Canada and EU agree to spy on passengers
international |
rights, freedoms and repression |
other press 
Monday October 03, 2005 19:10
by R. Isible
EU Parliament over-ruled by EU Commission
AlertNet (sponsored by Reuters) reports that despite disagreement by the European Parliament an agreement has been signed between the EU and Canada allowing the routine exchange between the two countries of private citizens details.
This story is interesting not just because it shows that terrorism is being used as an excuse to interfere further with our privacy, but also because it demonstrates concretely how the democratically elected European Parliament is over-ruled in practical matters by the non-elected European Commission.
Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Data retention is no solution!
The European ministers of Justice and the European Commission want to keep all telephone and internet traffic data of all 450 million Europeans. If you are concerned about this plan, please sign the petition.
http://www.dataretentionisnosolution.com/
Brokering the peace
The UN has been wrestling over who should run the internet for a number of years. It was one of the issues which divided nations at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva two years ago.
The second phase of the UN conference is due to take place in Tunisia from the 16 to 18 November.
Viviane Reding, European Commissioner
Currently a California-based group called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is the nearest thing to a ruling body.
The private company was set up by the US Department of Commerce to oversee the domain name and addressing systems, such as country domain suffixes. It manages how net browsers and e-mail programs direct traffic.
Icann was to gain its independence from the Department of Commerce by September 2006. But in July the US said it would "maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file".
America's determination to remain the ultimate purveyor of the internet has angered other countries which believe it is time to come up with a new way of regulating the digital traffic of the 21st century.
In the face of opposition from countries such as China, Iran and Brazil, and several African nations, the US is now isolated ahead of November's UN summit.
The row threatens to overshadow talks on other issues such as bringing more people online and tackling spam e-mail.
Secret code 'traces copies'
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_1819331,00.html
San Francisco - A secret code embedded in many colour laser jet printers allows the US government and any other organisation capable of reading the cipher to identify when the copies were made and on which particular machine, according to research conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The San Francisco-based privacy organisation said it had detected almost invisible patterns of yellow dots on every document printed on the affected machines that could indicate when and where the print was made.
Among the copiers found to include the secret yellow dots are ones made by Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, HP, Konica/Minolta, Kyocera, Lexmark, Ricoh, Tektronix/Toshiba and Xerox.
The foundation cautioned that though it had deciphered the code on Xerox machines, it had not done the same for the yellow dots found on other copiers, but that it was likely that they too represented a sophisticated document tracking system.
This is done, AP says, to foil currency counterfeiters, but could just as easily be used by governments to track down criminals or dissidents.
....
But although the article doesn’t mention it, I assume these tracking codes could also allow people to track down a suspect, by looking at the serial number and following the distribution of that printer. Unless the purchaser chose to cover his tracks, it shouldn’t be too hard to trace the printer through the country, town, retailer and credit card receipt. (With the time stamp included, it should be possible to track down the customer even if the end user is in a public printshop.) I’m guessing here, but it all seems plausible.
above from
http://loosewire.typepad.com/blog/2005/10/how_to_trace_th.html
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