Dave's Bit Bucket

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Sanity prevails in some corners of .gov.uk...

The UK All-Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG, shame about the acronym) have released their Report into Digital Rights Management.

It makes pleasantly sensible reading, although the repercussions of the DRM technologies it discusses can be startling.

There is one significant angle the fine folk at APIG (and the folk who contributed to the study) appear to have missed, though; having concentrated on e-Books, digital music downloads etc, there is basically no mention of the use / misuse of DRM within the enterprise as a means of controlling distribution and archival of business and personal information.

However, if media renderers for the disabled (text readers, digital magnifiers and braille convertors for the partially sighted, etc) are locked out of "Enterprise" DRM in the same way as they are locked out of "media" DRM, then Enterprise DRM will find itself falling foul of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (among others).

(2006-07-26 03:35:29.0) Permalink Comments [1]

"Why CALEA can't work for VoIP" - and implications for RIPA

Via the Schneierblog.

A truly stellar cast of security illuminati - Steve Bellovin, Matt Blaze, our very own team of Diffie and Landau, and others - have co-authored a paper which, in summary, gives some pretty convincing arguments as to why CALEA (US requirements for lawful interception, incumbent on hardware manufacturers) can't successfully be applied to VoIP communications.

Needless to say, this probably has pretty major implications for VoIP intercept techniques under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000 (aka "RIPA") also...

(2006-07-26 03:25:54.0) Permalink Comments [0]