InternetPolicy.net

Internet prominent in US fraud complaints

2003 was the first year in which "Internet fraud" accounted for more than half of all fraud complaints filed in the United States, according to a report released this week by the US Federal Trade Commission. Kevin Poulsen noted in SecurityFocus News that "The Internet played a prominent role in 55 percent of all the fraud reports, up from 45 percent in 2002, and accounting for approximately $200 million in losses. The most popular Internet scams reported were online auction rip-offs -- 15 percent of the cases -- and spammy quit-your-job-and-work-at-home-for-big-bucks swindles, which made up nine percent of the complaints... The report does not attempt to identify how thieves obtained the data needed to steal more than 200,000 consumers' identities, but security holes and data leaks remained a grim e-commerce reality in 2003..."

ITU Workshop on Internet Governance

The Action Plan approved last month at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) included a request that the UN Secretary General "set up a working group on Internet governance, in an open and inclusive process...to investigate and make proposals for action, as appropriate, on the governance of Internet by 2005."

To assist the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in preparing its input to the process, a Workshop on Internet Governance will be held 26-27 February at ITU headquarters in Geneva. Invitations have been mailed out to some experts and all ITU member governments. Background materials and the agenda will be posted soon at http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/forum/intgov04/.

Since some governments want the ITU to regulate the Internet, this will be a very important process to monitor.

Powerline Internet comes to Africa

Direct On PC Ltd., a Nigerian ISP, has announced the launch of "Powernet," Africa's first always-on broadband Internet access service delivered to customers via existing electric powerlines.

Powernet's data transmission to home users is said to be at 300-800 MB/second (64KB/second backhaul). "Basic corporate" service is claimed to be at 1 GB/second - far, far higher than any verified PLC service known to us. Plug-and-play transmit/receive cards are available for desktop PCs, but for the time being, laptops and Macintoshes can only be supported through PC-based gateways. Since any electrical outlet can supply connectivity, local area networks can be created without any separate cables.

The managing director of Direct On PC, Sandeep Jayaswal, told the Daily Champion, a newspaper in Lagos, that Powernet does not cause interference. However, a white paper published last September by the BBC's Research Department after tests of two similar systems in England found that broadband powerline Internet had "demonstrable potential to cause interference to indoor reception of [radio] broadcasting" particularly in the shortwave band.

Nevertheless, this technology is able to increase the speed and affordability of Internet access in places with inadequate telecommunication networks, and that makes it a very exciting development.

Do web searches suppress controversy?

An article by Susan L. Gerhart in the latest issue of FirstMonday asks "Do Web search engines suppress controversy?" Ms. Gerhart checked to see if some well-known controversies were revealed in the search-engine responses to simple queries. She claims to have found that they were not. Her essay gives ideas on how to fix that.

Internet elections: Experts vote NO

The Security Peer Review Group, an expert panel assembled by the US Federal Voting Assistance Program to evaluate the Defense Department's Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE), says that voting via Internet has "fundamental vulnerabilities" and "the best course is not to field the SERVE system at all. Because the danger of successful, large-scale attacks is so great, we reluctantly recommend shutting down the development of SERVE immediately and not attempting anything like it in the future until both the Internet and the world's home computer infrastructure have been fundamentally redesigned, or some other unforeseen security breakthroughs appear... [A] 'successful' trial of SERVE in 2004 is the top of a slippery slope toward even more vulnerable systems in the future..."

Click here to read the full report, which is a harsh and detailed critique of all forms of Internet-based voting, relevant to all countries.

Internet sale of fresh semen

The Scotsman reports that a lesbian has given birth in Liverpool to a healthy baby after buying fresh semen last year on the Internet. John Gonzalez says this is the second live birth reported by same-sex couples using www.ManNotIncluded.com, his website in Scotland. The sperm used reportedly cost the woman 1500 British pounds.

ManNotIncluded.com bills itself as "the world's only confidential and anonymous sperm donation service." The issue of anonymity seems to be especially controversial. Customers may learn about the donor's race, eye color, height, weight, social background and educational achievement - but not his name. Scottish law apparently gives purchasers of frozen sperm the right to learn the donor's identity. However, ManNotIncluded.com sells fresh sperm and argues that this is exempt from the identity-disclosure law. Medical authorities say they will try to close this loophole soon so that Internet sales of fresh and frozen semen are similarly regulated.

Dilemma: wiretaps vs. Internet telephony

Stephen Labaton writes in today's New York Times about the conflict between "two cherished policies of the Bush administration" - deregulating major industries and expanding the government's ability to intercept phonecalls. As noted here earlier, the Justice Department and US intelligence agencies are upset with the Federal Communications Commission for treating Internet telephony as a minimally regulated "information service" rather than as "telecommunications" because that makes it harder to conduct wiretaps:

"In a series of unpublicized meetings and heated correspondence in recent weeks, officials from the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration have repeatedly complained about the commission's decision in 2002 to classify high-speed Internet cable services under a looser regulatory regime than the phone system... As a result of the commission's actions, said John G. Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general who has played a lead role for the Justice Department, some telecommunications carriers have taken the position in court proceedings that they do not need to make their networks available to federal agents for court-approved wiretapping. 'I am aware of instances in which law enforcement authorities have not been able to execute intercept orders because of this uncertainty,' Mr. Malcolm said in an interview last Friday...

"By contrast, some FCC officials and telephone industry executives say that if the commission buckles to the other agencies and forces the industry to take on a host of expensive obligations the development of promising new communications services may be stalled or squelched for years to come... 'What's most scary for industry and perhaps some people at the FCC is the notion that the architecture of the Internet will depend on the permission of the FBI,' said Stewart A. Baker, a former general counsel of the National Security Agency..."

Cato Institute lights a fire

Adam Thierer, director of the Cato Institute's telecommunications studies division, has written a screed entitled "Howard Dean's Plan for the Internet: Collectivism In, Property Rights Out." In it Thierer lambasts not just Dean but Lawrence Lessig, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, and anyone else questioning the commercialization of the Internet and intellectual property in general. That provoked bitter rejoinders from the likes of David Weinberger ("Inept Cato Analysis of Dean Net Policy"), David Isenberg ("Adam Thierer's latest blast - incompetent or dishonest?"), Howard Reingold ("Cato can't distinguish collectivism from collective action ") and Lessig ("Cato'$ Late$t"). We won't add our two cents, except to note that this is one of the hottest online policy debates we've seen in quite a while.

Tiscali blocks Dutch radio feeds

Radio Netherlands reports that Italian-owned ISP Tiscali has blocked ADSL access to webcasts from some of Holland's most popular commercial broadcasters: Radio 538, Radio Veronica, Sky Radio and Classic FM. Apparently their digital audio streams had become too popular, consuming more bandwidth than Tiscali thought was appropriate. What's next - limits on the number of queries that Tiscali customers can send to search engines?

Indians protest NY ban on Internet tobacco sales

According to an Associated Press report, the Seneca Indians are suing the State of New York for banning the sale of tobacco products via Internet. The Seneca claim that the state law is unconstitutional and interferes with the tribe's sovereignty. Approximately 7000 Seneca live on two reservations in the western part of New York. They earn a substantial income from licensing tobacco sellers, who are able to sell cigarettes at reduced prices because the Seneca do not collect state sales taxes on tobacco. (Tobacco sold to non-Indian customers will become subject to New York state taxes starting on 1 March 2004.) The Online Tobacco Retailers Association has also challenged the New York law.