Thanks--
WGA Removal
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=wga+removal
You can remove the phone home aspect of WGA without disturbing the
validation aspect of WGA. MSFT has futz around and hemmed and hawed as
usual after the discovery of the WGA phoning home so many times per day
saying lol they would cut back the number of times as if that makes a
difference.
MSFT Meeting with US DOJ in Washington DC June 1 and June 2
The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive
idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their
customers' online activities.
Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail
chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet
providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs--that is, if logs were
ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such
logs be kept.
http://news.com.com/Your+ISP+as+Net+watchdog/2100-1028_3-5748649.html
and more importantly see if you can get a straight answer from anyone in
a MSFT Securities chat as to what they did as a result of their
activities in Wahhington, D.C. on June 1 and June 2 meeting with DOJ and
it's agency FBI:
These people know what was done:
Ted Kummert, Corporate Vice President, Security, Access and Solutions
Division
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/kummert/default.mspx
Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/mnash/default.mspx
Pete Boden, director, MSN Security, Microsoft Corporation
Mike Howard, director of corporate security, Microsoft Corporation
Charlie McNerney, general manager, MSN Security, Microsoft Corporation
Brad SmithSenior Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary,
Legal & Corporate Affairs
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/bradsmith/default.msp
Mary E. SnappCorporate Vice President, Deputy General Counsel Law and
Corporate Affairs Department
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/marysn/default.mspx
Your ISP as Net watchdog
By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Your+ISP+as+Net+watchdog/2100-1028_3-5748649.html
Story last modified Thu Jun 16 06:42:31 PDT 2005
The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive
idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their
customers' online activities.
Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail
chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet
providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs--that is, if logs were
ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such
logs be kept.
In theory, at least, data retention could permit successful criminal and
terrorism prosecutions that otherwise would have failed because of
insufficient evidence. But privacy worries and questions about the
practicality of assembling massive databases of customer behavior have
caused a similar proposal to stall in Europe and could engender stiff
opposition domestically.
News.context
What's new:
The U.S. Department of Justice is mulling data retention rules that could
permit police to obtain records of e-mail, browsing or chat-room activity
months after ISPs ordinarily would have deleted the logs--if they were
ever kept in the first place.
Bottom line:
Data retention could aid criminal and terrorism prosecutions, but privacy
worries and questions about the practicality of assembling massive
databases of customer behavior could engender stiff opposition to the
proposal.
More stories on this topic
In Europe, the Council of Justice and Home Affairs ministers say logs
must be kept for between one and three years. One U.S. industry
representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Justice
Department is interested in at least a two-month requirement.
Justice Department officials endorsed the concept at a private meeting
with Internet service providers and the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, according to interviews with multiple people who were
present. The meeting took place on April 27 at the Holiday Inn Select in
Alexandria, Va.
"It was raised not once but several times in the meeting, very
emphatically," said Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry
Association, which represents small to midsize companies. "We were told,
'You're going to have to start thinking about data retention if you don't
want people to think you're soft on child porn.'"
McClure said that while the Justice Department representatives argued
that Internet service providers should cooperate voluntarily, they also
raised the "possibility that we should create by law a standard period of
data retention." McClure added that "my sense was that this is something
that they've been working on for a long time."
This represents an abrupt shift in the Justice Department's long-held
position that data retention is unnecessary and imposes an unacceptable
burden on Internet providers. In 2001, the Bush administration expressed
"serious reservations about broad mandatory data retention regimes."
The current proposal appears to originate with the Justice Department's
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, which enforces federal child
pornography laws. But once mandated by law, the logs likely would be
mined during terrorism, copyright infringement and even routine criminal
investigations. (The Justice Department did not respond to a request for
comment on Wednesday.)
"Preservation" vs. "Retention"
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file
that's no longer required for business reasons such as network
monitoring, fraud prevention or billing disputes. Companies do, however,
alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an
investigation--a practice called data preservation.
A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional
Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers
to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request
of a governmental entity."
"We were told, 'You're going to have to start thinking about data
retention if you don't want people to think you're soft on child porn.'"
--Dave McClure, president, U.S. Internet Industry AssociationChild
protection advocates say that this process can lead police to dead ends
if they don't move quickly enough and log files are discarded
automatically. Also, many Internet service providers don't record
information about instant-messaging conversations or Web sites
visited--data that would prove vital to an investigation.
"Law enforcement agencies are often having 20 reports referred to them a
week by the National Center," said Michelle Collins, director of the
exploited child unit for the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. "By the time legal process is drafted, it could be 10, 15, 20
days. They're completely dependent on information from the ISPs to trace
back an individual offender."
Collins, who participated in the April meeting, said that she had not
reached a conclusion about how long log files should be retained. "There
are so many various business models...I don't know that there's going to
be a clear-cut answer to what would be the optimum amount of time for a
company to maintain information," she said.
McClure, from the U.S. Internet Industry Association, said he
counter-proposed the idea of police agencies establishing their own
guidelines that would require them to seek logs soon after receiving
tips.
Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,
compared the Justice Department's idea to the since-abandoned Clipper
Chip, a brainchild of the Clinton and first Bush White House. Initially
the Clipper Chip--an encryption system with a backdoor for the federal
government--was supposed to be voluntary, but declassified documents show
that backdoors were supposed to become mandatory.
"Even if your concern is chasing after child pornographers, the packets
don't come pre-labeled that way," Rotenberg said. "What effectively
happens is that all ISP customers, when that data is presented to the
government, become potential targets of subsequent investigations."
A divided Europe
The Justice Department's proposal could import a debate that's been
simmering in Europe for years.
In Europe, a data retention proposal prepared by four nations said that
all telecommunications providers must retain generalized logs of phone
calls, SMS messages, e-mail communications and other "Internet protocols"
for at least one year. Logs would include the addresses of Internet sites
and identities of the correspondents but not necessarily the full content
of the communication.
In other a.. Top 10 MP3 players in Asia
b.. Road Trip 2006
c.. Getting over laptop loss
d.. News.com Extra: Human family tree's shallow roots
e.. Video: Microsoft's IE 7 Beta 3
Even after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration
criticized that approach. In November 2001, Mark Richard from the Justice
Department's criminal division said in a speech in Brussels, Belgium,
that the U.S. method offers Internet providers the flexibility "to retain
or destroy the records they generate based upon individual assessments of
resources, architectural limitations, security and other business needs."
France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden jointly submitted their
data retention proposal to the European Parliament in April 2004. Such
mandatory logging was necessary, they argued, "for the purpose of
prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of crime or criminal
offenses including terrorism."
But a report prepared this year by Alexander Alvaro on behalf of the
Parliament's civil liberties and home affairs committee slammed the idea,
saying it may violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
Also, Alvaro wrote: "Given the volume of data to be retained,
particularly Internet data, it is unlikely that an appropriate analysis
of the data will be at all possible. Individuals involved in organized
crime and terrorism will easily find a way to prevent their data from
being traced." He calculated that if an Internet provider were to retain
all traffic data, the database would swell to a size of 20,000 to 40,000
terabytes--too large to search using existing technology.
On June 7, the European Parliament voted by a show of hands to adopt
Alvaro's report and effectively snub the mandatory data retention plan.
But the vote may turn out to have been largely symbolic: The Council of
Justice and Home Affairs ministers have vowed to press ahead with their
data retention requirement.
