I really have to get myself a MacOS X box. The peer pressure of so many hackers moving over to fiddle with this platform is growing fiercer and stronger. And now I discover the ultimate in hacker cool – you can overclock the new iBooks in software. Change 600Mhz to 700Mhz with the click of an option button! 700 to 800Mhz! Either to 2GHz, thus busting your machine and your warranty! Oh, the illicit thrill of it!
I don’t know what comet flew over Europe, but something’s giving the cybberrights community there a new lease of life. At XCOM, we relaunched STAND to be more of a umbrella blog for all the different UK orgs (this the subject of my elliptical blog entry a fortnight ago). The same week, Caspar Bowden left FIPR, the main parliamentary lobbying group on tech issues – a real shame, but perhaps it’ll lead to a refreshing shake-up in that organisation. And now, some of the cooler activist orgs in Europe – including the Chaos Computer Club, rivacy International and Denmark’s Digital Rights) – have co-operated to form European Digital Rights, a pressure group working from Brussels.
The need for cooperation among European organizations is increasing as more regulation for the internet, privacy and interception is originating from the European Union. Especially since 11 September the pace in which civil rights threatening regulation has been passed demands unified action from civil rights defenders. Some examples of regulations and developments that have the attention of European Digital Rights are data retention requirements, telecommunications interception, the cyber-crime treaty, initiatives for rating and filtering of internet content, notice and takedown procedures of websites and fair use restrictions.