2 Jun 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reports Gwinnett County schools in Georgia employ a filter, Blue Coat, that blocks access to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender site and classifies them as sexually explicit or pornographic. The ACLU drafted a demand letter on 23 May, asking the county to remove the filters from the schools and respond to its inquiry by 30 May, but has not yet received a response. Nowmee Shehab, a recent graduate and former president of the LGBT club at one of the schools told ACLU she was unable to access LGBT sites to plan activities. She stated, “Students need to be able to find information about their rights and about suicide and bullying prevention, and now they’re not able to get to information that’s really important for them.”s
27 May 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Just hours after the PROTECT IP Act passed unanimously in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon placed a hold to prevent it from reaching the Senate. Wyden argued the legislation was an “overreaching approach to policing the internet.” The act was introduced two weeks ago and authorises the government to use court orders to prohibit internet search engines from displaying sites that violate intellectual property laws. It would also force internet providers to block “rogue” sites offering pirated goods.Media groups fighting for anti-piracy protection have largely praised the legislation.
24 May 2011 | News and features
US view: The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jillian York and Cindy Cohn examine the Ryan Giggs affair
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22 Apr 2011 | Uncategorized
On Miller-McCune this week, I walk through a new US government proposal for what’s shaping up to be a kind of ID card for the internet. The government swears the idea is benevolent — that such a system wouldn’t track users, collect data or block content — but imaginations in the US privacy community are already running wild. In part, that’s thanks to one of the proposal’s primary authoring agencies: the Department of Homeland Security. Here’s an extract from the article, for the full piece, click here.
Last Friday, the U.S. government unveiled its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, a blueprint for the private-industry development of voluntary tools that would authenticate and consolidate your identity online. We need such a thing, the government says — in a pamphlet titled, well, “Why We Need It” — because our proliferating online passwords are inconvenient and insecure, and because last year 8.1 million adults in the U.S. suffered identity theft or fraud, at a cost of $37 billion.
The idea seems like one mandated by the moment. Increasingly, important commerce, banking and government services have migrated online, demanding ever more accounts and passwords and logins to remember.
But Amie Stepanovich, national security counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, explains that this proposal has actually been years in the making. And the history of its development suggests the concept is equal parts promising and risky — a reality hardly captured in the government’s enthusiastic 45-page rollout, complete with “Envision it!” sidebar scenarios.
