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Sat-ND, 1.9.96

Sat-ND 96-09-01 - Satellite and Media News

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TV+ sold and switched off
The Norwegian TV channel TV+ has new owners, A-pressen, TV Norge
SBS/Broadcast Norge and Schibsted. They have decided to cease the channel
from the 1st of September.
It will be relaunched when the owners have found a new concept and maybe a
new transponder. (I have no idea whether TV+ will continue on this
frequency or get a new transponder, but according to the information at
11,679 GHz h they are looking for a new transponder to broadcast the new
programming from.)
The new channel will also try to co-operate with some local TV stations in
Norway.
Richard Karlsson <http://hem.passagen.se/richardx/satindex.html>

Smart cards available for NRK 1 and 2
Card that will work on NRK 1,2 will cost the equivalent of US$62. Norwegian
residents can order it from Elektronikk Forbundet via telephone (+47) 22 72
07 40. 
Alternatively, Norwegians already owning a TV 2 Norway card can update it
easily. Just tune in to one of the NRK channels and leave it there until
the signal becomes descrambled.
Richard Karlsson <http://hem.passagen.se/richardx/satindex.html>

Special relationship
Over the last few decades, politicians have been stressing that the
relationship between Great Britain and the USA was a very special one.
According to a report in today's Sunday Telegraph, it is indeed so special
that Great Britain covertly contributed 500 million pounds (US$750 million)
to a US system of spy satellites dubbed MAGNUM.
Reportedly, not even all cabinet members of Her Majesty's government were
informed of the payment that allowed the British Government Communications
Headquarters (BGCH) to use the system for up to a third of the time. The
deal was "part of the way we kept up our subscription to the U.S. country
club," the Sunday Telegraph quoted a British official.
What makes this story really special is the possibility that the USA may
have used the system to monitor British activities. "By the time the
satellites became operational in 1994-95, British intelligence officers
thought the U.S. was using Magnum to spy on British officers in Bosnia,"
the newspaper said.


Zeroes and Ones
By Grandpa Zheng

Mainstream media bring down remailer
The all-European media hysteria about child pornography on the Internet has
its first victim: Johan Helsingius from Finland shut down his remailer.
The server, acting as an anonymous forwarding service, allowed Internet
users to send and receive email or post articles to some newsgroups without
revealing their real email addresses.
Already under pressure from various sides such as the so-called Church of
Scientology and several dictatorial governments around the world,
Helsingius decided to discontinue the service because "the legal protection
of users needs to be clarified. At the moment the privacy of Internet
messages is judicially unclear," he said in a statement.
A week ago, the British newspaper Observer ran an article with accusations
from a so-called FBI advisor claiming that 90 percent of child pornography
on the Internet were transmitted via Helsingius' server. Nothing but a
cheap lie, as the server's mail-to-news gateway wasn't able to post
articles to binaries newsgroups (Sat-ND, 26.8.96.) Since then, Helsingius
has been terrorised by callers accusing him of paedophilia.
After all, the server wasn't fit to be misused by criminals for their
sinister purposes. Everybody who pays close attentions to Internet privacy
issues knows that the server was raided by Finnish police at least five
times, following accusations of copyright violations by some of the 500,000
users. Helsingius has also been ordered to reveal the identity of one of
his users in a law suit with the so-called Church of Scientology.
"He's really been doing a great service to people; he's done nothing but
help," said Emma Borton of the Samaritans. This British group has about 100
Internet contacts per week, many of them from people about to commit
suicide. About 40 percent of them want to remain anonymous, but now they
have to find a different remailer. So do victims of child abuse, who won't
want to reveal their identity to anyone.
Thank you very much, Observer. Thank you for destroying one of the Internet
institutions.


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Copyright 1996 by Peter C. Klanowski, pck@LyNet.De. All rights reserved.

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