Tech News

Technology that claims to simply identify illicit images on PCs has attracted the interest of Australian cops. The software, developed in an Australian University, might eventually be used to screen PCs during border inspections.

Compared to breath test tools used by the police in a different context, the software - developed at Perth's Edith Cowan University in association with local police from Western Australia - is undergoing beta testing.

Described as Simple Image Preview Live Environment (SImPLE), the application is designed to be easy to use by law enforcement officers, even those with few computer skills. The main application of the technology is said to be hunting for images of child abuse though other application, such as border screening of computers, are under review.

The software runs off a Linux-bootable CD that can be put into the CD-ROM drive of a PC to load up a separate environment without affecting anything already on the PC. Copies of potentially interesting evidence are written to a DVD- writer.

Evidence obtained through the tool is admissible in court, at least in Australia.

Australian scientists hope to sell the software to law enforcement agencies worldwide following its release, scheduled for next February. The application is only capable of searching for dodgy content in existing files, not for deleted or partially overwritten files, unlike more powerful forensic tools.

Its developers say the tool will cut down on the workload faced by computer forensic specialists by allowing front line cops to perform a screening role. That might be good for the needs of law enforcement but it might encourage a stop and search culture of computers, particularly at border control, that is sure to raise objections from civil liberties activists and result in more random searches.

The Protect Our Children Act of 2008, S. 1738, signed into law this week by President Bush, allows ISPs to compare the "hash mark" - a unique digital signature - of each image file (even video) or document passing through its system with a list of the hash marks of known child porn images, and to report any hits to the FBI or other appropriate government agency.

Digital Entertainment has come up with a gadget known as CopyRouter, which ISPs could place in their data stream. According to an article on msnbc.com, CopyRouter's function is to compare the hash mark of each file passing through the ISP's computer system with the government's list, but it also takes the further step of blocking any flagged files it detects and substituting a file provided by law enforcement which contains a warning,  The hardware also has the capability of reporting the attempt to access the file to the government, together with the IP address of the file's intended recipient.

CopyRouter uses deep packet inspection, which MSNBC which can detect hash marks in real-time as the data is flowing through the system. Brilliant Digital claims that its unit can detect the hash mark of an encrypted file for comparison with the hit list.

Now, if it were simply the ISP itself that decided to use CopyRouter or some other child-porn detection software or hardware, and it made its users aware that it intended to scan all files flowing through its system, that would not present any constitutional problems. But there are a few flies in the ointment.

But if the ISP does its snooping on the sly, without informing its customers, that's clearly an invasion of privacy - and if it did so at the request of some government agency, that's a Fourth Amendment violation, since it would be a warrantless search - and it's unclear whether Cuomo's attempts simply to browbeat ISPs into performing the searches constitutes a similar violation.

Brilliant Digital thinks it can get around these problems because its CopyRouter doesn't look at the document itself, just its hash mark.

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has expressed concern over what it sees as prior restraint of speech if an ISP blocks files based on the hash list.

You can't declare speech, or images, illegal without judicial proceedings, CDT's John Morris said: That creates enormous First Amendment problems. You can't have an agency or outside firm acting as judge and jury on these images...

Interestingly, the nutters of Morality In Media (MIM) also object to the law - because it doesn't go far enough. If S. 1728 comes up for a vote, it will pass easily because Congress can't do enough to curb sexual abuse of children, wrote MIM president Robert Peters in a press release: But if Congress is ready to spend hundreds of millions of additional dollars to curb sexual abuse of children, why doesn't it also spend several million to fight 'adult' obscenity?

Help could be at hand for those who cannot resist dispatching a wee-small-hours email to a boss or an ex.

An altruistic Google employee has come up with a system that will block -or at least make you think twice about - the kind of message you will only regret the next day. Mail Goggles, which can be set to spring into action late at night and at weekends, asks emailers to answer a series of short mathematical posers before sending their message off. The idea, according to Gmail engineer Jon Perlow, is to help people who are a little too tired and emotional to foresee the consequences of their actions.

Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send, he confessed on the Gmail blog: Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late-night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. The program, he said, was designed to establish whether you're really sure you want to send that late-night Friday email.

YouTube Comment Snob automatically hides any comments posted on the video-sharing website that fail to meet a range of good English guidelines.

The filter can be set to hide comments with misspelled words, swearing and excessive punctuation.

Comments that do not begin with a capital letter, or which are composed entirely of capital letters, can also be blocked. Users are able to personalise their censorship settings depending on the quality of posts they want to read

Malicious commenters - known as trolls – are the bane of many websites, but YouTube has become notorious for hosting to some of the most confrontational and ill-formed comment exchanges on the internet.

Discussions about even the most inconsequential videos regularly degenerate into profanity-strewn slanging matches, many with a xenophobic undercurrent.

YouTube Comment Snob has been created by an individual software designer called Christopher Finke and has no connection to the official YouTube site, which has a separate system that allows users to give a “thumbs down” to comments they disagree with.

The comment blocker, which is only available for people using the Firefox browser, has already earned rave reviews from YouTube regulars.

This is a wonderful idea, now all I need is a similar filter for the entire web, wrote Aletha on the popular Boing Boing blog.

After two years in evolution, the world's first, intelligent, virtual sex toy has arrived in the form of the MX.

The initial, serial port, robotic toy design has come a long way since its inception and the MX, designed and created to synchronise with especially encoded adult DVD content, works on internet protocol (IP) networks (computers and television sets via set-top box services), Bluetooth (mobile telephones) and other compatible remote media systems.

The MX website explains: Virtual sex has been spoken of since Woody Allen's 1973 film, Sleeper, introduced the world to a fictional electromechanical device known as the orgasmatron. Now, for the first time ever, this fictional concept has become a reality in the shape of the MX.

The MX is available in both male and female variants; the male version being a real-feel, jelly-flesh silicone sleeve and the female version resembling a superior quality vibrator. Both have been embedded with 100% user safe encoded software motherboard and trigger modules which mirror the accompanying, personally interactive, DVD content.

The MX has no wires and does not need to be attached to anything. The male MX sleeve is fitted with a removable device consisting of a series of six trigger point modules, four down the shaft and one on either said of the base, each controlled in accordance with the on screen action. For example, when the actress says she is going to lick the top of the viewer's penis and does so, the relevant trigger point module will simulate that specific action, essentially meaning the MX will kinaesthetically replicate the visual and aural stimuli.

The female MX is similarly controlled, with each of the multiple functions of the vibrator triggered by the on screen action. For example, should the actor say he is going to rub the viewer's clitoris and begins to do so, the related trigger point will vibrate accordingly.

A third MX design has been created especially for the gay market, meaning it is essentially also the world's first sex toy which specifically caters for the active gay man. As with the other versions, the gay MX works in conjunction with gay adult video content.

The MX prototypes have now undergone vigorous and independent testing and the company is interested in speaking with toy manufacturers and distributors about partnership options.

Yahoo have launched Fire Eagle which lets users manage information on where they are.

Hard privacy protection questions need to be asked, said Jeff Chester, director of The Centre for Digital Democracy: These services are all being sold to consumers as only providing real benefit. No one is talking about the fact they are about building and collecting more data ,not just about the content you like but where you go and where you are at the moment.

Fire Eagle, which has just been opened up to the public, helps manage location information for websites and for any device that has internet access.

This is a way for the user to take their location to the web, for every site on the web to become geo-aware and to respond to where users are, explained Tom Coates head of product at Yahoo's start-up project, Brickhouse.

So far more than 50 third-party developers have signed up to offer Fire Eagle to their users, including Pownce, a micro-blogging service, brightkite, a location based social network, and DOPPLR which links travellers.

Yahoo said the service gives users complete control over their information and over which applications have access to their location. Users can also control whether an application can track their exact location, their ZIP or postcode or just the city they are in. Every 45 days, the service will send users an email to reauthorize the sharing of their location with the enabled applications: We only store your current information and don't keep any historical logs. That information will stay there until you over ride it or change it.

Coates said as an added protection Fire Eagle lets you hide your location at times and even lie about where you are if you want to.

Some blogs note however that while users can purge information from Fire Eagle, this will not delete location data collected over time by authorised sites.

Greg Sterling of SearchEngineLand said the added benefits of location information offers great opportunities for advertisers: Advertisers have yet to catch up to the possibility this space offers and Fire Eagle makes it that more explicit for them so I think we will see more targeted adverts coming into being that can take advantage of a person's location.

Olympic visitors are going to find themselves faced with internet restrictions when they get back to their hotel room or local internet cafe, thanks to that handy dandy Great Firewall of China.

Lucky for them, the Chaos Computer Club has prepped a solution called the "Freedom Stick" which when plugged into a computer redirects its internet traffic over The Onion Router, a worldwide network of anonymous computers designed to hide your steps. Naturally, you can just download the software yourself, but the $30 USB dongle could come in handy if you're not on your own PC, or just want to leave behind material evidence of your indiscretion. The Freedom Stick will only be available through the duration of the Olympics, so get one while you can.

SurfRecon Inc have announced the release of SurfRecon 2008, a new rapid-image-analysis tool that is available to law enforcement, parents, business owners, and schools for the first time.

This highly-mobile tool was originally created to enable members of law enforcement to quickly find, categorize, report-on, and delete pornographic content from almost any computer system, including many devices or media that can be mounted to the computer system.

SurfRecon is currently being used by police, adult probation and parole officers, and federal agents worldwide. I was excited to finally have a tool I could use to quickly search computers in the homes of my probationers, said said Cole Christensen, Adult Probation and Parole Officer, Utah State Department of Corrections, And guess what? The first time I used it, I found pornographic content. Images I wouldn't have found normally.

And now the same technology is available to parents, community leaders, and business owners.

The SurfRecon application comes pre-installed on a thumb drive. Furthermore, the application is cross-platform compatible, capable of scanning almost any Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computer system--and many devices or media that can be attached to the computer, such as recordable DVDs and CDs, iPods, cell phones, thumb drives, external hard drives, etc.

Different from a filter or firewall, SurfRecon actively searches for pornographic content, leveraging a database containing millions of hash values or digital fingerprints. With nearly 100 million image hashes in the database and with another 4 million added per week, if a computer contains pornography, SurfRecon will find it, said Andrew Brandt, SurfRecon Director of Business Development.

Each hash value in the database is the equivalent of a digital fingerprint, which uniquely identifies an image. SurfRecon uses "digital fingerprints" to determine the exact nature of any image that it discovers on a computer system. It can then pre-categorize the images, making it easier for individuals to view the contents of a computer system.

Psiphon, an Internet censorship evading software project developed by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab has been deemed the world's most original, significant and exemplary Net and Digital Initiative by a panel of French and international government, media and business experts. P

siphon was chosen first among 100 technology projects from around the world that were nominated for the Netxplorateur of the Year Grand Prix award.

Psiphon aims to restore the original promise the Internet once held out as a forum for free expression and access to information, said Professor Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab and the psiphon project. We are honoured to receive such a prestigious award. Internet censorship has become a major global problem, with dozens of governments blocking access to news, human rights, and political opposition websites as well as new media of self expression, such as blogs and streaming video.

Psiphon works by leveraging the Internet and social networks of trust that span censored and uncensored jurisdictions. Those with friends, family or colleagues in censored countries download the small psiphon application on their home computers and then give the unique connection information to their psiphon node to those living behind firewalled jurisdictions. Instead of attempting to access banned content directly, users of psiphon connect to the psiphon nodes over an encrypted channel and use them to surf the Web instead. As each psiphon node is private, encrypted, and separate from each other, the system as a whole is virtually impossible for authorities to discover and block.

While the psiphon software is free and open source, the Citizen Lab's developers have recently launched a start-up company, called Psiphon Inc., to provide professional services for businesses, media, and organizations that face increasingly difficult challenges operating in a carved up Internet environment.

The Indian Supreme Court will hear on February 15 an application seeking directions to the Union of India for blocking access to a website promoting pre-natal gender identification kits from abroad.

The Voluntary Health Association of Punjab is petitioning to seek strict implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition on Sex Selection) Act, 1994.

The application said that a website promoting sale of gender identification kits was reported in the media.

The website, according to the applicant, says the test seeks to identify the presence of male or female foetal genetic materials in the mother's blood. The website provided the methods by which the test was conducted, the process of ordering the test kit, safeguards to be taken, etc.

Since the website was accessible anywhere in the country, a blanket blocking of this website was essential to prevent the misuse of technology and violation of the law, the application said and sought a direction in this regard.