Court says government must charge Padilla or let him go; Opera tries ot thwart phishing; Senators push for e-voting.

U.S. Must Charge Padilla With Crime or Release

Him

A federal judge in South Carolina ruled yesterday

that the U.S. government must charge Jose Padilla with

a crime or release him in 45 days. According to the

Washington Post, the judge rejected the

arguments made by the government that Padilla, a U.S.

citizen designated an “enemy combatant” for his

alleged ties to Al Qaeda, could be held indefinitely

under that designation. In his ruling, District Court

Judge Henry F. Floyd, who was appointed to the bench

by President Bush in 2003, said, “to do otherwise

would not only offend the rule of law and violate this

country’s constitutional tradition, but it would also

be a betrayal of this Nation’s commitment to the

separation of powers that safeguards our democratic

values and our individual liberties.”

For more details, read the full article in the Washington

Post.

Opera Beefs Up Browser to Thwart Phishers

Opera software has added anti-phishing features to

the latest version of its Web browser, the second beta

version of Opera 8. According to a report in The

Register, Web surfers will be able to obtain

digital certificate information by clicking on the

padlock icon that appears in the address bar that

indicates the security of the site. Users can then see

who issued a certificate. Carsten Fischer, VP Desktop

Products at Opera Software, explained that the

approach helps users decide about the validity of a

site. “Before digital certificate information wasn’t

presented, now at least we’re giving users some

information to make a decision. Users need to be a bit

more educated,” he said.

For more details, read the full article in The

Register.

Clinton, Boxer Push E-Voting Bill in Senate

Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer

(D-Calif.) have introduced the Every Vote Count Act, a

wide-ranging bill that would mandate a voter-verified

paper ballot for every vote cast in electronic voting

machines. According to a report by

Computerworld (a sister company to CXO Media),

the paper ballot would become the official ballot of

record in case of a recount. The bill also calls for

increased security measures for e-voting machines so

that they may not be tampered with. This bill is

competing with another bill, the Voting Integrity and

Verification Act, which also calls for e-voting

machines to generate a paper trail record of votes.

For more details, read the full article in Computerworld.