WASHINGTON -- Microsoft's antitrust travails continue next week when a federal judge will decide whether to approve the settlement that the Redmond company inked with the Justice Department.
Starting Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly will begin hearings to consider whether the deal is in the "public interest," as required by federal law.
In an effort to stave off criticism -- mostly from Microsoft's competitors -- the Bush administration and Microsoft rewrote portions of the agreement this week to eliminate a section that might have given the company access to rivals' patents without compensation.
On March 11, a second round of hearings begin before Kollar-Kotelly on a different, albeit related topic: How else should Microsoft be punished? Because nine states won't agree to the Justice Department's settlement, their own lawsuit is proceeding on a separate track.
It'll take a while. Kollar-Kotelly ruled this week that the states can present 16 witnesses, and Microsoft will be allowed to call 31 witnesses to testify.
These legal maneuverings began in late 1997, have already involved multiple appeals court and Supreme Court rulings, and show no sign of ending soon. The complaint of Microsoft's courtroom foes is that it misused its monopoly to win the browser war with Netscape -- which seems almost quaint nowadays.
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Scarfo update: The son of a jailed Philadelphia mob boss pleaded guilty to a bookmaking charge this week, ending what began as a routine prosecution but became an important case governing the future of electronic surveillance.
Nicodemo Scarfo Jr. agreed to serve at least 33 months in prison and will be sentenced June 10 by U.S. District Court Judge Joel Pisano.
Scarfo's case attracted national interest because it offered the first glimpse into the FBI's secret techniques for dealing with criminal suspects who use encryption products such as Pretty Good Privacy to cloak their communications and business records.
To hear federal prosecutors tell it, the FBI became so frustrated by Scarfo's use of PGP to encode loan-sharking data that they had to resort to extraordinary means. With a judge's approval, FBI agents repeatedly snuck into Scarfo's New Jersey business to plant a keystroke sniffer that coughed up the defendant's password.
In court, Scarfo's attorney -- aided by privacy advocates -- argued that since the FBI did not follow the Fourth Amendment and federal wiretap law, evidence gleaned from the black-bag job should be tossed out. After receiving a secret briefing from the feds, a judge ruled in January that the FBI's technique was perfectly acceptable.
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Secret "Second Protocol": A coalition of civil liberties groups has asked for more information about the secret "Second Protocol" underway at the Council of Europe.
Details are scarce so far, but as Wired News reported last week, the council is considering additions to a cybercrime treaty that would apply to "terrorist messages and the decoding thereof."
The U.S. Justice Department sent representatives to a closed-door council meeting last week on Second Protocol, but has refused to say what was discussed. The United States is a non-voting member of the council.
In their letter, the civil liberties groups demand more openness: "We urge you to release information and draft documents regarding this second protocol to the general public if it is finished, or to release the document as soon as it is completed."
