contributed by iron river and laney
Biometric technology is on the verge of taking the Netherlands by storm - that is if club owners have anything to do with it. If clubs adopt this most expensive product, club goers will be forced to revoke their privacy rights in order to enter a club. Based on a smart card system, the technology scans for "criminal activity" in your past and can blacklist you during the sign in process if you have a spotty criminal record. Aside from the millions of implications a product such as this is sure to invoke, the mere fact that the registration process helps clubs gather highly sought after demographic data from club goers under the guise of keep clientele safe from undesirable riff raff is just plain wrong.

Wired

contributed by harvest
Over the past few weeks researchers have scrambled to test contest submissions, searching for attacks that were capable of defeating the organization's challenge. SDMI Executive Director Leonardo Chiariglione recently squelched the circulating rumors surrounding the contest's findings by issuing a public statement. Chiariglione revealed that of the five proposed technologies, three protection mechanisms, including both watermark and nonwatermark solutions, were able to withstand against attempted cracks. Of the remaining two successful attacks, one was not repeatable on additional music samples.

SDMI Press Release via Yahoo
ZDNet UK
Wired
Salon
The Washington Post

contributed by harvest
Jeffery Pollack, a conservative Republican and early proponent of mandatory Internet filtering software in schools, recently renounced his original stance on the necessity of site-blocking software after a study conducted by NetElection and Peacefire notified the staunch politico his own campaign site had been censored by Cyber Patrol software. Not surprisingly, spokespeople for Cyber Control continue to deny the survey's results, claiming the application does not block many of the candidate sites described in the study. I guess you never truly know what your position is on something until it directly affects you.

ZDNet
NetElection/Peacefire study

contributed by tan
The CyberSource Fraud 2000, a survey examining the views of businesses with ecommerce operations about the ever popular topic of online fraud, has recently been released. It's a wonder why you don't hear merchants complaining about this increasingly prevalent problem more often and attempting to find some type of solution. Obviously the safest answer would be to not store credit card numbers after a transaction, however in the interim, credit card companies and issuing banks could stand to up their efforts with smart-cards, working toward a system that doesn't encourage the storage of credit card credentials at the merchant's.

Newsbytes
CyberSource Fraud 2000 Survey

contributed by laney
The FBI has come to believe a computer in the electrical engineering department of Virginia Tech may have been involved in the web defacement of the Yankee's web site late last month. School authorities do not think a student was involved and instead believe the perpetrator may have just used one of the school's computers.

AP via CNET