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HavenWorks.com/secrets/archive/2002 |
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- Secrets Archive
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ARCHIVES NEWS Secret News History Archives Secrets Archives |
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- "Nameless
Juries Are on the Rise in Crime Cases." ... "It has
gained support from prosecutors, the courts and some legal experts. No
longer is the rationale simply that jurors must be shielded from threats
of retaliation. Supporters argue that anonymity protects jurors from being
badgered by reporters after their verdicts, and makes them feel more comfortable
about serving." ... "Critics, including defense lawyers and civil libertarians,
say the practice erodes the presumption of innocence before the trial begins.
Lawyers for news organizations add that the inability to interview jurors
after trials makes juries less accountable." (1, 2)
-By Adam Liptak -NYTimes
via -AltaVista-News
- "Voting
into the void: New touch-screen voting machines
may look spiffy, but some experts say they can't be trusted." ... "A fast-talking,
fact-toting woman who can recount dozens of stories of voting machines
going disastrously haywire, (computer science professor Rebecca) Mercuri
goes into a region whose election has been held up and proceeds to hold
forth. Mercuri tells everyone she can, from election judges to county supervisors
to the local media, that the supposedly "state-of-the-art" machines they've
all been sold are nothing but a "a bill of goods."" ... "Mercuri's chief
complaint with the touch-screen system is that its inner workings are often
a complete secret. When a voter touches the screen to make a choice, there
is no confirmation that the machine has actually registered the correct
selection. In the old punch-card and fill-in-the-circle paper systems,
voters can see their choice marked on paper. And in the event of a recount,
election officials can, as a last resort, manually count those slips of
paper. Since the new electronic systems leave no paper trail, there's no
chance of a recount." (1, 2,
3)
-By Farhad Manjoo -Salon
- 
OPINION
- "Can
You Trust Your Computer?" ... "Who should your computer
take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them,
not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large
media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies),
together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning
to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have
included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal."
... ""Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name, because the plan
is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you."
... "Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download
new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically
on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what
you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling
all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer
would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be
subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read
it yourself." -By Richard Stallman -NewsForge
via -CorpWatch.org
- "JudgeOrders
White House Papers' Release: Cheney Lawyers
to Ask Appeals Court to Keep Energy Task Force Records Secret." ... "The
Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, the plaintiffs in this case, are two of
several groups that have alleged that the administration improperly met
with private officials from the energy industry last year while shaping
its energy policy. Environmental groups say they were largely excluded
from the meetings." ... "The Bush administration has said repeatedly that
the separation of powers doctrine shields those documents from outside
review because they might show the administration's internal, deliberative
process." -By Neely Tucker
-WashingtonPost
-
"Rivals:
Microsoft is up to old tricks: Without protocols,
competing gadgets, software won't work as well on Windows." ... "As Microsoft
awaits court approval of its landmark antitrust settlement with the government,
the company has angered some competitors by tightly limiting the technical
data it promised to release." ... "In order to gain access, a company would
have to use Microsoft's "Passport" identity authentication system, then
request and sign two forms -- one of them promising secrecy -- just to
see the license terms and find how much Microsoft is charging for the information."
-AP via -CNN
Sniper
- "Secret
Military Spy Planes Enlisted in Hunt for Sniper."
... "The Pentagon agreed today to patrol the skies over the nation's capital
with secret surveillance planes — now used to combat drug lords in Colombia
and track military movements in North Korea — as part of a broadening effort
to catch the sniper in the Washington area." ... "While senior Pentagon
officials considered a range of aircraft, including unmanned drones like
the Predators used in Afghanistan and Navy P-3 Orion surveillance planes,
military officials settled on the unusual Army plane because of its technical
capabilities and because it blends in with civilian aircraft flying in
the Washington airspace." ... "The aircraft is a four-engine turbo-prop
DeHavilland DHC-7 equipped with an array of special sensors that can provide
high-resolution imagery as well as other detection capabilities." (1, 2)
-By Eric Lichtblau and Eric Schmitt -NYTimes
via -Google-News
- "Atomic
plans returned to Japan." ... "Documents hidden since
World War II showing Japan's plans for an atomic bomb have been returned
to the country, according to a newspaper report."
-BBC /News
- "The
Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.: Colombian
cartels have spent billions of dollars to build one of the world's most
sophisticated IT infrastructures. It's helping them smuggle more dope than
ever before." (1, 2,
3,
4)
-By
Paul Kaihla -Business2.0
Enron
- "White
House Could be Sued Over Cheney Advisers."
-By Don Van Natta Jr. -NYTimes
via -CBSnews/MarketWatch