- BE - Anti-porn cop jailed for sex chat with girl +/-
(IOL) A Belgian police officer has been jailed for one year for an online sex chat with a 12-year-old girl. A judge in Gent found the 31-year-old man guilty on charges of child abuse, despite him never having touched the underage victim. The man was judged to have lured the girl into "improper conversations". Pornographic images of children were also discovered on his computer's hard drive. The man was dismissed from his position as an investigator with the Flemish police service. It emerged during the course of the trial that he had been attached to a special police unit responsible for tracing and convicting suspected Internet paedophiles.
- FR - Appel du parquet après la relaxe d'un Belge qui consultait des sites pédophiles +/-
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(AFP) Le parquet a fait appel de la relaxe d'un ressortissant belge de 35 ans qui consultait des sites pédophiles à l'espace multimédia de la mairie de sa ville. Le tribunal correctionnel de Villefranche-sur-Saône avait estimé que 'l'infraction n'est pas constituée sur le plan juridique'. Interpellé à son domicile, l'homme avait été jugé en comparution immédiate pour 'détention d'images de mineurs à caractère pornographique'. Les 10 et 15 octobre, il s'était rendu à l'espace multimédia de la mairie de Tarare où il avait à chaque fois consulté, et ce durant 'plusieurs heures', des sites pédophiles sur internet.
- PL - Hunting Kids +/-
(Warsaw Voice) The number of crimes involving the sexual abuse of minors in Poland has grown rapidly in recent years. Those exploring the problem of pedophilia believe that it may only be the tip of the iceberg. The Internet is the pedophile's main hunting ground for children. The number of pornographic websites involving children has been growing year by year. The 1990s saw a rapid development of the sex industry in Poland involving children. The Kid Protect Foundation is engaged in a struggle against pedophiles as part of the Stop Pedophiles campaign. The foundation has operated since June 2002; its objective is to prevent the use of the media, mainly the Internet, for purposes involving child pornography and pedophilic practices, and to protect children against sexual abuse. Poland's first Internet Monitoring Center operates a hotline, where cases involving violence and child pornography can be reported.
- SI - Protests greet Slovenian sentence for Bush hate mail +/-
(Reuters) Slovenian human rights activists condemned a court's decision to sentence a man for "terrorist" crimes for sending hate e-mail to President Bush. Tomi Sluga told the local court in the town of Murska Sobota he was drunk and only joking when he sent an e-mail to the White House web before a June 2001 Bush visit to the small Alpine state. "President, save the Earth, you ass, you will be killed in Ljubljana. Welcome!" the email read. The court found Sluga guilty of "endangering a protected person" and gave him a two-year suspended sentence, the first conviction under Slovenia's new anti-terrorism laws.
- US - 'Cyber Sweep' Nets 125 Arrests +/-
(Wired) US law-enforcement agents had arrested 125 suspects in a crackdown on Internet crimes ranging from hacking and software piracy to credit card fraud and selling stolen goods over the Internet. The investigation, begun Oct. 1 and dubbed Operation Cyber Sweep, involved police from Ghana to Southern California and uncovered 125,000 victims who had lost more than $100 million. Seventy indictments to date have led to arrests or convictions of 125 people, with more expected as the probe continues. see Press Release and Background - Examples of prosecutions (Department of Justice).
- US - Bush pushes for cybercrime treaty +/-
(CNET News.com) by Declan McCullagh. President Bush has asked the U.S. Senate to ratify the first international cybercrime treaty. In a letter to the Senate, Bush called the Council of Europe's controversial treaty 'an effective tool in the global effort to combat computer-related crime' and 'the only multilateral treaty to address the problems of computer-related crime and electronic evidence gathering.' Even though the United States is a nonvoting member of the Council of Europe, it has pressed hard for the cybercrime treaty as a way to establish international criminal standards related to copyright infringement, online fraud, child pornography and network intrusions. The U.S. Department of Justice says the treaty will eliminate 'procedural and jurisdictional obstacles that can delay or endanger international investigations.'
- US - Man gets "spam rage" over penis ad +/-
(Reuters) Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis. The man now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The object of the Californian's anger said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. He said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.
- AU - File-swap students convicted +/-
(Guardian) Three students in Sydney have been convicted of swapping music files over the internet, in the first case of its kind in the world. The students, Charles Kok Hau Ng, 20, Peter Tran, 19, and Tommy Le, 21, pleaded guilty to 68 copyright infringement charges. Ng and Tran were both given 18-month suspended sentences, while Ng and Le were also given 200 hours of community service. The trio set up the MP3/ WMA Land website which had an archive of 390 CDs and 1,800 tracks to download. Prosecutors said that 7 million people had visited the site, but were only able to turn up evidence of 58 music files distributed through it.
- TH - Bangkok's software piracy battle +/-
(BBC) Pirated software is easily available in Thailand, despite efforts to stop the illegal trade.
- US - Kazaa Launches Legitimacy Campaign +/-
(Washington Post) The world's largest Internet music-trading service launched a $1 million advertising campaign Tuesday designed to rally the public to pressure lawmakers and the entertainment industry to embrace digital file sharing as a legitimate distribution tool. The campaign is the latest push by the Kazaa file-sharing service and its parent company, Sharman Networks, to counter a multi-million-dollar legal and lobbying effort launched by music, software and movie firms convinced that peer-to-peer (P2P) services are a major source of online piracy. The ads invite readers and Kazaa's estimated 60 million users to "join the revolution" by proclaiming their love of Kazaa to "politicians, journalists, record labels, movie companies and friends." They also exhort the entertainment industry to embrace the "revolution" or get left behind as technology passes them by.
- Civil liberties groups demand halt to RFID +/-
(ZDNet UK) Over 30 civil liberties and privacy groups have demanded a suspension to the deployment of radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging systems until a number of issues surrounding the controversial technology have been addressed. These organisations, including Britain's Foundation for Information Policy Reseach and Privacy International, have backed a position statement on the use of RFID on consumer products.
- DE - Chaos Computer Club warnt vor Speicherung biometrischer Daten +/-
(Heise) Der Chaos Computer Club (CCC) warnt davor, biometrische Merkmale wie Fingerabdrücke oder Analysen einer Speichelprobe aller europäischen Bürger in einer zentralen Datenbank zu speichern. "Das Missbrauchspotenzial steht nach Ansicht des CCC in keinem Verhältnis zum möglichen Zugewinn bei der Verbrechensbekämpfung", sagte Club-Sprecher Andy Müller-Maguhn in Berlin. Die Fortschritte in der Verbrechensbekämpfung ließen sich auch mit einem "technisch deutlich weniger Demokratie gefährdenden System" realisieren.
- UK - Biometric cards will not stop identity fraud +/-
(New Scientist) A plan to introduce biometric ID cards in the UK will fail to achieve one of its main aims. The proposed system will do nothing to prevent fraudsters acquiring multiple identity cards. The home secretary, David Blunkett, said they are necessary to prevent identity fraud. Every resident would have to carry an ID card containing biometric information, such as an iris scan. Cards could then be checked against a central database to confirm the holder's identity. But Simon Davies, an expert in information systems at the London School of Economics and director of Privacy International, says the system would not stop people getting extra cards under different names. If he is correct, it could have far-reaching implications.
- UK - House of Lords passes 'Snoopers' Charter' +/-
(out-law.com) The UK's House of Lords has given way to Government pressure to pass legislation that would bring the so-called 'Snoopers' Charter' into force. It was "a dark moment in the history of the House of Lords," said human rights group Privacy International. The controversial new laws give public authorities - other than the police and intelligence agencies - access to personal data held by telcos and ISPs for periods of up to twelve months. They form part of a package of measures produced under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime & Security Act (ATCSA), which was enacted in the aftermath of the September 11th atrocities. This Act required the retention of communications data on the grounds that these were needed for the purpose of fighting terrorism. These data, retained on anti-terrorism grounds, will be accessible by provisions under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to a range of public authorities for purposes unconnected with terrorism.
- US - Big Employer Is Watching +/-
(Dow Jones WebReprint Service) Increasingly, companies do. In their drive to squeeze greater efficiency from staffers, a growing number of employers are embracing sophisticated electronic tracking systems to ensure their workers are at their desks and work stations when they are supposed to be. And while many blue-collar workers are used to punching a time clock, many of the new tracking systems are trained on white-collar, salaried employees.
- Global music sales continue to fall +/-
(Guardian) Things are going to get worse before they improve for a music industry brought to its knees by music piracy and file sharing. The Informa Media research predicts the value of global music sales will drop for the fourth year in a row to £16.5bn this year and will fall even further next year. The total number of CD sales, which fell for the first time in 2001, will continue to slide, dropping by 8% to 2.1 billion units in 2003. Online peer-to-peer piracy, counterfeit CDs, the end of the CD boom - when music fans updated their vinyl collections - and the rise of competing leisure products such as video games, mobile phones and DVDs have all been blamed for the industry's current crisis. However, the Informa analysis predicts a recovery will be under way by 2005 provided record labels can get to grips with piracy and support legal digital download services.
- ITU - Digital Access Index: World's First Global ICT Ranking +/-
(Press Release) The first global index to rank Information and Communication Technology (ICT) access has turned up some surprises. Slovenia ties France; and the Republic of Korea, usually not among the top ten in international ICT rankings, comes in fourth. Apart from Canada, ranked 10th, the top ten economies are exclusively Asian and European. The four Asian Tigers have made the greatest progress in ICTs over the last four years. The results suggest that English is no longer a decisive factor in quick technology adoption, especially as more content is made available in other languages.
- UNCTAD - E-Commerce and Development Report 2003 +/-
(UNCTAD) The E-Commerce and Development Report 2003 (ECDR 2003) analyses, from a development perspective, recent trends and advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), such as e-commerce and e-business, and examines their applications in developing countries.