"Geri Agalia doesn't appear to leave less of a data trail than most Americans. She has a phone in her name, a bank account, utility bills, a mortgage and a credit card. But the stay-at-home mom and part-time student is among a select and ever-shrinking group of the digitally privileged -- her name does not appear on Google."

"Internet users hoping to protect their privacy by using anti-virus software, Web anonymizers, false identities and disabled cookies on their computer's Web browser have something new to worry about %96 a patent filed by the National Security Agency (NSA) for technology that will identify the physical location of any Web surfer."

"... Anonymity on the Internet is a heated subject. It's also amazing the cross section of interested parties, too. We have the old-school cypherpunks, and the hacker community on both sides of the law. There are teams of lawyers, and of course, governments everywhere trying to protect the average person's anonymity and privacy. And then we have the average Internet user himself, bombarded with alerts and warnings but is unsure what he should do."

"From www.epic.org: The ICANN is requesting public comments on a new WHOIS policy. Under ICANN's current contracts with the registries and registrars, the WHOIS domain name contact information, which includes names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, must be public."

"... Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest."

"... Anonymity is a cornerstone of the state's abuse prevention efforts. It is a crime to reveal the name of anyone who reports abuse. But within days of calling the hotline in August, Jones found herself in a face-to-face confrontation with the man she'd accused."

""You can get online to research a person and find out who they are before even meeting them," says Bridget Koza of Colonia, N.J. "It's never really a blind date anymore.""

"Three out of four Korean Internet users think using real names on Web sites will be effective in preventing cyber crimes such as libel according to a survey by Korea Gallup... The system requires Internet users to provide their real names, instead of aliases, and their resident registration numbers when they make postings on the Web."

"Federal prosecutors on Friday appealed a federal judge's decision to lift a gag order on librarians who received an FBI demand for records about library patrons under the Patriot Act."

"In a bid to crack down on cyber crimes, Korea's major portals are to introduce a "real-name system" by the end of this year. The Ministry of Information and Communication unveiled a plan yesterday to require Internet users to provide identification, such as their real names and resident registration numbers (the Korean equivalent of U.S. social security numbers), before being allowed to make posts online."

"In the second report looking at privacy and the internet, Dan Simmons examines whether it is possible to be totally anonymous and asks if this is really a desirable thing."

"She has a strong personality, attached to strong opinions and an outspoken way of expressing herself. She expressed those strong opinions on the forum I moderate on STLtoday.com, using a pseudonym. Like many others online, she felt free to toss around insults from behind that cloak of anonymity. That was a problem: The forum isn't intended as a shooting gallery."

"Only a very naive person would believe that their identity is secure when using the internet, although most of us would like to think that our rights to privacy are protected in law. Not so, according to a ruling of the Dublin Court in favor of the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA), the Irish equivalent of the RIAA."

"A defamation lawsuit filed by a Smyrna Town Council member angered by anonymous criticism on the Internet placed the state Supreme Court on Wednesday in the middle of a clash between the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and a citizen's right to defend his reputation."

"A Smyrna Town Council member who claims he was libeled by an Internet "blogger" should be required to show evidence of defamation before he can force disclosure of the blogger's identity, the state Supreme Court was told today."

"Singapore: Prepaid phone cards are seen as so harmless and convenient that any mobile phone user can drop by the local 7-11 store to get one for about $25. But it will not be so for long."

"SHARMAN Networks chief executive Nikki Hemming wasn't in court to see the music industry deliver its body blow to file sharing, but there's no doubt Justice Wilcox's ruling on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network is a major win for the big record companies. It was quickly clear to those crowding court 21C in Sydney's Queen's Square complex that the judgment represented a victory for the record labels, which have been fighting peer-to-peer around the world."

"Well in advance of next year's legislative session, an effort is under way to have Maine follow the example of neighboring New Hampshire and a half dozen other states that allow adult adoptees to have access to their original birth certificates... Maine's law would be similar to one that took effect Jan. 1 in New Hampshire. It gives adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates if they were born in the Granite State, complete a request form and pay $12 research fees."

""What's worse than a Web site that, for free, provides oodles of personal information about you and your family to anyone who wants it? "How about that same site adding a blog feature that allows people -- former classmates, ex-lovers, disgruntled co-workers -- to discuss you online?" asks Lazarus. And that's exactly what it does"

"The town of Colonie will pay $21,000 to a former volunteer paramedic who filed a federal lawsuit after police detectives used criminal subpoenas to identify him as the author of an anonymous e-mail accusing town officials of misconduct and mismanagement."

""The components are now being assembled piece by piece," he says. "Each piece is justified in its own right by advocates but when viewed as a whole the edifice could amount to total surveillance" ... "The day of the data aggregator is upon us" ... This is often called the "biographic footprint" "The technology now exists to tie identity to the very human tissue of an individual through biometrics,""

"...The lawsuit challenges the National Security Letter (NSL) provision of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the FBI to demand a range of personal records without court approval, such as the identity of a person who has visited a particular web site on a library computer, or who has engaged in anonymous speech on the Internet."

"ONE of Australia's worst child sex predators is living in a northwest Melbourne suburb, only metres from two schools and a sports ground. The Sunday Herald Sun has tracked Charles Alan Smith, 72, to an address in Sunbury where he is living with his daughter and son-in-law. Smith is one of five interstate pedophiles secretly living in Victoria with the State Government's approval."

"Private information about anonymous online critics was protected this week when a Utah man dropped his lawsuit against people who had allegedly made critical comments about him on message boards and blogs, including the Yahoo! SCOX board. The plaintiff in the case had asked the court to let him use the subpoena process to unmask his anonymous "John Doe" critics."

"Most job hunters never even know when they've lost out on an interview because of "digital dirt." That could include your chat-room tirade on an ex-roommate's sex life or that photo of you and college buddies smoking something that's not exactly tobacco - stuff a prospective employer finds by Googling your name that causes her to scratch you off the "to call in" list."

"Japan's communications and Internet services industry is planning to provide police information on people who post messages suggesting they may be close to committing suicide. Four communications industry groups have worked out guidelines for submitting the information, which could include the names and addresses of such people, Kyodo news agency reported on Thursday."

"Now information designers can make it easier for people to protect themselves online. The developers of Tor, a software tool for communicating anonymously online, today announced the Tor graphical user interface (GUI) competition. Entrants will create a usable and aesthetically pleasing GUI for the Tor program, which will allow people to install and configure Tor easily and monitor the software's performance while it's running."

"Utah - A case brought in a US district court by a Utah man threatens to undermine the First Amendment right to speak anonymously on issues of public concern. In Merkey v. Yahoo SCOX et al., the plaintiff requested an expedited process for serving subpoenas that would unmask anonymous "John Doe" critics who participated in a discussion of another court case, in which Utah-based technology company The SCO Group, Inc., is suing IBM."

"A Pierre doctor is under investigation for taking inappropriate and compromising photos of an anesthetized patient during surgery at St. Mary's Healthcare Center... According to the affidavit in support of the request for a search warrant, from several interviews conducted by the detectives, Sanchez allegedly took a photo using his cellular telephone of a nude patient who was under anesthetic."

"... some in the poetry community were infuriated by Cordle's assertions, he said, and demanded that [Domains By Proxy] reveal his identity. And while the circumstances of what happened are in dispute, the company decided to cancel Cordle's DBP account and make his information public."

"Imagine if the law permitted the people who service your computer to share all the personal information on your hard drive with the police, without your consent and without a search warrant... Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the respondent, Robert Westbrook, arguing that citizens have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their computers, and that their Fourth Amendment rights don't disappear when a computer is delivered to a technician for servicing."

"In what's certain to become one of, if not the, major discussion papers of the year, in Measuring the DMCA Against the Darknet, Fred von Lohmann picks up where Microsoft computer scientists Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado and Bryan Willman left off in their The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution.Below is von Lohmann's complete paper, with footnotes..."

"The Malaysian government is to put a stop to the anonymous use of mobiles. From the end of the year, people using a prepaid service will have to register their details with phone companies."

"The controversial system that requires users' to use their real names when posting on the Internet, recently proposed in South Korea, was first proposed in China three years ago. The system would require that many users register their real names when posting information on websites. Sixty-five colleges already require their BBS users to register by name in China."

"A federal lawsuit claims officials of an upstate town issued five false criminal subpoenas to make Time Warner Cable identify the RoadRunner e-mail subscribers who were anonymously criticizing emergency services."

"Whoever won the $93.4 million Powerball jackpot on Thursday can expect life to change... Lance Ross, corporate communications director for the New Mexico Lottery Authority, said the lottery releases the winner's name, hometown and how the money will be received. That's all the information that can be released under New Mexico public records law... McClean said that even releasing primary information can be harmful. She said many of her clients lived in small towns, so when their information was released, people immediately knew who they were."

"In a closely watched case governing Internet privacy, a federal appeals court has reinstated a criminal case against an e-mail provider accused of violating wiretap laws. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 5-2 vote, ruled on Thursday that an e-mail provider who allegedly read correspondence meant for his customers could be tried on federal criminal charges."

"Briefly buoyed by their Supreme Court victory on file sharing, Hollywood and the recording industry are on the verge of confronting more technically sophisticated opponents. At a computer security conference in Las Vegas last month, an Irish software designer described a new version of a peer-to-peer file-sharing system that he says will make it easier to share digital information anonymously and make detection by corporations and governments far more difficult."

"DELETE isn't enough anymore. Consider the case of Robert M. Johnson, the former Newsday publisher who, prosecutors allege, used a software program called Evidence Eliminator to rid his computers of child porn. As anyone who watches shows like "CSI" can attest, pressing "delete" makes files invisible, perhaps, but it doesn't make them gone. Making files gone has become a booming industry unto itself."

"A lawsuit filed by a Smyrna town council member who claims he was defamed by an anonymous Internet blogger threatens the right of citizens to criticize elected officials, according to free-speech advocates. A coalition of national public-interest groups has joined the legal battle over the identity of a blogger who posted allegedly defamatory statements about town councilman Patrick Cahill."

"The Korean government plans to replace the mandatory usage of resident registration numbers in cyberspace with new individual identification numbers late this year. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) said Thursday that it will finalize a new format in October with the aim of launching it late this year."

"Fresh from its victory in the Supreme Court Grokster case, Hollywood faces a new Internet threat -- the rise of "darknets," or private, encrypted networks that allow the anonymous exchange of music, movies and other digital files. The entertainment industry has dismissed these hidden networks as a risk because they lack the massive reach of a file-swapping service like Kazaa, which has been downloaded 378 million times and enables the exchange of billions of songs, movies and software."

"A person who posted Internet messages criticizing a Delaware politician's leadership skills has a right to remain anonymous, Public Citizen urged the Supreme Court of Delaware today in a "friend of the court" brief. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware also joined the friend of the court brief."

"... The wave of cyber violence focuses on bulletin boards and news articles that present groundless criticism and fake stories as if they were true. As cyber violence continues to snowball, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) is considering introducing a real-name system for online users in October. However, Kim Young-hong, staff of the Citizens' Action Network, said that if the real-name system is adopted, it will cause many more serious privacy breaches."

"INTERNET rebels have begun preliminary testing of a new weapon that threatens to scuttle efforts to stop illicit online music swapping. Internet privacy activists at Freenet Project posted word on their website that they were looking for other users to test a refined version of "darknet" software designed to keep file swappers anonymous."

"Internet rebels have begun testing a new weapon that threatens to scuttle efforts to stop illicit online music swapping. Internet privacy activists at Freenet Project posted word on their website that they were looking for savvy programmers to test a refined version "darknet" software designed to keep file swappers anonymous."

"TAMPA - Top brass at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, growing weary of Web site postings they say include racist and sexist comments, have filed a lawsuit to identify the authors. Critics of the suit say the top brass are more worried about negative comments made about them. Copies of several postings were included in the lawsuit filed Friday. The suit, filed against one or more John Does it says are Hillsborough deputies, asks for an injunction to stop anonymous deputies from posting messages on www.leoaffairs.com."

"Lawyers for controversial vitamin entrepreneur Dr Matthias Rath have won the Cape High Court's permission to search computers belonging to a former Rath employee. Rath claims natural health practitioner Anthony Rees is conducting an Internet "smear campaign" against him."