Another non-invitee was Solveig Singleton, director of information studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. ``Law enforcement views the Fourth Amendment as the problem,'' she said. That's the piece of the Bill of Rights that protects ``persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures'' -- with no mention of e-mail. And so now, Singleton observed, the FBI wants to force manufacturers to ``build surveillance into technology,'' all but eliminating the need for search warrants.

The dangers that Kyl and Freeh described are real, but so is the danger of a government's habitually stomping on privacy rights. History proves that basic rights are unalienable only when those who might alienate them are watched like hawks.

Slashdot | Science | Celera Completes Human Genome. Sorta..

Slashdot | Ask Slashdot | Information On Cryptography And Effects On Society?.

Slashdot | Articles | Man Arrested For Enigma Theft.

Political News from Wired News - They Fight for Citizens' Privacy.

This is the first year the CFP conference has been held outside of the United States, and panel moderator Colin Bennett, from the University of Victoria in Canada, pointed out that the United States is the only major industrialized nation that has not yet established an office of privacy commissioner.

The panel was followed by Mozelle W. Thompson, commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission(FTC), who told the audience that the United States has been aggressive in protecting consumers even without a privacy commissioner.

He claimed 120 cases and belittled while Australia for only having four. But when pushed admitted than only four actually had to do with privacy. Remember these are the folks who keep saying that industry should regulate themselves. That's how we got in this mess in the first place.

Privacy International - The 2000 US Big Brother Awards.

On April 5, 2000, Privacy International presented the 2nd annual "Big Brother" awards to the government and private sector organizations which have done the most to invade personal privacy in the United States. The ceremony took place at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2000 Conference.

The "Orwell" statutes was be presented to the government agencies, companies and initiatives which have done most to invade personal privacy. A "Lifetime Achievement" awards was also be presented. The 1999 Big Brother Awards< were held in Washington, DC in April 1999. Winners included the FBI, Microsoft, Rep. Bill McCullum, the Know Your Customer proposal and Elenysis. Last year's event was so sucessful that we had to flee the country to do it again

Political News from Wired News - DoubleClick Wins for Losing.

The winner of the corporate invader award: DoubleClick, a company whose now-legendary privacy missteps drew fire earlier this year.

Commerce Secretary William Daley won the worst government official award, beating out the Federal Trade Commission. The Commerce Department has hosted direct marketing conferences and oversees U.S. export controls of encryption technology.

Salon Technology | Can hyperlinks be outlawed?.

Washington Post - 'Digital Storm' Brews at FBI.

The FBI is seeking more than $75 million in budget appropriations to continue a massive information technology expansion, which includes a system dubbed "Digital Storm" that eases the court-sanctioned collection and electronic sifting of traffic on telephones and cellular phones.

Another proposed system would create "the foundation for an up-to-date, flexible digital collection infrastructure" for wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A third initiative would develop an "enterprise database" that would enable agents to analyze huge amounts of data and share them via a secure World Wide Web-style network

In its budget documents, for example, the FBI estimates that technological advances would so improve the ability to conduct wiretaps that the number of approved taps would grow by 300 percent over the next decade.

CNET.com - News - The Net - Programmers battle filtering firm, movie industry.

Slashdot | Your Rights Online | ACLU To Appeal CPHack Ruling.

Slashdot | Articles | Verant Backs Down On Drive-Scanning.

CNET.com - News - E-commerce - Online game backs away from privacy threat .

Sony's popular online game EverQuest dodged a public relations bullet today, as a new policy was rescinded after some players had called it a potentially massive violation of their privacy.

Game developers Verant Interactive, worried about tools which allow people to cheat or disrupt the online game, wanted to examine players' personal computers for "hacking tools" as a part of a new software upgrade. As recently as last night, executives said they would bar people from the game who didn't agree to open their systems to the digital bloodhounds' inspection.

Yahoo News - Company Finishes Sequence of One Person's Genes.

Celera Genomics said on Thursday it had finished the first step of sequencing -- making a kind of map -- the genes of one person and was starting to put the pieces together.

The U.S. company aims to be the first to have a complete sequence of the human genome, which is the collection of all the genes and other genetic material that are the basic blueprint of life.

Celera plans to use the genes of five different people, who will remain anonymous, to make up a final human genome sequence. It will copy this sequence several times over to make sure it is correct.