Decius wrote:
] ] Researchers at Cambridge University published information
] ] on a flaw in banks' procedures that rogue bank employees
] ] may have been using to learn the PINs from many
] ] customers' ATM cards. Now some banks are apparently
] ] trying to suppress the research.
]
] This is a blog thread. Ed Felton linking K5 linking some
] documents posted by Ross Anderson.

On Saturday, I logged two URLs for the paper in question, which is not a Ross Anderson paper but rather the work of two of his students.

At this late date, an attempt to "suppress" the paper seems pointless.

Have you read the paper?

Jeremy wrote:
] At this late date, an attempt to "suppress" the paper seems
] pointless.
]
] Have you read the paper?

I scanned it. I saw your post, which is why I forwarded this here. Felton's point about court cases is interesting, if a little "black helicopterish." (U: Felton was right! This IS in fact directly related to the court cases. Anderson's team was actually hired by a plaintif who claims his money was stolen!) If the document was surpressed then it couldn't be raised in a court even if it was relevent. I think a more likely explanation, however, is that from Citibank's perspective, why NOT try to supress it. Whats the worst thing that could happen? They can't keep it out of everyone's hands, but they can make it hard to get access to. However, I don't think, in the US, that they have a case with this, and therefore I don't think it will get them anywhere.

Echos of Bill Joy... I can't post DeCSS on my website. The DMCA won't help with this, but it does set a precident that Congress could go back around and ban the distribution of things like this as well.

A little off topic, but I was responding to a post from Elonka about the requirements on ISPs for dealing with Law Enforcement information requests, and it struck me that the disclosure requirements are much more, well open, for intellectual property crimes then for, say, rape, murder, etc... If I think that you're pirating my works, I can contact your ISP and they have to tell me who you are. If I think that you murdered my cousin, the ISP can't say a damn thing unless I get a court involved.

IMHO, courts exist to validate the legitimacy of these kinds of requests, and the DMCA is in error. I just thought the state of things was a little ironic. You can see how this will be flipped on its head. People will be pissed off because they get ISPs to disclose all the time on DMCA notices but they can't get disclosure on a murder case. Down the slippery slope we go! Wheeeee....