Greetings NetHappenings Readers,

Happy New Year to one and all.

<Karen>





Google distorts reality, Austrian study says
Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, is on severalfronts a danger that has to be stopped, a study released by Austria's Graz University claims. A research team led by Prof. Hermann Maurer,
chairman of Graz University's Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media, argues that Google is turning into a new version of George Orwell's "Big Brother" - creating unacceptable monopolies in many areas of the worldwide web.
According to his research, around 61 billion Internet searches are conducted each month. In the US, on average 57 percent of searches are conducted with Google, and up to 95 percent of Internet users use Google at least sometimes. It is dangerous enough that single entity such as Google is dominant as a search engine, Maurer and his co-writers say, but the fact that Google is operating many other
services and is probably colluding with still further players was "unacceptable".
"Google is massively invading privacy," the study said with the company knowing more than any other organization about individuals and companies, but not bound by national data protection laws. Google was amassing data by using data mining tools in its applications like Google Earth or Gmail in connection with being its search engine function.
Thus, the search engine could potentially turn into the world's largest detective agency, the Austrian researchers warned, using the data it was collecting from its users via its applications. Even if Google
did not use that potential now, it might have to do so in the future in the interest of its shareholders.
The study argues that Google is influencing economies in the way advertisements and documents are ranked. "The more a company pays, the more often will the ad be visible." The study believes influence may be increased by also ranking results from queries, and that Google could, for
business reasons, in the future rank paying customers higher in search results.
[snipped]
"Google's open aim is to know everything there is to know on Earth," the researchers concluded. "It cannot be tolerated that a private company has that much power: it can extort, control, and dominate the world at will." Stopping the insidious aspects of Google was however not possible by a head-on strategy, as the company was too powerful, the Austrian researchers warn.
Rather, they say, the "Google effect" can be minimized by the introduction of special-purpose search engines that are better in their areas of application that the larger company is.

Passing of Computing and Information Security Pioneer
By Prof. Eugene Spafford January 2nd, 2008  
On November 18, 2007, noted computer pioneer James P. Anderson, Jr.,
died at his home in Pennsylvania. Jim, 77, had finally retired in
August.
Jim, born in Easton, Pennsylvania, graduated from Penn State with a
degree in Meteorology. From 1953 to 1956 he served in the U.S. Navy as a
Gunnery Officer and later as a Radio Officer. This later service sparked
his initial interest in cryptography and information security.
Jim was unaware in 1956, when he took his first job at Univac
Corporation, that his career in computers had begun. Hired by John
Mauchly to program meteorological data, Dr. Mauchly soon became a family
friend and mentor.



"The Race to the Shelf Continues"

Online Education Trends


FBI compiling big database of physical traits
"CLARKSBURG, W. VA. — The FBI has embarked on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.
Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns already are flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that significantly would expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives."


UK gov sets rules for hacker tool ban
The UK government has published guidelines for the application of a law that makes it illegal to create or distribute so-called "hacking tools".

Bain quiet about probe into 3Com acquisition
WASHINGTON -- Bain Capital LLC, a Boston-based equity investment firm,
declined to comment today on news reports that a federal government
panel reviewing a proposed acquisition of networking vendor 3Com Corp.
plans to extend its review.
Bain would get an 83.5% stake in 3Com, and Chinese networking giant
Huawei Technologies Co. would get the remaining piece in the $2.2
billion deal. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
(CFIUS), part of the U.S. Department of Treasury, is investigating
whether the investment by Huawei poses a risk to national security after
Bain voluntarily submitted the deal for review in October.



"Planning for Certain High Risk Security Incidents,
http://www.uoregon.edu/~joe/highrisk/high-risk.ppt  (or .pdf)
from the fall 2007 Internet2 Member Meeting in San Diego,  where I urge adoption of a program of hardening critical assets to  resist H-EMP. ~ Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.


Congress Earmarks $3 Million to Reopen EPA Libraries
Environment News Service
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2007/2007-12-24-093.asp


Watching the Watchers: Why Surveillance Is a Two-Way Street
If governments and businesses can keep an eye on us in public spaces, we ought to be able to look back.
Published in the January 2008 issue. Suddenly, cameras are everywhere. As this month's cover story  notes, the recent boom in video monitoring—by both the state and businesses—means we're all being watched. It's like something out of George Orwell's 1984. Except that, unlike Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith, we can watch back—and plenty of people are doing just that. Which makes a difference.
There's a difference, though. In the old days, ordinary people didn't have much privacy, but neither did big shots. By contrast, today's government officials and big corporations often want to watch us, but they don't want to be watched in return. Shopping malls are full of security cameras, but many have signs at the entrance telling customers that no photography or video recording is allowed. Police cars have dashboard cameras, cities and counties are posting red-light and speed-limit cameras, and it seems that the dream of many government officials is to put every public space under 24-hour video watch. But try shooting photos or video of police or ­other public officials as they go about their business and you might find yourself in wrist restraints.
In recent months such cases have been piling up. Brian Kelly of Carlisle, Pa., was a passenger in his friend's car when the police pulled the vehicle over for speeding. When Kelly began videotaping, he was arrested and charged with violating a state wiretap statute and thrown in jail overnight. Charges were dropped when the district attorney recognized that recording police in public isn't much like wiretapping. In addition, the DA said that the police had no expectation of privacy when they themselves were recording the incident. Michael Gannon, of Nashua, N.H., faced similar charges when he used a front-door security camera to record what he considered to be overly aggressive behavior by a detective. The charges against Gannon were dropped. That's the eventual outcome in most such cases, though sometimes photographs and video are lost in the process.


Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park
As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far  
to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly  
spiralling out of their control.
Twenty billion dollars here, $20bn there, and a lush half-trillion  
from the European Central Bank at give-away rates for Christmas.  
Buckets of liquidity are being splashed over the North Atlantic  
banking system, so far with meagre or fleeting effects.
As the credit paralysis stretches through its fifth month, a chorus of  
economists has begun to warn that the world's central banks are  
fighting the wrong war, and perhaps risk a policy error of epochal  
proportions.


DoCoMo to team up with Google for better i-mode
Kyodo News
NTT DoCoMo Inc. will team up with Google Inc., the world's No. 1 Internet search engine, to enhance its i-mode Net service custom-made for mobile phone users, company sources said Tuesday. Japan's largest mobile phone operator will apply the California-based company's popular search and other functions to i-mode, which debuted in Japan in 1999 as the world's first Net access service available on
mobile phones.
Sweeping initiatives like elevating minimum wage and lowering prescription drug prices, not technology topics, took the forefront. What that meant was a year of largely unfinished business--or, less charitably, unfulfilled promises--for high-tech companies.

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep
A nasal spray of a key brain hormone cures sleepiness in sleep-deprived monkeys. With no apparent side effects, the hormone might be a promising sleep-replacement drug. In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate
sleepiness.
A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.
The discovery's first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.
The treatment is "a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new study shows it to be relatively benign," said Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. "It
reduces sleepiness without causing edginess."


As part of a December salvo in its war against illegally downloaded music, the Recording Industry Association of America sent letters to the University of Washington, leveling charges of piracy against 16 students and threatening legal action. But the university is refusing to pass the letters along--for now. UW isn't sure the students are to blame, a university spokesman told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer yesterday. The problem is that the letters actually accuse Internet addresses, and students are only guilty by association with those addresses. In other words, a student's computer may have connected to the Internet and downloaded a music file using one of the addresses, but that doesn't mean the student was the person operating the computer at that time. It could have been another student at the controls, or even another computer temporarily assigned to that Internet address. The university says it is going to investigate, attempting to ascertain the real culprits, before passing along the letters, which usually ask for $3,000 to $5,000 from students in order to avoid a lawsuit.--Josh Fischman


From the RIAA's website at some point in the past, though it's been removed:
"If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on
your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music
and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the
jogging trail."
Also, from the Supreme Court oral arguments in the Grokster case,
Donald Virrelli, on behalf of the entertainment companies:
"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and
it's been on their Website for some time now, that it's perfectly
lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your
computer, put it onto your iPod. There is a very, very significant
lawful commercial use for that device, going forward."

Here Comes Another Bubble v1.1 - The Richter Scales Video

Online videos that use clips from copyrighted music and movies may not violate the law and deserve protection from blanket prohibitions, two scholars at American University -- Pat Aufderheide, a professor of communication, and Peter Jaszi, a professor of law -- contend in a new report. Update: The professors are taking their argument to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week. Ms. Aufderheide is scheduled to speak on a panel there on Monday. What will representatives of the entertainment industry think of their argument that fair use might cover more than many people think? In an e-mail interview on Wednesday, Patrick Ross, executive director of the Copyright Alliance, a nonprofit group whose members include associations for the motion-picture and recording industries, said that "copyright owners are not trying to suppress fair use, they practice fair use." He said he had not yet read the professors' report and declined to comment further. --Jeffrey R. Young

The Airport Security Follies By Patrick Smith
Worth reading, well researched

Democrats in 2007
controlled both chambers of Congress for the first time in a dozen years--and with the power shift came a scattershot year for technology policy.


New FAA limits on lithium based batteries in air travel
Effective January 1, 2008, the following rules apply to the spare lithium batteries you carry with you in case the battery in a device runs low:
* Spare batteries are the batteries you carry separately from the
devices they power. When batteries are installed in a device, they are
not considered spare batteries.
* You may not pack a spare lithium battery in your checked baggage
* You may bring spare lithium batteries with you in carry-on baggage ­ see our spare battery tips and how-to sections to find out how to pack spare batteries safely!
* Even though we recommend carrying your devices with you in carry-on baggage as well, if you must bring one in checked baggage, you may check it with the batteries installed.
The following quantity limits apply to both your spare and installed batteries. The limits are expressed in grams of “equivalent lithium content.” 8 grams of equivalent lithium content is approximately 100 watt-hours. 25 grams is approximately 300 watt-hours:
* Under the new rules, you can bring batteries with up to 8-gram equivalent lithium content. All lithium ion batteries in cell phones are below 8 gram equivalent lithium content. Nearly all laptop computers also are below this quantity threshold.
* You can also bring up to two spare batteries with an aggregate equivalent lithium content of up to 25 grams, in addition to any batteries that fall below the 8-gram threshold. Examples of two types of
lithium ion batteries with equivalent lithium content over 8 grams but below 25 are shown below.
* For a lithium metal battery, whether installed in a device or carried as a spare, the limit on lithium content is 2 grams of lithium metal per battery.
 * Almost all consumer-type lithium metal batteries are below 2 grams of lithium metal. But if you are unsure, contact the manufacturer!


Tories offer NHS IT rescue plan after major patient data losses
The Tory party has put forward a rescue plan for the NHS IT system in
the wake of the latest government data losses, which were revealed over
the weekend. Nine English NHS trusts have owned up to large scale losses
of personal data, and although in most cases the nature of this data has
yet to be revealed, City & Hackney Primary Care Trust reportedly mislaid
the names and addresses of 160,000 children.

One-fifth of Windows apps go unpatched
One in five applications installed on Windows PCs are missing security patches, a Copenhagen-based vulnerability tracker has reported.
According to Secunia APS, more than 20% of the applications scanned by its Personal Software Inspector (PSI) utility were open to attack because available fixes for security flaws had not been applied.
"More than 20% of all applications installed on users' PCs have known security flaws, but the users have yet to install the patch provided by the vendor of [the] product," said Jakob Balle, Secunia's development manager, in a post to the company's blog last week.


Stolen Metro laptop was being tested for use without full Social Security number
One of two stolen laptop computers bearing full Social Security numbers
of 337,000 Metro voters had been left unsecured as workers tested
whether it would work using only the last four digits of the number.
The other computer was left unsecured because it was being repaired,
Metro Elections Administrator Ray Barrett said. Both were taken during a
Christmas-stretch break-in at the county Election Commission offices on
Second Avenue South.
The theft of the computers and the information they contain has raised
fears of identity theft among voters across Davidson County.
People are just beside themselves. They are just livid about this, Metro
Councilman Michael Craddock said.

Students may not be abandoning libraries for the Internet, as some people have worried. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report Sunday that says Generation Y--18-to-30-year-olds, in particular--is more likely to turn to libraries to ferret out information than their older counterparts are. Adults do use the Internet to gain information more than any other source, including government agencies and experts, according to the report. However, 18-to-30-year-olds said they used library resources--mostly computers--more than older groups. Steve Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional services at Temple University writes on ACRLog: "Now although the report mostly deals with public-library use, I would bet that a good number of respondents in this age category have regular access to an academic library." Bell admits that it might be too soon to jump to this conclusion, and the Pew report concludes that libraries should work to better understand why information seekers might or might not use them. It could be, however, that rather than the Internet replacing libraries, it creates a new niche for them to fill. --Hurley Goodall

Facebook Enemy List
Facebook users, if pressed, will admit that not all the friends they list on the social-networking site are really friends. And that got Kevin Matulef, a computer-science graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinking: What if people were open about who on their Facebook page was and was not a friend? He decided to act on the idea by creating a Facebook application, Enemybook, that allows users to tag people as "enemies." Those who use the application make available on their Facebook page their list of foes as well as friends. A photograph of the enemy is depicted along with a list of reasons why the person is despised: He /she hooked up with my ex, insulted my honor, or killed my family, are among the possible explanations. Enemybook is not the only Web application to mock Facebook. Snubster allows Facebook users to list adversaries. And then there's Hatebook.com and Hatebook.org. In an interview with National Public Radio, Mr. Matulef said his software is meant to be tongue in cheek. "The time is right for a Facebook parody," he said in the interview. He acknowledged that college rivalry may have played a part in his development of Enemybook. Facebook, after all, was developed by a Harvard alumnus, Mark Zuckerberg. MIT and Harvard are neighbors in Cambridge, Mass. So who are Mr. Matulef's enemies? Mr. Zuckerberg and President George W. Bush, among others.---Andrea L. Foster

Barcoding Life
A pair of U Penn professors with a dream: a handheld barcode reader for life. The concept is that Joe Average can walk into his backyard (or his field), and find out what species there are there. What's that ant? What bird left a feather in our garden? What's this plant doing here?