments should also respect fundamental rights.

Of course, countries that are blatantly censoring the internet, from China to Australia all claim that they're working towards 'better protection of children online' etc. Such a statement basically undermines the entire point of the principle. The document goes on in this nature, inserting 'intellectual property' in all sorts of places it doesn't belong. Perhaps most troubling is that there's a section officially on limiting third party liability, which has a whopper in the middle. Basically it talks up the importance of limiting liability to service providers to encourage innovation... and then puts a huge 'but not in the case of IP' in there:

Within this context governments may choose to... identify the appropriate circumstances under which Internet intermediaries could take steps to educate users, assist rights holders in enforcing their rights or reduce illegal content....

In other words, this document is a joke, which is why civil society deserted it. It seems clear that it presents some nice principles upfront, but then undermines them in the fine print.

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If The Gov't Wants To Stop Hactivists, It Should Look At Its Policy Choices First

If The Gov't Wants To Stop Hactivists, It Should Look At Its Policy Choices First: "As law enforcement continue to try to chase down every lead to figure out who was behind LulzSec, a bit of wisdom from Loz Kaye in the UK. He notes that efforts like LulzSec, Wikileaks, Anonymous and others are being driven by bad government policies, in which governments look to clamp down on free speech and shut down technologies they don't understand, just because some people might use them for things the government doesn't like. The end effect is actually driving more people to demonstrate just what the technology can be used for in protest.

LulzSec wasn't an isolated or unique phenomenon. People with passionate beliefs have been using new technological tools to effect change out of a sense of powerlessness. In the last year, I've watched 38 Degrees using the strength of association online to change government policy, WikiLeaks force transparency on those who'd rather run from it, even the amorphous mass that is Anonymous taking a stand on whatever issue they feel deserves their attention.

These tools are now themselves under attack. Lord Mandelson's last gift to us, the Digital Economy Act, is just one of a raft of 'three strikes laws' worldwide that threaten to cut off households from the web. Buried in the coalition's Prevent strategy is the assertion that 'internet filtering across the public estate is essential'. Nor is it solely a British issue; Nicolas Sarkozy called for global online governance at the eG8 in his attempt to civilise the 'wild west' of the web.

I don't think very many people in the government recognize this simple fact. They continue to treat these web-native movements as if they can be dealt with in the same manner as criminal operations. They may arrest a few people here or there, but that's not going to have the desired impact. If anything, it's only going to drive even more people to join the fray.

We've reached a critical juncture: either we sail headlong into escalating confrontation, or we attempt to change tack and reduce the tension by finding a democratic way forward, one that preserves our right to free association. From anonymous bloggers in Iran, to those using Twitter and Facebook in Tahrir Square and even teenagers in the bedrooms of Essex, there is a common thread. A feeling of persecution and dismay that our freedoms are being suppressed.

Of course, I can't see any government today smart enough to recognize this. It seems that they're going to continue down this path that they've chosen, and then act surprised when it fails to have much of an impact, other than to escalate the problems.

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Microsoft patent points to Skype snooping

Microsoft patent points to Skype snooping: "

Just what the government ordered

A new Microsoft patent points towards Skype becoming equipped for lawful interception, which could be important as the service grows up to challenge traditional telcos.…

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Survey Shows Support For New Privacy Laws

Survey Shows Support For New Privacy Laws: "GovTechGuy writes 'Two-thirds of consumers want the government to safeguard their privacy online and 81 percent want to add their names to a Do Not Track list, according to a May poll released Tuesday by Consumers Union. In addition, over 80 percent of respondents were concerned that companies may be sharing their personal information with third parties without their permission. The survey's release comes just one day before a Senate Commerce Committee hearing where lawmakers will hear testimony on three data privacy bills currently in front of the Senate.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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