After serving a 16-month sentence for exposing an email vulnerability to his company’s customers, Bret McDanel is appealing his conviction in an effort to clear his name and send a message that discussing flaws and vulnerabilities is acceptable. While working for Tornado Development, McDanel discovered the email flaw and reported it to the company. Six months after severing his employment with Tornado, McDanel discovered that the company had never fixed the vulnerability. McDanel then informed each email user of the Tornado system of the vulnerability in an email from “Secret Squirrel.”

If you know of organzations experiencing the problems outlined in this article or other types of actions taken by the government to control nonprofit speech please send a message to Kay Guinane at kguinane@ombwatch.org

Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush administration appear to be feeling the growing public opposition to the USA Patriot Act. Rather than push safeguards and increase transparency, Ashcroft has hit the road in a publc relations campaign to convince the public that the Patriot Act is nothing to fear.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) postponed implementation of its “do not fax rule” for 16 months thanks to the many concerns voiced by nonprofit organizations and business groups. The rule was scheduled to take effect on Aug. 25, and will now take effect on January 1, 2005, according to a FCC news release. The do-not-fax rule, which was adopted late June, requires companies and organizations to get written permission before sending unsolicited faxes that include information on financial transactions. This could include conference registration forms or membership-dues notices.