Salon.com > Wendy M. Grossman

Are British bobbies reading your e-mail?

Wed, 23 Aug 2000 18:57:00 +0000

Americans are used to thinking of Britain as the source from which most of the principles of our democracy flow, a country for which these principles are so innate it doesn't even need a written Constitution. The reality is increasingly different.

Compare and contrast. On July 14, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the FBI was using an Internet wiretapping system known as Carnivore to intercept and access e-mail. By July 24, FBI assistant director Donald Kerr was explaining Carnivore to Congress. By Aug. 15, a federal appeals court had ruled, in response to a suit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center and others, that law enforcement officers must get a Fourth Amendment search warrant before they can have access to "packets from which call information has not been stripped." The ruling, it seems, makes Carnivore illegal. In Britain, on the other hand, on July 28 the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIP) became law, requiring all Internet service providers to install and maintain interception equipment for the benefit of law enforcement. Yes, agents will have to get a warrant. But that warrant will be issued by the politician at the head of the Home Office (Britain's equivalent to the Justice Department), not by a judge.

Britain’s first software billionaire

Mon, 10 Jul 2000 18:34:00 +0000

Mike Lynch is Britain's first software billionaire. After years of hype about "Silicon Fen," the high-tech concentration growing up in and around Cambridge, England, it finally happened: We got a multibillion-dollar company.

Lynch is founder and CEO of Autonomy, a maker of software that ties together all kinds of unstructured information -- what's now known as knowledge management. The term wasn't in heavy use back in 1991, when Lynch borrowed 2,000 pounds (about $3,000) from an English pop promoter in a pub to start his first company, Cambridge Neurodynamics, from which Autonomy spun off in 1996. Lynch still sits on Neurodynamics' board, but he believes there is more scope in Autonomy, whose software and techniques he expects to be everywhere in a couple of years.

In a corporate context, you might use Autonomy's software to display links to material in the corporate archives that's relevant to a memo you're writing. On the Web, it might display links to news stories related to the ones you're reading.

Wireless warrior

Mon, 15 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

When Nicholas "Colly" Myers talks about Symbian, the company he leads, it's easy to get into a time warp muddle: The company sounds simultaneously fairly old and brand new. The reason is that although Symbian was only officially formed as a joint venture between Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Psion in 1998, its real origins date back to the forming of Psion's software division in 1981. Psion is a maker of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and modems, and Myers has been with the company since the beginning.

Symbian's product is a low-power, high-performance operating system called EPOC, originally designed for pocket computers. Eyeing the convergence between computing and mobile telephony, Symbian hopes EPOC will be the system of choice to power computer gadgets of all sizes and types, from smart phones to advanced wireless information devices. Elegant and lean, EPOC is so far primarily known through Psion's series 5 and 5mx PDAs. Because of that, people often think of Symbian as a competitor to Palm and other handhelds, such as Microsoft's just-released Pocket PC. But Symbian's strategy is really fixed firmly on the mobile phone market. EPOC-based mobile phones are expected to start appearing within a few months.

21st: The top 10 new jobs for 2002

Mon, 05 Jan 1998 20:00:00 +0000

1. Copyright protection officer: Goes around to schools to make sure that children writing papers, reciting poetry or playing with trademarked toys aren't violating any copyrights, exceeding fair use in quotations or bringing trademarked characters into disrepute.

2. Embedded advertising manager: Develops, manages and implements campaigns to place links to company sites and products in Net-based editorial matter. Also in charge of traditional product placement in movies and TV shows and newer techniques -- such as hiring actors to impersonate ordinary people discussing new products (books, movies, music, tools, software) in public places like buses, trains and coffeeshops, as well as newsgroups, BBSes and chat rooms.