"The New York Times is reporting that American trade negotiators may demand the shutdown of AllofMP3.com as a condition of Russia joining the World Trade Organization." From the article: "Music industry officials say AllofMP3, which first came to their attention in 2004, is a large-scale commercial piracy site, and they dismiss its claims of legality. "It is totally unprecedented to have a pirate site operating so openly for so long," said Neil Turkewitz, executive vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America, who is based in Washington ... AllofMP3.com says on the site that it can legally sell to any user based in Russia and warns foreign users to verify the legality within their countries for themselves. The site features a wide selection of Russian music, but is written in English with prices listed in United States dollars."

US authorities can get access to EU citizens' data on phone calls, sms' and emails, giving a recent EU data-retention law much wider-reaching consequences than first expected, reports Swedish daily Sydsvenskan.

The EU data retention bill, passed in February after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months, aimed at fighting terrorism and organised crime.

The US delegation to the meeting "indicated that it was considering approaching each [EU] member state to ensure that the data collected on the basis of the recently adopted Directive on data retention be accessible to them," according to the notes of the meeting.

In the US itself meanwhile, fury has broken out in the US congress after reports revealed that the Bush administration covertly collected domestic phone records of tens of millions of US citizens since the attacks in New York on 11 September 2001.

President George Bush did not deny the allegations in a television statement last night, but insisted that his administration had not broken any laws.

It's official: The Bush administration formally said Friday that it will try to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of helping the National Security Agency spy on Americans illegally.

The Justice Department said in its filing that the "United States intends to assert the military and state secrets privilege" and have the case dismissed.

The Bush administration did carefully note, however, that a mere invocation of the state secret privilege should not be viewed as confirmation that AT&T did anything untoward, saying even the non-existence of the activity is a state secret. "The fact that the United States will assert the state secrets privilege should not be construed as a confirmation or denial of any of plaintiffs' allegations, either about AT&T or the alleged surveillance activities," the brief said.

A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers.

The draft legislation, created by the Bush administration and backed by Rep. Lamar Smith, already enjoys the support of large copyright holders such as the Recording Industry Association of America.

Such changes are necessary because new technology is "encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft," Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, "quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities."

The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

Instead of merely targeting distribution, the new language says nobody may "make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess" such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else.

The US and the tiny island nation of Antigua have been fighting it out in the WTO over online gambling laws for quite some time. It started years ago, with the US trying to go after someone for setting up an online gambling operation in Antigua. The US government, of course, is no fan of online gambling -- even though it's legal in large parts of the world. Things got ugly three years ago, when Antigua went to the WTO to protest the US's actions, noting that it appeared to violate a fair-trade agreement both countries had signed -- especially since the US does allow some forms of domestic online gambling. The WTO agreed with Antigua that the US was violating the agreement -- a decision we noted the US was likely to ignore completely. Indeed, that's exactly what they did, so Antigua went back to the WTO, who once again ruled in favor of Antigua... though, amusingly, the US still claimed victory and then proceeded to ignore the ruling anyway.

So, what's a small country like Antigua to do? Normally, they could place trade sanctions on the US -- but that's likely to hurt Antigua a lot more than the US. Another option that's being discussed, apparently, is that Antigua would stop enforcing US trademarks and patents, allowing manufacturers in that country to start making knockoff goods.

It's definitely an interesting retaliation strategy, but Jerry Brito takes the argument one step further, suggesting that an even more compelling move might be to allow the creation of online music services that have been banned in the US, such as the original Napster or my.MP3.com. Or, at the very least, an online music store like AllofMP3.com that currently exists in a legal gray area over in Russia. That, clearly, could get the attention of politicians in the US, since they seem so tuned into the "concerns" of the entertainment industry these days. No matter what, though, it seems like this could be an interesting strategy for any country involved in a trade dispute with the US.

US politicians have been caught defacing entries on Wikipedia which they do not agree with, or say nasty things about them.

According to News.com, the latest case involves Marty Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat who deleted references to his broken term-limits pledges and massive campaign war chest on Wikipedia. Obviously he didn’t do it himself, his aides did it for him.

However, Wikipedia editors have compiled a list of more than 1,000 edits made by Internet addresses allocated to the US Senate and House of Representatives. Apparently they are so childish that Wikipedia has blocked the US Senate and House of Representatives IP addresses.

It looks like folks in Wisconsin have been paying attention to the problems found in many e-voting systems. The Governor there has signed into law a requirement that all e-voting machines include a verifiable paper trail that would let a voter check his or her vote before leaving the booth -- and which can be used for an official recount, if necessary. Perhaps more interesting, though almost entirely ignored by most press accounts of this new law, is a separate claim that this law not only requires e-voting providers to hand over their source code (similar to other states), but that the companies need to make that source code "publicly accessible" so that it "may be used to independently verify the accuracy and reliability of the operating and tallying procedures to be employed at any election." This is a big step forward that, hopefully, other states will emulate.

The presiding judge, Rizgar Mohammad Amin, must have known beforehand that he was going to have a battle on his hands.

He and the other four judges on the bench had to maintain their control over Saddam Hussein. He, for his part, was determined to try to take over the proceedings.

He was free of the chains and handcuffs which were imposed on him in the past, but two Iraqi guards in bullet-proof jackets gripped him firmly by the arms.

Yet when the judge finally ordered him to sit down, he did so meekly, shambling away from the microphone to his seat a little apart from the other seven defendants.

There was the same switch between defiance and obedience later. When the prosecutor outlined the case against him he interrupted several times, accusing the prosecutor of lying.

Saddam had finally acknowledged the other defendants for the first time, smiling and making jokes about the changes in their appearance since the last time he had seen them, when they were still serving his regime.

A Diebold insider is blowing the whistle on the company's continued lack of concern about security holes in its voting software. The insider wrote to Brad Friedman, a somewhat shrill political blogger, claiming the company is instructing technicians to keep quiet about the security flaws. This is despite the vulnerability being listed on the US-CERT website for the last year. A Diebold company rep admits the software can be remotely accessed via modem, but states, "it's up to a jurisdiction whether they wish to use it or not...I don't know of any jurisdiction that does that." The insider disputes that, claiming several counties in Maryland made use of the feature in 2004.

US President George W Bush has declared Friday 16 September a national day of prayer and remembrance for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Mr Bush asked agencies in the disaster zone to treat bodies with "dignity and respect", and announced initial aid of $2,000 (£1,090) for displaced families.

Washington has been accused of failing to react swiftly to the disaster.

Some 25,000 body bags are being sent to New Orleans as rescuers begin recovering victims.

Only 23 of the city's normal contingent of 148 pumps are in operation along with three portable pumps.

They are said to be pushing out about 60,000 gallons (228,000 litres) of water per second but water remains in about 60% of the city.