Professor Anita Ramasastry of the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle has published a commentary worth review, Patriot II: The Sequel Why It’s Even Scarier than the First Patriot Act. See my previous postings here and here on this controversial draft legislation that was leaked even before it was made available to members… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Monthly Archives: February 2003
Study Reveals New Consequences of Net Filtering
Web Sites Sharing IP Addresses: Prevalence and Significance, a study by Benjamin Edelman of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, establishes that “more than 87% of active domain names are found to share their web servers with one or more additional domains, and more than two third of active domain names share their web… Continue Reading
Privacy Rights and Online Job Databases
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) issued a press release warning job seekers about privacy issues related to posting their resumes online. Personal data from online resumes can be mined, including phone numbers and email addresses, then compiled, aggregated and sold without the author’s permission or knowledge. This is according to a study undertaken by researcher… Continue Reading
California Cracks Down on Cyber Doctors
The California Medical Board is targeting doctors who provide services to patients via the Internet without the benefit of an in-person consultation. Many patients obtain a wide range of prescriptions in this manner, and according to this Sacramento Bee article, the state has levied fines totaling $48 million against six out-of-state doctors. The fines will… Continue Reading
New Homeland Security Website
“Terrorism Forces Us to Make a Choice, Don’t Be Afraid, Be Ready.” This is the introduction to the new website launched today by the Homeland Security Department, called Ready.gov. The site provides information in three main areas: Make a Kit of Emergency Supplies, Make a Plan, and Be Informed, which covers how to respond to… Continue Reading
EU Accession Treaty
The full-text of the EU Treaty of Accession of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia to the European Union in 2004 is available here (Word). An Analysis of the Accession Treaty (Word) is here, and an Analysis of the accession Treaty (PDF) is here. Continue Reading
Appeal to Supreme Court on Gov't Surveillance
The ACLU, on behalf of a group of civil liberties organizations and several Arab-American organizations, filed an appeal (PDF) with the Supreme Court on February 18 in re: The Sealed Case of the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review (FISA) (PDF) decided November 18, 2002. This controversial decision, the first in the history of FISA, gave… Continue Reading
News About AllTheWeb Search Engine
Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) announced that another major e-commerce site, Dell.com, has deployed FAST Data Search to power the site’s search function. Dell joins AT&T, IBM, InfoSpace, Reed Elsevier (Scirus.com), Reuters and Terra Lycos, among others. In related news, the competition between Google and AllTheWeb for the accolade as “best” search engine continues with… Continue Reading
Overture to Acquire Search Engine AltaVista
From the Overture press release: Overture Services, Inc., the world’s leading provider of Pay-For-Performance search to Web sites across the Internet, and AltaVista Company, a pioneer in Web search technology, and a majority owned operating company of CMGI, Inc., announced that they have signed a definitive agreement under which Overture will acquire AltaVista’s business for… Continue Reading
The New Copyright Frontier
The March 2003 issue of Scientific American includes an article, Some Rights Reserved, on the non-profit Creative Commons licensing project that promotes a new avenue of sharing copyrighted works while retaining different levels of rights of authorship. See my previous post on this topic here. Continue Reading
New Global Online Forum on Science and Technology
ICSU (International Council of Scientific Unions) launched a new online global discussion forum focused on ensuring universal access to scientific knowledge. There are currently 26 articles posted on the site from authors around the world, and issues addressed include copyright, privacy, digital rights and the free and unfettered publication and distribution of scientific research via… Continue Reading
Photo Directory for 108th Congress
Interested in a photo guide of members of the 108th Congress? You are in luck, as GPO recently released the Congressional Pictorial Directory (S. Prt. 108-2). The PDF guide features black and white photos of the Senate and House Leadership, Senate Officers and Officials, House Officers and Officials, Capitol Officials, Members (by States), Delegates and… Continue Reading
