Month: September 2004

Judge overturns ISP provisions of PATRIOT act

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A judge has struck down a portion of the PATRIOT act which requires ISPs to hand over records on their customers and keep silent about the handover. The ruling means the FBI can no longer use National Security Letters to demand an ISP’s record on a customer without any sort of recourse.

The enforced silence is one of the more nasty aspects of the PATRIOT act… in fact, we covered one aspect of this earlier when the ACLU was prevented from discussing a lawsuit they filed against the NSL provisons of the PATRIOT act itself.



Read more over at News.com.

Tales of the Sausage Factory: Alert on INDUCE

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I am reproducing below a legislative call to action from the Association of American Law Libraries. You can find similar alerts and more infromation at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge.

Remember — if we do not act, we get the legislation we deserve. Pick up the phone and call these folks!

Stay tuned . . . .

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Tales of the Sausage Factory: Live at Cool Conference

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What a blogging cliche! I am posting from the excellent Bellhead v. Nethead conference at Cardozo Law School, put together by my friend Susan Crawford (which explains why I am on a panel with such luminaries as Eli Noam).

But what is this conference and what makes it cool? And why are such things the life blood of public policy? My humble opinions below . . .

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More Artificial Stupidity, Coming Up…

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Hey, whattaya know… they held another Turing Test, run by the man the A.I. cognoscente love to hate: Hugh Loebner. You of course know Lobner from John’s story at Salon about Loebner’s fight with the A.I. community.

And… surpise! A program that sucked at pretending to be a human being won… but as is the nature of these schemes, it was the program that sucked the least that took home the prize money. According to the Slashdot story, the bronze medal and $2000 boobie prize was awarded to ALICE, which has won three times in the past.

They're after our precious BBQ!

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In a sinister move hastening the day that we all have govenment chips implanted in our heads to monitor ThoughtCrimes,

CNN is reporting about a chip being implanted in pork butts.

OK, so the chip was (allegedy) accidentally lost in some meat packing plant. But I don’t buy this for one moment. I encourage you all (well, OK, those of you who aren’t wisely keeping kosher) to use preventative measures normally reserved for your own person to secure your precious BBQ supply from the sinister secret government!

(link shamlessly stolen from boing boing)

Kafka alive and well, and working for the NYPD

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Emmanuel Goldstein, one of the guiding forces behind the hacker magazine 2600, was arrested and detained for over 33 hours during the RNC, for doing nothing more than covering protests which are supposed to be every American citizen’s right. The story of his arrest, and the long, slow, grinding process of being processed through the “justice” system is available over at 2600.

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Nature's take on Bush V. Kerry

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By Nature, of course, I mean the the magazine. In a (mostly) free area the position of the candidates on various scientific issues is discussed, from stem cells to climate change to nuclear waste and weapons. Also, they rehearse the Bush administration’s apparent manipulation of science for its own ends.

Those needing additional grist for the mill can find it in the specials – us election page.

UTX OTARD UPDATE

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I’m informed by my contacts that the FCC has traditionally exempted colleges and universities from OTARD on the grounds that the relationship is not a standard landlord/tenant relationship. As a consequence, the OTARD declaratory ruling does not apply to UTX or other dormitory situations. The June 24, 2004 ruling did not change any existing OTARD exemptions. It merely clarified that OTARD applied to unlicensed services as well as licensed services.

Looks like the UTX policy is therefore legal. Whether it is wise or not is an entirely different question, and not for yr hmbl obdnt to judge.

Stay tuned . . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory: UTX, OTARD, UH-OH!

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As readers of Slashdot may have seen, The University of Texas at Dallas has prohibitted students in certain dorms from setting up wireless access points. If you read the policy, you will find out that the University is not simply amending its acceptable use policy (AUP), it prohibits setting up access points using residential DSL or cable.

Rather than break into the raging debate in the comments on how this policy meshes (as it were) with the FCC’s recent ruling prohibiting landlords from mandating such things, I’ll use Wetmachine to say what I want (but feel free to refer anyone from Slashdot over here to our humble corner of the internet if they would like to hear from a lawyer who dabbles in such things).

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