contributed by Brian Oblivion
A provision of a bill that makes 911 the official emergency number across the country has been signed into law. One provision of this law directs the Federal Communications Commission to help states develop systems that can automatically locate cellular callers who have dialed 911. The new system will probably take advantage of GPS to locate callers. The law also calls for "automatic notification when a vehicle is involved in an accident." (The potential abuses of these new systems is frightening.)

Associated Press

contributed by Br0k3
A new tax proposed by Marvin Goodfriend, a senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond would cost you money the longer you held cash without depositing it. This Carry Tax would be deducted from each bill upon deposit according to how long the bill was in circulation. According to Goodfriend this would have the effect of discouraging people who 'hoard' currency, deter black market and criminal activities, and boost economic stability during deflationary periods. (Before you know it they will be putting cellular tracking devices in your money so when it gets stolen it can be recovered.)

Wired

contributed by Br0k3
Part of the $39 billion fiscal 2000 appropriations bill that funds the departments of Commerce, Justice and State includes $250 million for law enforcement technology. $130 million of the money will be used for the Crime Identification Technology Program which will help local communities participate in national crime databases and improve crime laboratories. Monies are also earmarked for upgrades and increased management of various systems as well as development of multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency communications systems.

Civic.com

contributed by Deepquest
Forbes magazine has an interesting interview with Robert Cailliau, the co-inventor of the World Wide Web. In the article Cailliau proposes some radical ideas, everything from a pay per page model of the internet to licensing all internet users.

Forbes

contributed by evilwench
In the first eight months of 1999 there have been 138 reported cyber attacks compared with only 18 for all of last year, reported Senior Inspector Paul Jackson of the Police Computer Security Unit in Hong Kong.

South China Morning Post

contributed by William Knowles
Remember the grandmother from Kansas City, North whose AOL account was used to send thousands of porn SPAMs? Well AOL password thieves have not stopped their shenanigans, everything from free offers to web page redirects to trojan horses, the methods are wide and varied but still abound.

Kansas City Star

contributed by Code Kid
More new interesting defacements have joined the one done of the Microsoft site last Sunday. The Web Site of George Magazine has been defaced by the United Lone Gunmen, additional defacements included U.S. Navy Coastal Systems Center, Andersen AFB, and a slew of others.

Statement by ULG - via OSALL
Interview with Flipz - via OSALL

Yesterday morning HNN mentioned that a Microsoft web page had been defaced two days prior. Not really big news, web page defacements happen on a daily basis, but the mainstream media picked it up and thought it was important enough to run a two day old story. Here are some of the links.

MSNBC
UOL - Brazil
ABC
Wired
Ultimahora - Portugal