background image writes “According to Alan M Gershowitz, the doctrine of “search incident to arrest” may grant devices such as mobile phones, PDAs and laptops to be thoroughly searched without either probable cause or warrants [PDF download below abstract]. Incriminating evidence found in such searches might be used against you whether or not it is germane to the reason for the original arrest. He notes, ‘Obviously, the framers of the Fourth Amendment could not have conceived of a handheld technological device like the iPhone, and courts haven’t yet been called upon to answer most of the difficult questions posed by such devices.’ We’ve discussed similar search issues recently, as well as other privacy concerns related to modern technology.

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belmolis writes “If the CIA is right to attribute current blackouts to cyberwarfare, cyberwarfare is no longer science fiction but reality. In a current op-ed piece and a detailed scholarly paper, legal scholar Duncan Hollis raises the question of whether existing international law is sufficient for regulating cyberwarfare. He concludes that it is not: ‘Translating existing rules into the IO context produces extensive uncertainty, risking unintentional escalations of conflict where forces have differing interpretations of what is permissible. Alternatively, such uncertainty might discourage the use of IO even if it might produce less harm than traditional means of warfare. Beyond uncertainty, the existing legal framework is insufficient and overly complex. Existing rules have little to state about the non-state actors that will be at the center of future conflicts. And where the laws of war don’t apply, even by analogy, an overwhelmingly complex set of other international and foreign law rules purport to govern IO.’”

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The law says telecom providers can’t wiretap your phone calls or net traffic, but as long as their taps are legal or they acted in good faith they’re already immune from prosecution and lawsuits. That stated, your telecom providers are still trying to get Congress to immunize them for cooperating with NSA wiretaps (presumably because the taps were both illegal and done in bad faith). Retroactive immunity wouldn’t just mean they get away with it, it would crush our ability as citizens to find out what happened using the power of the courts. Last month, Sen. Chris Dodd temporarily stopped the bill, but within days — probably on Monday — it’s going to be reintroduced, and it’s not at all clear it will be stopped again. He’ll need strong allies, because he’s fighting not just the Bush administration and GOP Senators, but his own party’s Sen. Harry Reid and “AT&T’s personal Senator” Jay Rockefeller. So Dodd needs more Senators backing him up, preferably joining a full-blown filibuster on the Senate floor. If you ever want accountability for whatever companies illegally forwarded your data to the NSA, you basically have this day and tomorrow to state something.

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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “The FTC has put a stop to Negotiated Data Solutions, a patent troll that bought a patent on an important part of the Ethernet networking standard and tried to jack up the royalties for licensing it. In a consent decree (pdf), N-Data agreed to continue licensing the patent at the formerly promised rates. ‘Whatever the merits of the decision, it shows that the FTC sees the value of standards and will be on the lookout for any behavior that could undermine these standards-setting process. That alone could keep companies honest when they enter the standards process. Standards-setting bodies have also become more sophisticated over the years (after being burned in several high-profile cases), and now do a better job at forcing involved companies to disclose and license patents.’ The IEEE voted back in 2002 to make patent letters irrevocable, which could have prevented this, but neglected to make that clause retroactive.”

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Darkman, Walkin Dude writes “An internet group calling itself Anonymous has declared war on the Church of Scientology, in the form of an ominous posting to the YouTube site. ‘In the statement, the group explained their goal as safeguarding the right to freedom of speech. “A spokesperson said that the group’s goals include bringing an end to the financial exploitation of Church members and protecting the right to free speech, a right which they claim was consistently violated by the Church of Scientology in pursuit of its opponents.” The press release also claimed that the Church of Scientology misused copyright and trademark law in order to remove criticism from websites including Digg and YouTube. The statement goes on to assert that the attacks from the group “will continue until the Church of Scientology reacts, at which point they will change strategy”.’ It should be noted that Slashdot users have had interactions with Scientology in the past as well.”

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Employees, Economic data, Recession

There’s an economic adage that states, “The economic cycle repeats itself, but never in quite the same way.”

The current economic slowdown, at least initially, is providing evidence to confirm the above, as unlike the previous two slowdowns, corporations appear to be taking a more-cautious approach toward both eliminating and adding jobs.

During this cyclical downturn, many companies are adopting hiring freezes as they attempt to discern the likely direction for the U.S. economy in 2008 and beyond, The Wall Street Journal reported. (Subscription required.) Many economists expect the U.S. economy to register anemic growth in Q1 and Q2 2008 — roughly 1.0-1.5% GDP growth, and the most recent monthly hiring total supports that prediction: the nation added fewer than 20,000 jobs in December 2007.

However, unlike the start of previous downturns in 2001,1990-1991, and 1981-1982, corporations have resisted — at least so far — major layoffs and operational cutbacks. Economist David H. Wang told BloggingStocks on Thursday that he believes two factors are behind the personnel balancing act.

Corporate America: lean

First, corporate America is much leaner this day that it was during the previous three downturns; companies are much more efficient. Wang calls 2008, “the age of perpetual right-sizing.”

“If you look at most key measures — productivity per employee, revenue per employee, costs — corporations this day are in a much stronger operational stance than they were in 2001 or during the 1990s,” Wang said. “In other words, companies have to lay off fewer employees because they weren’t there to begin with.”

Second, the complex and sometimes contradictory signals characteristic of the current U.S. economy have required corporations to be nimble, at-the-ready for a sudden change in the economic landscape, positive or negative, Wang stated.

“Most executives would agree that operationally, globalization has made corporate decisions more complicated. It’s no longer ‘the economy has stalled, let’s lay off 10,000 employees.’ The U.S. economy has slowed and we may be headed toward a recession. Or, the economy might not be headed toward recession. Or maybe the economy is, but your sector — state, oil services — is going to perform well, comparatively,” Wang stated. “Today, corporations have to be ready for both the potential slowdown, or a bigger surprise, an unexpected slow expansion.”

“Corporations,” Wang added, “have to be at-the-ready amid uncertainty… at-the-ready for both recession or growth. It’s not an easy task, but I think it helps explain the cautious stance by corporations toward hiring and then toward layoffs during the recent economic expansion and during today’s declining economic growth, respectively.”

A workforce positive

Economist Steve Affinito agreed, arguing that companies’ cautious hiring stance during the recent expansion is a two-sided coin, one that might yield some benefits during this economic cycle, as 2008 progresses. “Because companies took on fewer employees than during previous expansions, we may see fewer employee cutbacks during this slowdown, barring a calamity, of course,” Affinito stated.

Affinito was careful to qualify his remarks by noting that there undoubtedly already are sectors with big layoffs — housing and mortgage lending being the most obvious, with banking possibly set to join that group — but that does not refute the current modest-layoff environment.

As a result, Affinito sees only a modest rise in the U.S. unemployment rate, to 5.4% or 5.5% from the current 5%, during the current slowdown.

“If we have the ability to get fiscal and monetary stimulus into the U.S. economy in the first half of this year, and maintain liquid markets as the nation addresses the subprime default issue, we have the ability to limit the layoff downside and position the country for a resumption of growth,” Affinito said. “Those are big ifs, I know, but that’s what the data’s suggesting is possible in 2008.”

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Filed under: International markets, Forecasts, Products and services, Management, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, eBay (EBAY), Amazon.com (AMZN), Marketing and advertising

When we took a look at eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY)’s fourth-quarter earnings last night, we also made note that long-time CEO Meg Whitman would be stepping down, to be replaced by John Donahoe. We wondered what changes Mr. Donahoe would be bringing to his new position, and some of those answers have come quicker than we expected, as Donahoe has already announced a few changes that we have the ability to anticipate to see.

One thing consistently on the mind of eBay users is the website’s fee structures. Since last year, users have been openly voicing their disappointment with what they think about to be abnormally high selling fees, and it seems like Donahoe will quickly look to address these concerns.

Donahoe stated that within a few weeks, we’ll be seeing a brand new fee structure from eBay. In response to what users are demanding, eBay is planning to lower its upfront listing fees, but at the same time will be raising final selling fees. These final fees are only paid once an item has been successfully sold, and I am sure that users won’t like to hear this too much, but they should be happy to hear that the initial listing fees are going to be reduced.

Another massive change for eBay will be the emphasis the site places on fixed-price items. Historically, eBay has mostly been about one easy thing: user-to-user auctions. Now that the company finds itself in some steep competition with rival Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the company has decided to put more emphasis on its fixed-price items, bringing a much greater “Amazon-like” experience to eBay.

While the new changes might ring positively for eBay users, it will more than likely lead to lower revenues for the company in the short term. As a result, the company was forced to lower its guidance for the current quarter as well as its full year 2008 outlook, which has resulted in shares falling in today’s session. The stock traded down to a new 52-week low of $25.75 earlier in the session, but has bounced a bit from the lows up to $26.70, which is down 7.6% with about an hour left in the trading session.

Looking down the road, it is anyone’s guess how the new changes will impact eBay’s business. I assume that the lower initial listing fees should result in more listings on the site, but will it be enough to get eBay back to its glory days? Time will tell, and until we get more details on the upcoming fee structure, it’s just way too early to predict what reaction eBay users will have to the new changes.

Other changes that some industry insiders are calling for Donahoe to consider are structural changes to the company. Will Donahoe look at the possibility of selling off Skype? How about the option of spinning of its popular PayPal business into a separate company? Both of these options are choices that Donahoe will undoubtedly be forced to consider once he takes over the reins a few months from now.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the on the web investment advisory service Investor’s Observer

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belmolis writes “If the CIA is right to attribute current blackouts to cyberwarfare, cyberwarfare is no longer science fiction but reality. In a current op-ed piece and a detailed scholarly paper, legal scholar Duncan Hollis raises the question of whether existing international law is adequate for regulating cyberwarfare. He concludes that it is not: ‘Translating existing rules into the IO context produces extensive uncertainty, risking unintentional escalations of conflict where forces have differing interpretations of what’s permissible. Alternatively, such uncertainty might discourage the use of IO even if it might produce less harm than traditional means of warfare. Beyond uncertainty, the existing legal framework is insufficient and overly complex. Existing rules have little to say about the non-state actors that will be at the center of future conflicts. And where the laws of war do not apply, even by analogy, an overwhelmingly complex set of other international and foreign law rules purport to govern IO.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Filed under: Competitive strategy, Employees, Economic data, Recession

There’s an economic adage that states, “The economic cycle repeats itself, but never in quite the same way.”

The current economic slowdown, at least initially, is providing evidence to confirm the above, as unlike the previous two slowdowns, corporations appear to be taking a more-cautious approach toward both eliminating and adding jobs.

During this cyclical downturn, many companies are adopting hiring freezes as they attempt to discern the likely direction for the U.S. economy in 2008 and beyond, The Wall Street Journal reported. (Subscription required.) Many economists anticipate the U.S. economy to register anemic growth in Q1 and Q2 2008 — roughly 1.0-1.5% GDP growth, and the most recent monthly hiring total supports that prediction: the nation added fewer than 20,000 jobs in December 2007.

However, unlike the start of previous downturns in 2001,1990-1991, and 1981-1982, corporations have resisted — at least so far — major layoffs and operational cutbacks. Economist David H. Wang told BloggingStocks on Thursday that he believes two factors are behind the personnel balancing act.

Corporate America: lean

First, corporate America is much leaner today that it was during the previous three downturns; companies are much more efficient. Wang calls 2008, “the age of perpetual right-sizing.”

“If you look at most key measures — productivity per employee, revenue per employee, costs — corporations today are in a much stronger operational stance than they were in 2001 or during the 1990s,” Wang said. “In other words, companies have to lay off fewer employees because they weren’t there to start with.”

Second, the complex and sometimes contradictory signals characteristic of the current U.S. economy have required corporations to be nimble, at-the-ready for a sudden change in the economic landscape, positive or negative, Wang said.

“Most executives would agree that operationally, globalization has made corporate decisions more complicated. It’s no longer ‘the economy has stalled, let’s lay off 10,000 employees.’ The U.S. economy has slowed and we may be headed toward a recession. Or, the economy might not be headed toward recession. Or maybe the economy is, but your sector — state, oil services — is going to perform well, comparatively,” Wang said. “Today, corporations have to be ready for both the potential slowdown, or a larger surprise, an unexpected slow expansion.”

“Corporations,” Wang added, “have to be at-the-ready amid uncertainty… at-the-ready for both recession or growth. It’s not an easy task, but I think it helps explain the cautious stance by corporations toward hiring and then toward layoffs during the current economic expansion and during today’s declining economic growth, respectively.”

A workforce positive

Economist Steve Affinito concurred, arguing that companies’ cautious hiring stance during the current expansion is a two-sided coin, one that may yield some benefits during this economic cycle, as 2008 progresses. “Because companies took on fewer employees than during previous expansions, we may see fewer employee cutbacks during this slowdown, barring a calamity, of course,” Affinito said.

Affinito was careful to qualify his remarks by noting that there undoubtedly already are sectors with big layoffs — housing and mortgage lending being the most obvious, with banking possibly set to join that group — but that does not refute the current modest-layoff environment.

As a result, Affinito sees only a modest rise in the U.S. unemployment rate, to 5.4% or 5.5% from the current 5%, during the current slowdown.

“If we have the ability to get fiscal and monetary stimulus into the U.S. economy in the first half of this year, and maintain liquid markets as the nation addresses the subprime default issue, we can limit the layoff downside and position the country for a resumption of growth,” Affinito stated. “Those are massive ifs, I know, but that’s what the data’s suggesting is possible in 2008.”

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belmolis writes “If the CIA is right to attribute recent blackouts to cyberwarfare, cyberwarfare is no longer science fiction but reality. In a recent op-ed piece and a detailed scholarly paper, legal scholar Duncan Hollis raises the question of whether existing international law is sufficient for regulating cyberwarfare. He concludes that it is not: ‘Translating existing rules into the IO context produces extensive uncertainty, risking unintentional escalations of conflict where forces have differing interpretations of what’s permissible. Alternatively, such uncertainty may discourage the use of IO even if it might produce less harm than traditional means of warfare. Beyond uncertainty, the existing legal framework is insufficient and overly complex. Existing rules have tiny to state about the non-state actors that’ll be at the center of future conflicts. And where the laws of war do not apply, even by analogy, an overwhelmingly complex set of other international and foreign law rules purport to govern IO.’”

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