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Senate considering Tax-Free Net Bill The Almighty Buck Posted by Hemos on Thursday October 01, @08:48AM from the bloody-well-approve-it dept. Well, although the House of Representations passed it way back in June, the US Senate is finally getting close to passing the bill which would temporarily close the Internet to any new taxes. It will be considered today. It has been twice blocked by Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), but Senator McCain (R-Arizona) has pushed it forward.

Ask Slashdot: Cryptography and Digital Signatures Encryption Posted by Cliff on Wednesday September 30, @09:40PM from the encryption-101 dept. Jonathan Squire writes in with questions concerning encryption. He writes: '...is it considered "secure" to generate an MD5 of a passphrase and then use the MD5 hash as the key to an RC4 cypher of a message/file that you want to send to someone? What are the implications of sending some alternative file with the same pass phrase used if someone who does not know the pass phrase is able to obtain both of the cyphertexts? What if they obtain both cyphertexts and one clear text, how hard would it be (computationaly/finacially) for them to derive the passphrase that was used?'   There's more! Click the link below...

Investigating Echelon Encryption Posted by Hemos on Wednesday September 30, @02:29PM from the white-or-black-spy dept. It appears that the European Parliment is going to attempt to investigae Echelon, the somewhat mystical eavesdropping entity that is supposed to be able to listen to all Continental communications. This article gives a great amount of detail about what it is alleged to be, but apparently it's run by five security agencies, including the NSA, and can intercept almost anything. I'd love to have this rig at home. updated

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