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<p>WASHINGTON — The government disclosed Thursday it requested and won approval for a record 1,228 warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies, a reflection of aggressive efforts to prevent terror attacks in the United States.</p>

Inside Cisco's eavesdropping apparatusBy Declan McCullagh April 21, 2003, 4:00 AM PT Cisco Systems has created a more efficient and targeted way for police and intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on people whose Internet service provider uses their company's routers. The company recently published a proposal that describes how it plans to embed "lawful interception" capability into its products. Among the highlights: Eavesdropping "must be undetectable," and multiple police agencies conducting simultaneous wiretaps must not learn of one another. If an Internet provider uses encryption to preserve its customers' privacy and has access to the encryption keys, it must turn over...

Non-Contemporaneous Probation Violations A little background, I am an independent computer consultant. My latest position was at the Washington DC Superior Court System in the nations capitol. I was the lead consultant in re-building the Court Finance and Remittance System (CFARS). This system collects many of the fees/fines/escrow and other transactions the court undertakes on a daily basis. The system accounts for tens of thousands of dollars of transactions daily. My current concern is multiple jurisdictional court-to-court computer linkages, which are becoming more common because of advances in technology. What is found in the linkages may result in many small...

Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries -- apparently without their consent or knowledge -- allowing myriad federal agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States. A suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint Inc., collects the information abroad and sells it to U.S. government officials in three dozen agencies, including immigration investigators who've used it to arrest illegal immigrants. The practice broadens a trend that has an information-hungry U.S. government increasingly buying personal data on Americans and foreigners alike from commercial vendors...

MONTEREY PARK, Calif. -- Every public computer inside this city's library has a new warning taped to its screen. Beware, the message says, anything you read is now subject to secret scrutiny by federal agents. "We felt strongly that this had to be done," said librarian Linda Wilson. "The government has never had this kind of power before. It feels like Big Brother." Wilson is not accustomed to protest. Her days are spent quietly tending to aisles of books in this immigrant community near Los Angeles. But now she is at the forefront of an unusual rebellion. Across the country,...

Librarians Use Shredder to Show Opposition to New F.B.I. Powers By DEAN E. MURPHY SANTA CRUZ, Calif., April 4 — The humming noise from a back room of the central library here today was the sound of Barbara Gail Snider, a librarian, at work. Her hands stuffed with wads of paper, Ms. Snider was feeding a small shredding machine mounted on a plastic wastebasket. First to be sliced by the electronic teeth were several pink sheets with handwritten requests to the reference desk. One asked for the origin of the expression "to cost an arm and a leg." Another sought...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Intermediate-size Nevada casinos will have to file suspicious-activity reports on certain cash transactions beginning Tuesday, Nevada gaming regulators announced. The decision comes after the U.S. Treasury Department adopted anti-money laundering rules in September as part of the government's war on terrorism. Those rules require casinos that win more than $1 million per year from gamblers to file the suspicious activity reports with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a Michigan-based federal data repository. Nevada regulators had hoped Treasury officials would exempt state casinos from the new suspicious-activity requirements, but the Nevada Gaming...

<p>Terrorists are on the loose in New Jersey and some have been secretly locked up, the state's anti-terror czar said Wednesday night as U.S. forces massed to depose Iraq's Saddam Hussein.</p> <p>"Yes," said the state counter-terrorism chief, Sid Caspersen, on New Jersey 101.5 FM radio when asked if terrorists were afoot in the Garden State.</p>

Go to www.google.com then type in your phone number (separated by hyphens, including area code) and click on Google Search. If your phone number is listed it will show your name and address and give you two map options. Yahoo and MapQuest. See how accurate the map is to your home. VERY SCARY!!! Any person wishing to discover the physical location of a phone number, be it a home or business address, could use this feature to locate a physical street address, and receive directions on how to get there from anywhere in the country. In the age of the...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) --The head of a controversial airline passenger-screening program sought to ease concerns that the government would scrutinize travelers' financial and criminal records before letting them board.</p> <p>While the Transportation Security Administration will hire private data aggregators to confirm travelers' identities and screen out possible hijackers, the agency will not view credit records, traffic violations or other personal data, Admiral James Loy said.</p>

Accounting Web: Leading tax preparation software companies Intuit (TurboTax) and H&R Block (TaxCut) may be producing software that puts customer tax data at risk, according to some data security experts. Both TurboTax and TaxCut leave taxpayer data files unencrypted and thus unprotected from hackers, and some people are concerned about the possibility of identity theft. Security Firm PivX Solutions has issued a warning about the hacker potential. Here's how the tax information is stored: TurboTax stores taxpayer information in files that end in a .tax extension. These files, while not readable by a standard word processing program, can be opened...

Fashion designers from New York to Milan have filled the runways in recent weeks with all the latest Spring looks. Hemlines are up, heel heights are down and pink is all the rage. But regardless of what you think of this season's haute couture you should be made aware of a trend that's catching on... it could make you think twice before buying new clothes. Tiny specks capable of tracking virtually every single item are now being imbedded by manufacturers. This Orwellian technology, called RFID (radio frequency ID) will now be used by Italian clothing designer Benetton in the form...

<p>LAWRENCE, Kansas (AP) --Jerome Dobson worries that 1984 may be just around the corner. Dobson, a University of Kansas research professor and president of the American Geographical Society, is concerned that technical advances carry the potential for bringing about George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a society that destroys privacy. This new threat, says Dobson -- a respected leader in the field of geographic information technologies -- is "geoslavery."</p>

David will take on Goliath, Mar. 13, as Southern Golden Gate Estates property owner Jesse Hardy fights the state of Florida for 160 acres of land he has called home for 27 years.Located in what is called the "Hole in the Donut," the property is part of the state's 55,000-acre buy-out to restore natural water flows to the SGGE, once slated for development.Hardy says his property is not necessary to the restoration project and will not be adversely affected by it."I'm not against any of the environmentalists' work to re-hydrate the Southern Golden Gate Estates," he says. "I'm all for...

WASHINGTON--The U.S. Defense Department has awarded millions of dollars to more than two-dozen research projects that involve a controversial data-mining project aimed at compiling electronic dossiers on Americans. Nearly 200 corporations and universities submitted proposals to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, according to government documents brought to light by a privacy group Thursday. John Poindexter, who oversees the agency's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, approved 26 of them last fall, including grants to the University of Southern California, the Palo Alto Research Center, and defense contractor Science Applications International. Over the last few months, TIA has become a lightning...

Say he moved in - and killed mom By ROBIN HAAS and RICHARD WEIR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS Houseguest Tony Sexton confessed to killing Marie Rogers on Valentine's Day. A 33-year-old drifter has been busted for killing a Queens woman after her daughter invited him into their home - and he became the guest from hell, police said yesterday. Tony Sexton, who claimed to be a poet, confessed to detectives how he beat and suffocated Marie Rogers, 57, on Valentine's Day, wrapped her body in a plastic couch cover and stashed it in the back of her car, police said....

Piscataway gets OK to condemn farmland December 3, 2002 By Patrick Jenkins, Star-Ledger Staff pjenkins@starledger.com 732-634-3607 To submit a Letter to the Editor: eletters@starledger.com The future of the Cornell Dairy Farm was decided yesterday when a state judge granted Piscataway the power to condemn property that has been at the center of a bitter, three-year legal battle between the Halper family and township officials. Superior Court Assignment Judge Robert Longhi rejected arguments by Halper attorney John J. Reilly to dismiss the condemnation proceeding. Longhi restated his ruling from June 2000 that Piscataway had a legitimate purpose in taking the 75-acre...

<p>New York officials will soon be heading to London for a firsthand look at a controversial new program to limit traffic by charging motorists $8 to drive into the central city during rush hours, officials said yesterday.</p> <p>"We're watching it with interest," said Tom Cocola, a spokesman for the Transportation Department. "We'll see how it goes."</p>

Sunday, February 16, 2003 The 'terahertz' camera at work: This man is fully clothed.   Voyeurs take note: a portable, cheap camera that can see through objects and clothing may be available for sale to common folk in as little as five years, say British-based space researchers.The camera, built by a European Space Agency-funded team working at a lab in central England, could one day be used to find skin cancer or hidden weapons, reveal wounds beneath animal fur or bandages, spot forged works of art, even pierce through fog.The technology was unveiled last fall, but it was just...

  Feds Look to Expand Electronic Surveillance   Confidential proposal calls for increased monitoring of private e-mail messages, Web surfing, and other online activities. Kyle Stock, Medill News Service Monday, February 10, 2003 WASHINGTON--A confidential document leaked by the Department of Justice Friday calls for laws to expand the government's right to read private e-mail messages and monitor Web surfing, and privacy rights advocates are crying foul. Drafted by Attorney General John Ashcroft, the 120-page "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" would greatly inflate the powers afforded by the controversial Patriot Act, pushed through Congress after the September 11...