Last year, we noted that the new webcasting royalty rates pushed through by the RIAA appeared designed specifically to kill internet radio. These royalties are different and much higher than things like traditional and satellite radio.

The RIAA knew exactly what it was doing in pushing these higher rates: it was killing off alternative routes to promoting non-RIAA music. The RIAA labels have always thrived off a very limited distribution and promotion channel.

The RIAA's spinoff, SoundExchange, gets to collect money on non-RIAA music as well. Oh yeah, it gets better too: if SoundExchange can't find the musicians to pay, it gets to keep the money. That's why it has a history of not looking very hard for musicians in order to pay them.

SoundExchange claims higher royalties for Internet radio because it says musicians deserve a bigger cut of Internet radio profits. But it strangely ignores the fact that if an Internet radio shuts then musicians will not get anything.

SoundExchange claims that it the Internet Radio stations fault that they have not tried to work out ways to make money out of playing the songs.

Now the radio station will have to pay royalties to SoundExchange even though the artist has not signed a contract with the organisation. Any cash SoundExchange collects will not go to the artist but will be saved up to give an RIAA executive a holiday somewhere hot with their secretary.

Microchipped passports designed to have watertight security can actually be cloned in a matter of minutes.

A computer researcher was able to clone the chips on two British passports. They then implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The tampered chips were then passed as real by passport reader software used by the United Nations agency that sets standards for the e-passports.

These tests flag up several interesting and somewhat alarming points: They undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week are useless as they can't be cloned, they also raise questions on the £4 billion spent by the government on ID cards which use the same technology.

In one of the more colossal security blunders in a long time, an unencrypted laptop containing sensitive information for 33,000 travelers has been reported stolen from San Francisco International Airport.

Officials with Transportation Security Administration say the laptop was discovered missing from a locked room more than a week ago, but unbelievably, they weren't warned until Sunday.

As if the lack of encryption and a tardy warning weren't enough, the company's CEO, Steven Brill, dismissed the incident as a simple burglary of a laptop. "For it to be more than that, the thief would have to hack into two different passwords - and even then would not get what identity thieves want most - a Social Security number and/or credit card information."

For a long time, Hushmail was considered a very secure email provider until an affidavit (PDF) from a DEA agent in 2007 showed that they had handed over 12 CDs of possibly decrypted data to law enforcement. Now, Cryptome has posted that the Hushmail encryption program is no longer the same program for which Hushmail releases their source. Is Hushmail even safe to use anymore?

"Plaintiffs' privacy claims fail, among other reasons, because the view of a home from the driveway that can be seen by any visitor, delivery person, or telephone repairman is not private," the company said in response to the suit.

"Today's satellite-image technology means that...complete privacy does not exist," Google said in its response to the complaint.

Google also takes issue with the Borings' approach to the matter, though stopping short of accusing them of opportunistically trying to extract some money from a wealthy company.

In the latest cockup involving nuclear arms, three ballistic missile crew members fell asleep while in possession of classified launch codes used to launch nuclear attacks, the US Air Force says.

An Air Force spokesman said the members were waiting to return to the base "and they fell asleep."

Over the past year, the Air Force has committed other blunders. Last year, it mistakenly loaded nukes onto a B-52 that few across the US. The Air Force has also sent nuclear fuses to Taiwan.

Just four days after escaping a federal minimum-security work camp, "Spam King" Eddie Davidson shot his wife and child and wounded a teen-age girl before turning the gun on himself.

Media and prosecutors have dubbed Davidson "The Spam King" for years for his prolific anonymous e-mails selling a raft of products.

Davidson had pleaded guilty to tax evasion and falsifying information about the sender of e-mail pitches for low-cost, high risk stocks.

For the past century, the FBI has been a vital player in American history, front and center in some of our country's most high-profile national security and criminal issues. Not surprisingly, some myths and misunderstandings about the Bureau have evolved over that time, in part because of the complex and sometimes sensitive nature of our work. We've picked out what we think are the top ten myths down through the years, leaving aside ones that are so fanciful that they don't deserve mention here.

No decision has been taken to create a huge database containing details of all phone calls, e-mails and internet use, security minister Lord West says.

Mr Thomas acknowledged that "targeted and duly authorised" interception of communications by terrorists and other suspects could be "invaluable".

Speculation that the government was considering collecting the information - including numbers dialled, websites visited and location of mobile phones being used - has increased because it has talked about "modifying procedures for acquiring communications data" in the Communications Data Bill.