The Federal Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with official documents singling out a web site critical of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy. Tender documents issued by the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy reveal it is looking for a monitoring service for print and electronic media
. The department later attached a clarification confirming this included blogs such as Whirlpool
. Whirlpool has strongly criticised Senator Conroy’s plan to filter internet content and his handling of the Government’s $15 billion national broadband network. It is a community-run forum devoted to discussing broadband internet access
Makers of fake anti-virus software are exploiting search engines to drive people to sites peddling scareware
. Using popular and mis-spelled search terms, the criminals divert people to sites that are seeded with fake warnings about virus infections. The pop-up warnings claim that a visitor’s PC is riddled with malicious programmes and spyware. Research suggests some criminals are making as much as $10,000 a day from fake security software
The entertainment industry managed to convince the French government to draft a law that will make it possible to disconnect people from the Internet, if they receive more than two copyright infringement warnings. Sadly, most of the politicians who plan to sign the law into action have no clue what they’re dealing with
Ray Baughman and his colleagues have produced a formulation that’s stronger than steel, as light as air and more flexible than rubber — a truly 21st century muscle. It could be used to make artificial limbs, smart
skins, shape-changing structures, ultra-strong robots and — in the immediate future — highly-efficient solar cells. We can generate about 30 times the force per unit area of natural muscle,
said Baughman, director of the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas
Wikileaks claims it now has up to date ACMA blacklists of banned web sites dated 11 March and 18 March — only days old. The site’s leak yesterday of the supposed ACMA blacklist from August 2008 prompted ACMA and Senator Conroy to call it a fake. This is not the ACMA blacklist
, said Conroy. There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist. However, ACMA advises that there are URLs on the published list that have never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation, and have never been included on the ACMA blacklist.
But Wikileaks has pressed on, obtaining what it claims is an up-to-date blacklist. Between the 11th and yesterday, [ACMA] did an enormous cleanup of the list
, it said. Where the list previously contained over 2000 URLs, and Conroy and the ACMA claimed ‘See! Our ‘current list’ never contained that many URLs’, this new list is about the size the ACMA claimed it to be. ACMA/Conroy in a media release stated that there were 1061 URLs for August 6, 2008. The 18 Mar 2009 list, having apparently being cleaned up, now contains 1172
Three civil liberties groups have asked a US appeals court to strike down a US government request to obtain stored mobile phone location tracking information without showing probable cause. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have filed a brief asking the US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the US Department of Justice’s request that courts give permission for it to obtain historical mobile-phone tracking information without a court-ordered warrant showing probable cause
The Queensland dentist included on the Australian communications regulator’s blacklist of prohibited web sites has demanded that the list be cleaned up, as he is now being associated with child porn peddlers and sexual violence sites. Whistleblower site Wikileaks published the top-secret ACMA list today. Web sites contained on it will be blocked for all Australians once the government implements its mandatory internet filtering scheme — originally pitched as targeting only illegal
content — later this year. But, as experts have long warned the government, having a top-secret blacklist of banned sites is dangerous because there is a real danger that Australian businesses could be added to the list in error, with little recourse
So you finally told the boss what you think of him in a Gmail. Feels good. But wait, you actually hit the send button! Now Google will save you with its Undo Send feature in Gmail. But you only have five seconds to hit Gmail’s Undo Send button, and some users are telling Google that’s not long enough. It’s not a morning after
solution
Google has launched the UK version of its Street View service, which allows users to browse a selection of pictures taken along city streets. Street scenes in 25 UK cities from Aberdeen to Southampton can be viewed using the service. The Netherlands version of the service also launched on Thursday, bringing the number of countries covered to nine. The imagery available comprises video taken along 22,369 miles of UK streets by customised camera cars
Microsoft Launches Faster, Safer Internet Explorer, Chrome Is Like Teflon in Browser-Hacking Contest
Microsoft has released a new version of Internet Explorer, adding features meant to speed up common web surfing tasks and bringing the browser’s security measures in line with those of major competitors. The number of browsers has grown to a dizzying array, from Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, the two most popular, to Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, the Norwegian entrant Opera and others. Each is using speed, security enhancements and new features to fight for a share of web surfers’ growing time online. Microsoft remains the dominant player, but Firefox’s influence is growing. The Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security conference aims to unearth browser flaws. This year, white-hat
hackers at Pwn2Own took down Safari on Mac OS X, IE8 and Firefox. Only Google’s Chrome remained impervious to hacks. Google wants to improve Chrome’s performance further via user feedback to its latest Chrome beta
ACMA’s secret list of banned web pages has reportedly been leaked to Wikileaks.org. The list, which contains hundreds of links to supposed banned content such as child pornography, also lists large online poker sites, YouTube pages and even some Wikipedia links. The Australian government plans to use this list as a basis for its mandatory ISP filtering scheme. According to Wikileaks, the list contains 2,395 webpages (dated 6 August 2008) and was taken from a government approved censorship software maker
Even the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions’ (formerly Diebold’s) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fail to record the wholesale deletion of ballots. Even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. That’s the shocking admission heard today from Justin Bales, Premier’s Western Region manager, at a State of California public hearing on the possible decertification of Diebold/Premier’s tabulator system, GEMS vs 1.18.19
Sun Microsystems surged the most ever in German trading after the Wall Street Journal reported IBM is in talks to buy the company for at least US$6.5 billion. Sun Microsystems jumped as much as 61 per cent to 6 euros in Frankfurt trading. The offer would value Sun’s stock at more than double the closing price of $US4.97 in the US yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the plan. An agreement may not be reached, the newspaper said. Officials at Sun and IBM declined to comment
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy
Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, has filed a complaint against Amazon.com alleging that some security and copy protection features in the Kindle and Kindle 2 violate the company’s patents. In the lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the District of Delaware, Discovery has asked for unspecified monetary compensation. Amazon representatives were not immediately available for comment
Google has made a detailed submission to the Telecommunications Carriers Forum that heavily criticises the draft code of practice for ISPs in relation to section 92A of the Copyright Act. In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims. As such, Google says Section 92A puts users’ procedural and fundamental rights at risk, by threatening to terminate users’ internet access based on mere allegations and reverse the burden of proof onto a user to establish there was no infringement
. It goes on to say, Section 92A undermines the incredible social and economic benefits of the open and universally accessible internet, by providing for a remedy of account termination or disconnection that is disproportionate to the harm of copyright infringement online
Jaiku has moved to App Engine and they are open sourcing the Jaiku code base under the Apache License 2.0. The code is available as JaikuEngine on Google Code Project Hosting. Anyone can set up and run their own JaikuEngine instance on Google App Engine
Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the world wide web, said that he was concerned about the emergence of user profiling on the internet and snooping
. The British computer science professor and guru underlined that one of the biggest challenges is to ensure that information available online is used transparently for the specific purpose that its owner intended or consented to, avoiding privacy pitfalls
Legislation to boost NSW Police covert searching and computer hacking powers looks set to go ahead after facing almost no opposition in the lower house of the NSW Parliament earlier this week
Google’s hardly publicised method for sending free text messages has been revoked after traffic from a popular iPhone app became too much. Google has started to block Infinite SMS and all other third-party software that’s been piggybacking the text messaging feature available in Gmail. Enabled in December via the Labs, the possibility of sending free SMS messages right from the Gmail chat window was quickly targeted by the Inner Fence developers who last month released Infinite SMS, a paid ($0.99) app for the iPhone and iPod touch which used the function to let users send as many text messages they want for free (if you don’t count the one-time fee of course)
RSS – Posts