October 17, 2000

Steel Industry Would Dump Higher Prices on Consumers
Court Tears Down Internet Anonymity
Big Brother 2.0

Steel Industry Would Dump Higher Prices on Consumers

U.S. steel producers yesterday urged President Clinton to take immediate action to stop a flood of imports they said are wrecking the industry, according to Reuters. The appeal, made just three weeks before the presidential election, came in a letter signed by the president of the United Steelworkers union and 75 steel industry executives.

The "steel action plan" announced by the White House last year is not working, industry officials said in the letter. "We need the administration immediately to take broad and comprehensive action against the flood of imported steel."

Japan, South Korea, Russia and others flooded the U.S. market with steel in 1998, forcing U.S. manufacturers to lay off thousands of workers. Steel imports dipped in 1999 but have since climbed to nearly peak levels.

In "Stealing from Steel Consumers," Senior Fellow Doug Bandow explains that "attempting to freeze the economy to protect employment in such cases would lock resources in obsolescent and inefficient industries, stifling technological progress and economic development. Some jobs would be preserved, but many more would ultimately be lost."

Brink Lindsey, Daniel T. Griswold, and Aaron Lukas of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies write in "The Steel 'Crisis' and the Costs of Protectionism" that although there is no real crisis, consumers and steel-using producers will be the ones who pay a heavy price for steel protection.

Court Tears Down Internet Anonymity

In a ruling that challenges online anonymity, a Florida appeals court declared yesterday that Internet service providers must divulge the identities of people who post defamatory messages on the Internet, according to the Associated Press. Critics of the ruling say it could have a chilling effect on free expression in Internet chat rooms.

The ruling comes against the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union to protect the identity of eight individuals who posted anonymous missives on a Yahoo financial chat room about Erik Hvide, the former CEO of Hvide Marine Inc. The ACLU had wanted the court first to rule on whether Hvide had actually been defamed before identifying the defendants, named in court papers only as John Doe. If there was no showing of defamation, the ACLU reasoned, the critics should remain anonymous.

"The court had the potential to set an important precedent about the right to speak anonymously on the Internet," said Lyrissa Lidsky, who argued the case on behalf of the ACLU. "The courts are eventually going to have to come to grips with this issue and decide how broad free speech rights are in cyberspace."

In "Nameless in Cyberspace," Jonathan D. Wallace makes the case that proposals to limit anonymous communications on the Internet would violate free speech rights and demonstrates that anonymous and pseudonymous speech played a vital role in the founding of this country.

Big Brother 2.0

Fox News reports today that the FBI says its controversial Carnivore system is just "the tip of the iceberg" when it comes to Internet surveillance because an even sharper-toothed information chomper is now in development.

Amid all the hubbub over whether the current system violates privacy rights, the agency has been quietly working on both "Carnivore 2.0" and "Carnivore 3.0," according to FBI documents released this month under a Freedom of Information Act claim filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The current Carnivore is version 1.3.4, according to the documents.

An "Enhanced Carnivore" program has been under development since last November -- under a $650,000 contract scheduled to end in January 2001. Most of the details on the souped-up snoopers were blacked out in heavy black marker before the papers were released.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation makes no bones about its plans for the system, which sifts an Internet Service Provider’s transmissions to track online activity.

In "How Big Brother Began," Solveig Singleton writes that seemingly innocuous measures by government can lead to an Orwellian state.

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