Category: News

Two reports to Congress obtained by the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the FBI didn’t use Carnivore, or its rebranded version “DCS-1000,” at all during the 2002 and 2003 fiscal years. Instead, the bureau turned to unnamed commercially-available products to conduct Internet surveillance thirteen times in criminal investigations in that period.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10307

All that is necessary is the permission of the business that owns the computer, the appeals court said in a 3-0 decision last week.

In April 2003, when Jack Leck briefly worked at a not-for-profit organisation called the World Peace Ambassadors, he allegedly used an office computer to do Web searches for pre-teen boys and girls and participate in related mailing lists from his Hotmail account.

When police showed up with some questions, the not-for-profit group permitted that computer to be seized without a warrant.

Leck was charged with 50 counts of possessing child pornography and sentenced to four years in prison.

He claimed the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab’s seizure and search of the computer without a warrant was illegal because it violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

The Washington state Supreme Court has authorised searches without a warrant as long as the lawful owner of the property gives consent voluntarily, the court noted.

“Leck did not share equal authority with [the nonprofit’s director] over the WPA office or computer, thus, Leck’s consent to the state’s search was not necessary,” wrote Judge Marywave Van Deren.

The court upheld Leck’s conviction and sentence.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/employment/0,39020648,39183217,00.htm

By forcing Microsoft to play by European rules and comply with court orders, such as the ruling that forces Microsoft to strip Media Player from Windows in Europe, the European Commission may hope to set a precedent for controlling corporations with a firm hand.

Robert Badal, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, and who specializes in intellectual property law, believes the ruling illustrates a growing gap between the approaches of the EU and the U.S. to intellectual property.

Judge Bo Vesterdorf’s decision not to grant Microsoft a stay from the penalties while it appeals the European Commission’s antitrust penalties, he said, illustrates that the EU is quick to conclude that a company should be compelled to share its intellectual property with competitors. “This will have a chilling effect on innovators,” he said, adding that there is a direct correlation between the amount of innovation a company produces and the risk of being forced to share those innovations with competitors.

Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff said, “What Microsoft doesn’t want is a legal precedent under which a government agency can tell Microsoft what it can and can’t put into Windows.

The European Court of First Instance refused to relieve Microsoft from complying with the judgment levied by antitrust regulators, thereby enforcing penalties that go much further than what the U.S. Department of Justice imposed in an antitrust settlement.

On the other hand, if the penalties had been suspended, by the time the appeal process ended, the EU’s order to sever the media player from the operating system might have been moot.

“Microsoft was asking the court to take a huge leap of faith pending outcome of final decision,” said Andre Bywater, an attorney in the Brussels office of Eversheds, LLP. He said that in domestic cases in both the UK and France, it’s extremely difficult to persuade courts to suspend judgments.

CompTIA, a computer industry trade association of which Microsoft is a member, said the ruling would have negative consequences for the IT industry and consumers.

http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3451271

In comments filed with the FCC, advocates with the Center for Democracy and Technology argue the government hasn’t offered any evidence that law enforcement agencies face obstacles in conducting Internet wiretaps under current regulations — which obligate ISPs and other companies to cooperate with court-authorized surveillance, but do not force them to retrofit their networks with special surveillance gear, as the government is asking.

“In the absence of evidence of any problem, it is impossible for the Commission to act,” wrote CDT, representing a handful of technology companies, industry associations and advocacy groups, including the Computer and Communications Industry Association, Dialpad Communications, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Information Technology Association of America, and others.

At issue is the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), a federal law that mandates surveillance backdoors in U.S. telephone networks, allowing the FBI to start listening in on a target’s phone line within minutes of receiving court approval.

At the same time the FCC ruled that “managed” Internet telephony providers like Vonage must also become wiretap friendly.

The FCC opened the matter to public comment, specifically seeking guidance on some implementation details, including the issue of how much time to allow service providers to wire their networks for spying.

But many of the flurry of comments that followed challenged the fundamentals of the FCC’s ruling, including the commission’s authority to expand CALEA to the Internet in the first place.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10192

“A corporate Linux or open-source user that lacks indemnification and product warranty will expend its own time, money and resources fighting legal action,” said Laura DiDio, senior analyst for application infrastructure and software platforms at The Yankee Group. DiDio said that in the absence of indemnification or specific indemnification provisions, corporations could be the target of an intellectual property lawsuit that they would be forced to defend using their own money and resources.

In some cases, such as free open-source software, beta test software, steeply discounted software or software produced by nonprofits, the vendor may not realize enough of a profit to justify the cost of indemnifying its customers, DiDio said.

“Novell believes open-source software poses no greater risk of intellectual property infringement than does closed-source software, something this Yankee press release certainly doesn’t convey,” said Bruce Lowry, public relations director at Novell. “There’s been a lot of noise in the market around this issue of late, fanned by Microsoft and actions like this from the Yankee Group, but we’re not aware of any patent claim being filed against an open-source offering,” Lowry said.

“Prior to the announcement of blanket and total indemnification, if any user of Microsoft’s software was sued for patent infringement, the incentives would preclude Microsoft from abstaining and leaving their customer on their own, because if the customer lost, that would set precedent against the same Microsoft software used by anyone.”

Therefore, “in order to prevent the software from being stopped, Microsoft would—even without having given an indemnification—want to be involved with any case where its software is accused of infringement in order to protect, not its customer per se, but its software,” Ravicher said.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1743663,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

In a report made public this week, the Office of Inspector General in the DHS warned that the audit turned up weaknesses in the systems used to avoid unauthorized access.

“Due to these remote access exposures, there is an increased risk that unauthorized people could gain access to DHS networks and compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive information systems and resources,” the report said.

The OIG also discovered that the DHS does not provide adequate or effective system security controls over remote access to its computer systems and data.

“In assessing the effectiveness of remote access controls, we identified several problems related to remote access host configurations, system patching, and the control of modems.

On the findings that system patches were not applied, Cooper said that all of the patches identified in the audit were in testing to be implemented.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1743639,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594