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NSA: Redact by rewriting.
As reported recently in Secrecy News, "The National Security Agency has issued new guidance to assist officials in redacting (censoring) documents in Microsoft Word format and producing unclassified Adobe Portable Document (PDF) files without inadvertently disclosing sensitive information." (NSA: Redacting With Confidence by Steven Aftergood, SECRECY NEWS, Volume 2006, Issue No. 8 January 20, 2006.) Now, one person who has examined the NSA document says that "it suggest redaction by complete rewriting."
When redaction is done by creating a new document and pasting in old text, opportunities for misbehavior and errors abound. The NSA's suggestions do address one such issue: figures appearing in the wrong place. Continue reading
Privacy
In light of recent developments (the subpoena of search records from Yahoo and Google, the revelations of secret government spying), two recent stories examine the issue of privacy of research and reading on the net.
- After subpoenas, Net searches give some pause, By Katie Hafner, CNET News.com, Jan 24, 2006.
- Privacy for People Who Don't Show Their Navels, By JONATHAN D. GLATER, New York Times, January 25, 2006.
A bill you are not allowed to see or discuss??
Surely, I thought, they're not proposing passing a secret law. Surely they're not going to say that the citizenry isn't allowed to know what's in the law that Congress is considering. [but it turns out] ...I can know the contents of the bill Congress is debating, but only if I pay $10k to a private party, and only if I promise not to tell anybody what is in the bill or engage in public debate about it. Which brings us to the most interesting question of all: Are the members of Congress themselves, and their staffers, allowed to see the spec and talk about it openly? Are they allowed to consult experts for advice? Or are the full contents of this bill secret even from the lawmakers who are considering it?We've seen this before. Laws that are copyrighted or considered the property of a private company. (One comment to the Felten post above says that it is it's perfectly acceptable for the law to be private intellectual property in forty-seven states.) But this is worse. Felten says of a proposed law to "plug the analog hole":
"This is much worse than a claim of copyright. Copyright doesn't stop you from talking about what is in the document, or from rephrasing it in your own words. A copyrighted law can at least be debated. Here, they're claiming the (proposed) law is a trade secret and cannot be discussed at all."What are the implications? There are at least two: First, treatment of a bill as being proprietary could become a precedent for even more private control of what should be public information leading to even less access to information and even less government accountability. Second, the law itself deals with "a fundamental vulnerability in copy prevention schemes" (see: the analog hole WikiPedia) in a way that would effect the functionality of all hardware for all purposes -- even legal copying of public information (say files downloaded from govt. agencies) could, potentially, be disabled because of this. Continue reading
More on Google vs. DOJ
Declan McCullagh has a good, very short post that includes several useful links to more about the Justice Department subpoena of Google search records and why it is a privacy issue that should concern us.
Perhaps visits to a search engine can be thought of as somewhat akin to thumbing through a dictionary, or an encyclopedia, or a phone book. You'd want privacy in those cases, especially when doing financial or medical research. But because the Supreme Court has said you don't have privacy when your records are held by others, the virtual equivalent of thumbing-through information is available to curious prosecutors or divorce attorneys. Thanks a lot, Supremes...Continue reading
Forthcoming hearing on network neutrality to be webcast by committee
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will be holding a Full Committee Hearing on Network Neutrality on Tuesday, February 7, 2006. It will be webcast live:
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