The law obliges a range of e-commerce sites, video and music services and webmail providers to keep a host of data on customers.

This includes users’ full names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and passwords. The data must be handed over to the authorities if demanded.

This means that the data which is handed over can be used to access your accounts.

via BBC News – Net giants challenge French data law.

Like wikileaks for the Middle East, it shows concessions made by the Palestinians weren’t good enough for Israel and the US was running around showboating, not doing much constructive.

The story behind the Palestine papers | World news | The Guardian.

Under the new law, a government-appointed media council will have the power to decide whether a publication has broken rules on what it calls balanced and ‘moral’ reporting, and can issue heavy fines. Print and Internet media can face fines of more than $100,000 and broadcasters nearly $1 million, if, for example, their coverage is deemed unbalanced. News programs cannot use more than 20 percent of their airtime on crime-related stories, and journalists may be forced to reveal their sources.Presenters at Hungarian state-run radio have already been dismissed for protesting the law on air.

via VOA | Hungary Introduces Europe’s Most Restrictive Media Law | Europe | English.

PrimariesForPalin.com aims to nominate Sarah Palin as the Republican presidential candidate by encouraging Democrats and Independents to purposefully vote for her in state primaries. In head-to-head polls with President Barack Obama, Palin consistently fares worse than other possible Republican candidates because of her divisiveness. If Palin is nominated, Obama has a much better chance of winning reelection in November 2012.

via Mission Statement « Primaries For Palin.

Because if you discuss the material on there, obviously you can’t handle sensitive information and so are not fit to work in government. Or in other words, you have too much of an independent opinion and won’t fit in with the superconformist monkeys and thus are not fit to work in the US Government.

State Dept. warning prospective recruits to steer clear of Wikileaks – Blog – The Arabist.

“His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?”

via Sarah Palin says: target WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange like the Taliban – ComputerworldUK.com.

Wow, she’s even more nuts than Hillary Clinton!

This is the most realistic sound I’ve heard coming from the US about the wikileaks affair. If only Clinton and the rest could be so normal, maybe we would like the US a bit more…

“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.

“So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another.

“Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.’

via Gates on Leaks, Wiki and Otherwise – NYTimes.com.

Yup – instead of just having been embarrassed and pointing out that every country makes the same kind of internal assessments, that these have to be brutally honest internally in order to be effective and then getting on with it, the US is flipping.

H Clinton, the mad spying control freak, is now claiming it’s an ‘attack’ on the ‘whole international community’. Who is she kidding? And now a senator wants WikiLeaks to be considered a terrorist organisation.

It’s not like the information released was really a big deal. Embarrasing? Yes. Devastating? No.

Get a grip, US. We’ve had enough of being dragged into vague, undefinable wars by you. Use diplomacy, not violence, for once.

WikiLeaks as Terrorists? – Chris Good – Politics – The Atlantic.

In a bizarre swipe at public media, the VVD has stated that tax payers money can’t be used to develop the websites of the public channels. Are they supposed to be website-less? The stated reason is unfair competition with newspapers, but newspapers have been notoriously slow to pick up any kind of innovation. The VVD states that the public channels can afford to experiment with new media without the risk that newspapers have, but that’s kind of precisely the point: if the public channels pick up the risk, then the commercial channels don’t have to: they can see what works and what doesn’t and for much much lower development costs copy what does work.

nrc.nl – Binnenland – VVD: geen internet door publieke omroep.

It’s pretty clear: don’t enforce it and don’t discuss it behind people’s backs. The EP is doing well in terms of privacy and protection of rights!

Written declaration ACTA 12/2010 – La Quadrature du Net.

It looks like the UK is starting to be saved allreay! The ConLibs are devoted to things such as personaly privacy and are against mammoth centralised databases (such as the National ID fiasco). The government is looking to increase the safety of your data and keep much less of it. Well done, I hope this becomes a continuing trend!

ConLibs to outlaw kiddyprinting without permission • The Register.

Looks like the British are blithely going where the French couldn’t go by adopting a 3 strikes rule for illegal filesharers. First you get warning letters and then you get disconnected from the internet.

Not only does this mean that basically your internet connection will be monitored for this kind (and what other?) behaviour, but also that people will be forced to switch to encrypted internet connections, making police and MI5 work much more difficult.

Lord Mandelson sets date for blocking filesharers’ internet connections | Technology | guardian.co.uk.