Thursday, November 06, 2003

Benton Headline: MOST COUNTRIES' WEB SITES ARE IGNORED Most nations have their own official websites, but only 20 percent of people with Internet access ever use them, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday. In 2003, 173 of the UN's 191 member states had websites, while 18 countries, many in Africa, do not, the report added. Only a very few governments have opted to use e-government applications for transactional services or networking, and even fewer use it to support genuine participation of citizens in politics, the report states. In another ranking, Great Britain beat the US in terms of "e-participation" -- government willingness to interact and dialogue with citizens over the Internet. Report author Mark Stevenson highlights a particular initiative in the former Soviet Union: Estonia, for example, has a site called 'Today I Decide' at which people can propose, amend and vote on policy issues, he said. Officials then are required to consider those proposals. The report also says women and the poor have less access to the Internet, while security and privacy issues discourage use. Some governments use Internet services to cut red tape, but we see the Internet as advancing and consolidating transparency and democracy, says Jose Antonio Ocampo, the UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs. SOURCE: Associated Press; AUTHOR: Mark Stevenson http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_E_GOVERNMENT 5:24:21 PM    comment []

'DDoS' Attacks Still Pose Threat to Internet. By David McGuire, washingtonpost.com. 2:24:00 PM    comment []

Library of Congress Coca-Cola Fellowship for the Study of Advertising and World Cultures (thanks, Eszter!) 2:23:54 PM    comment []

Libraries may have to tell parents what kids borrow: Senate passes bill; Assembly gives early OK. By Amy Rinard And Richard P. Jones, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Public libraries would be required to tell parents of children under 16 what books, CDs, videotapes and other library materials their kids check out, under a bill approved by the Legislature Tuesday. With few exceptions, libraries now are prohibited from disclosing any records that indicate the identity of individuals who borrow library materials or use library services. . . . We're saying it's a parental right, said Rep. Sheryl Albers (R-Reedsburg), the author of the bill. But Rep. Marlin Schneider (D-Wisconsin Rapids), who used Assembly procedural rules to block final approval of the bill, said he thought the measure was terrible public policy. It's a major invasion of the right of privacy of children, he said. Children need to understand their rights are protected, and if government won't protect their rights nobody will. . . . In the Senate, Sen. Fred Risser (D-Madison) said children should be encouraged to be inquisitive, to use public libraries to learn more about any subject they're interested in, including some issues they may be unable or unwilling to discuss with their parents. I think we should encourage kids to use libraries, encourage their minds to be open to new ideas, Risser said. I don't know why we should have the public libraries be an investigative arm for parents. 12:23:56 PM    comment []

Weakness in Passphrase Choice in WPA Interface, by Robert Moskowitz. Anyone with knowledge of the PSK can determine any PTK in the ESS through passive sniffing of the wireless network, listening for those all-important key exchange data frames. Also, if a weak passphrase is used, for example, a short passphrase, an offline dictionary attack can readily guess the PSK. Since the common usage will be a single PSK for the ESS, once this is learned by the attacker, the attacker is now a member of the ESS, and the whole ESS is compromised. The attacker can now read and forge any traffic in the ESS. 12:23:52 PM    comment []

Microsoft to offer bounty on hackers, by Robert Lemos , CNET News.com. Not so much ''hackers'' as virus writers (and releasers). They're after the Blaster/Lovsan author. We'll see. 12:23:49 PM    comment []

Napster, Penn State reportedly in music pact (Reuters). Penn State issued a statement late Wednesday that its president, Graham Spanier, and the president of a leading online music service would announce a deal in Anaheim, Calif., on Thursday, to provide digital music to one of the largest student bodies in the country--at no cost to students. People familiar with the matter said Napster was the partner in the venture. Financial details were not immediately available. Spanier is scheduled to attend a conference on peer-to- peer file sharing in Anaheim, along with Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. 12:23:45 PM    comment []

Websites get legal place in national archive, by Donald MacLeod, The Guardian. The Legal Deposit Law puts the growing number of electronic publications on the same footing as printed newspapers, books and documents which have been collected by law since 1911 for the use of scholars by the British Library and five other deposit libraries. The existing print legal deposit arrangements have enabled the British Library alone to collect and save, in perpetuity for the nation, more than 50 million items. In the past year, the library has acquired 95,286 books, 248,686 journal issues, 1,994 maps and 2,357 newspaper titles through legal deposit. But that is likely to be dwarfed by the scale of potential electronic deposits: a study last year forecast a massive increase in online publications, predicting a near quadrupling (from 52,000 to 193,000) in the number of electronic journal issues published in the UK between 2002 and 2005. There are nearly 3 million websites with ".uk" in their titles and although many are of merely passing interest, many will be fascinating to future historians - the websites that sprang up after the September 11 attacks but have not disappeared, for instance. 12:23:38 PM    comment []

The Smoking Gun has up excerpts from the statement of defendant on plea of guilty (i.e., confession) of Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River Killer. 9:23:05 AM    comment []