CAcert.org is a community driven, Certificate Authority that issues certificates to the public at large for free.
CAcert's goal is to promote awareness and education on computer security through the use of encryption, specifically with the X.509 family of standards. We have compiled a document base that has helpful hints and tips on setting up encryption with common software, and general information about Public Key Infrastructures (PKI).
For the enthusiast looking to dip their toe in the water, we have an easy way of obtaining certificates you can use with your email program. You can use these not only to encrypt, but to prove to your friends and family that your email really does come from you.
For administrators looking to protect the services they offer, we provide host and wild card certificates which you can issue almost immediately. Not only can you use these to protect websites, but also POP3, SMTP and IMAP connections, to list but a few. Unlike other certificate authorities, we don't limit the strength of the certificates, or the use of wild card certificates. Everyone should have the right to security and to protect their privacy, not just those looking to run ecommerce sites.
If you're extremely serious about encryption, you can join CAcert's Assurance Programme and Web of Trust. This allows you to have your identity verified to obtain added benefits, including longer length certificates and the ability to include your name on email certificates.
CAcert Inc. is a non-profit association, incorporated in New South Wales Australia.
Mark Frisse on 24 Aug 10his article explains why supplying data to researchers is set to become a profitable line of business for entities that hold large stores of health data in electronic form. Health information systems are a form of infrastructure, and Congress's cost-based fee for data preparation and transmission echoes pricing schemes traditionally used in other infrastructure industries such as railroads, electric power transmission, and telecommunications. Cost-based fees for infrastructure services, of constitutional necessity, must allow recovery of operating and capital costs including a return on invested capital-in other words, a profit margin. This fee structure is being launched in an emerging 21st-century research landscape where biomedical discovery will depend more than it has in the past on studies that harness existing stores of data-such as insurance claims and healthcare data-that were created for purposes other than the research itself. This article explores why, in this environment, the new fee structure has the potential to destabilize already-fragile public trust and invite state-law responses that could override key provisions of federal privacy regulations, with devastating consequences for researchers' future access to data. To avoid this outcome, the cost-based fee must be thoughtfully implemented and accompanied by reform of the HIPAA waiver provision now used to approve nonconsensual use of people's health data in research. This article identifies specific defects of the existing framework for approving nonconsensual uses of data with the aim of eliciting a wider debate about what the reforms ought to be.
