October 09, 2001 -
FTC Shuts Down Sophisticated Internet
Cramming Operation - The Federal
Trade Commission recently settled another
case against an operator of adult Web
sites that billed hundreds of thousands of
dollars in subscription charges to
consumers’ telephone bills. The practice,
called cramming, has become endemic over
the last several years. Despite dozens of
successful enforcement actions against
crammers, the FTC has been unable to put a
stop to the practice. If the defendant in
this case, RJB Telecom, Inc., fails to
comply with the terms of the settlement,
it will be forced to pay one of the
largest fines yet leveled in a cramming
action...
October 24, 2002 -
No Easy Money Suing Spammers - By Joanna Glasner, WiredNews,
When Ken Pugh sued the Elizabeth Dole for Senate campaign last month
for sending him spam, it wasn’t money that motivated him. Even if he
wins, according to the North Carolina statute he’s suing under, Pugh
stands to net a whopping $80. That's $10 for each of eight e-mails he
received. No, it’s the principle of the thing, says Pugh, a computer
consultant from Durham, North Carolina, who is claiming that the
unwanted e-mails constituted an illegal computer trespass...
October 28, 2002 -
Dear Saddam, How Can I Help? - By Brian McWilliams, WiredNews,
On the afternoon of July 17, a self-proclaimed expert in
biochemistry composed an e-mail message to Saddam Hussein. The message,
sent from an MSN Hotmail account on a computer in China, recommended the
use of methyl bromide, an agricultural pesticide, as an effective
chemical weapon against the U.S. Army. "For weapon use, have function:
no color, no smell, will let person dead in a few second," wrote the
e-mail's author, who provided the phone number and address of a
distributor in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from which the toxic chemical could
be purchased "in cylinder or in can." The chilling electronic missive
was among hundreds evidently sent to Iraq's president last summer from
people around the world...
October 31, 2002 -
Siege in Moscow, Russia and
Chechnya, The
Economist, The lost cause of the
Caucasus - MOSCOW, From The
Economist print edition, The
siege of a Moscow theatre by
Chechen terrorists ended when
the Russian authorities pumped
in gas through the
air-conditioning system. By the
time troops stormed in, it had
killed many of the Chechens—and
nearly 120 of the hostages. The
operation was a success, said
the government, while refusing
for days to tell doctors what
gas it had used. A security
clampdown in Chechnya was
ordered...
October, 2002 -
Freedom of the Press Survey 1999
...
The time, it
is to be hoped, is gone by when
any defense would be necessary
of the “liberty of the press” as
one of the securities against
corrupt or tyrannical
government.—John Stuart
Mill, “On Liberty.” 1859
This century, and
especially the past decade, has
seen remarkable gains for
freedom of the press throughout
the world. One hundred years
ago, press freedom barely
existed outside North America
and a few Western European
countries, and no one expected
that things would be otherwise.
There were no serious movements
to expand the reach of a free
press to the 95 percent of the
world’s population which had
access only to censored or
controlled information, or to no
press whatsoever. Three European
countries controlled all the
news flowing into or out of
Africa, Asia, and much of Latin
America...
October 16, 2002 -
Bibliotheca Alexandrina to open
- Alexandria, Egypt, Presidents
and royalty gathered
to help Egypt inaugurate the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a
modern version of the famous
ancient library known for a
freedom of thought and
expression lacking in today's
Middle East. While the new
library cannot match the 500,000
scrolls said to have been housed
in the Great Library of
Alexandria before it burned down
in the fourth century, it has a
digital archive that includes 10
billion Web pages dating back to
1996...
October 23, 2002 -
Powerful attack cripples Net’s
core - Homeland
security official downplays
level of sophistication.,
ASSOCIATED PRESS, WASHINGTON,
The White House sought
Wednesday to allay concerns
about an unusual attack this
week against the 13 computer
servers that manage global
Internet traffic, stressing that
disruption was minimal and the
FBI is working to trace the
attackers...
October 04,
2002 -
Ex-smoker awarded $28 billion
- Philip Morris says it will
appeal Calif. jury’s decision,
ASSOCIATED PRESS, LOS ANGELES, A
jury awarded a record-shattering
$28 billion in punitive damages
Friday to a 64-year-old former
smoker who sued Philip Morris
Inc. for fraud and negligence...
October,
2002 -
Caught in the Kid Porn Crusade,
The United States of America v.
Adam Vaughn - By
Steve Silberman, Wired Magazine,
October 2002, He was a stand-up
Marine, a beloved cop, and a
local hero — until the
government branded him part of
the largest kid porn ring in
history. Inside Operation
Candyman, the FBI's crusade to
sweep the Net clean of child
abuse. At a press
conference on March 18, attorney
general John Ashcroft brandished
a pointer in front of a map
marked with badges where FBI
field offices had made arrests.
The badges stretched from coast
to coast. "A new marketplace for
child pornography has emerged in
the dark corners of cyberspace,"
he said. "There, hidden in the
vastness of the Internet,
innocent boys and girls have
been targeted by offenders who
view them as sexual objects."
With the bureau under increasing
heat in the aftermath of 9/11,
the smashing of "the largest
child porn ring in history" made
headlines as far away as Iceland
and Vietnam...
