A Win for Free Speech on the Web Bill of Rights makes headway in cyberspace. In a decision that could bode well for the lengthy uphill battle facing the Electronic Frontier Foundation , academics, American businesses and civil libertarians, a San Francisco court recently ruled in favor of overturning export restrictions on a technology for protecting communication on the Internet called cryptography. Last week, Federal Judge Marilyn Hall Patel found in favor of a mathematician at the University of Illinois named Daniel J. Bernstein who sued the government for violating his guaranteed First Amendment right to free speech. Citing issues of national security, the government restricted Bernstein from publishing his work without his first acquiring a license to deal arms. Judge Patel found in favor of the plaintiff, ruling that the Arms Export Control Act is a prior restraint on speech, because it requires Bernstein to obtain a license to publish his ideas.
Proponents are cautiously hopeful.
Safely On the technology front, software and media companies are addressing new privacy issues with a new class of software. ZDNet has released CookieMaster, a free downloadable software utility that lets you easily delete cookies from your hard drive. It also informs you of the Web sites that are monitoring you. Pretty Good Privacy , a software company specializing in digital privacy software, also makes a cookie monitoring tool called PCPcookie.cutter.