A long day yesterday — 12 hours on airplanes, but only 45 minutes late in the end despite a connection in thunderstorm-plagued Chicago. I’m back in Silicon Valley after a week in London, where I spoke at the NetMedia 2000 conference, ate some remarkably fine food and saw old friends. I also got up to date on a story that has received too little attention, here or there.
It’s the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (R.I.P.) bill, now before Parliament, and this legislation is one of the most Draconian communications surveillance systems conceived by a popularly elected government. Will it pass? The the odds may be improving slightly for a derailing of the bill, but no one knows for sure.
More in my Tuesday column.
TWO VIEWS ON R.I.P.
Big Brother in America
Wall Street Journal: FBI system covertly searches e-mail. That would give the government, at least theoretically, the ability to eavesdrop on all customers’ digital communications, from e-mail to online banking and Web surfing.
Encryption, encryption, encryption.
Changing the Terms of Journalism
Dave Winer: Shaking Out Content. The Web is not a mirror of the print industry, that’s why advertising is not so important. The unique thing about the Web is that it’s interactive.
See also: Truckin The News.
The traditional media should pay attention to this kind of thinking. They won’t.