Amazing how demonstrations of appalling, imminent disaster tend to clarify the thinking. Eric Butler has developed a brilliant piece of software called Firesheep that makes web site identity hijacking easy and fun for all. (Ed: First the iCow, now the Firesheep? CD: Agreed, it would behoof them to switch it up a bit.) The concern […]
It’s ten days to midterm elections in the US. Tempers are running a bit high. Now FreedomWorks, one of the larger organized vehicles driving Tea Party activism, claims to have been shut down by a “cyber attack” when they were about to start a Glenn Beck online fundraiser. The WSJ doesn’t provide many details apart […]
The main Google search page now redirects to an SSL encrypted version. Compute cycles are no longer the limiting factor on shoveling all the bits through an iron-bound SSL pipe. Privacy concerns are going to lead more people in this direction. At the same time, law enforcement types are going to scream bloody murder about […]
I grew up as a practicing member of the Cult of the Mac. As such, Microsoft was clearly of the Forces of Darkness. They’re redeeming themselves now. Russia famously used illegal pirated software as an excuse to kick the doors in and shutter NGOs that were doing annoying things like advocating for universal human rights. […]
I sometimes disagree with choices Google makes, but one note they have consistently hit is the importance of transparency. As a corporate entity they are obligated to follow the rules in the countries in which they operate – as long as they want to work there. This often means they have to be the tool […]
The Hill had a piece recently talking about Republican Senatorial angst around Chinese networking electronics giant Huawei providing equipment to Sprint. Huawei, like all firms of any importance in China, has significant ties to the CCP leadership and the People’s Liberation Army. The idea is that Sprint, being a major provider of IT to the US […]
I get pretty irritated with the CyberWar Hysteria sometimes. The logic of alamists goes something like this: 1) “Oh Noes there are Bad Haxors out there who break into computers!!” 2) “Computers are buggy and have problems and really get hacked!!!” 3) *crickets* 4) “EXPLOSIONS, MASS DESTRUCTION AND DEATH ARE COMING!!!1!11!” It is genuinely hard […]
The UAE and the Saudis have made a lot of news earlier this week with their steps to choke BlackBerry data services in their countries. Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of BlackBerry, came up with a particularly clever system for securing their devices. CEOs, as it turns out, don’t like the idea of anyone […]
That’s the not-terribly-unreasonable response of former NSA Director Michael Haydon. It’s a problem to try and figure out where Internet attacks come from. In the real world, that doesn’t really matter as much. If Canada was feeling pissy and let a bunch of bombers from some unknown third country sail through their airspace to take […]
Secretary Clinton identified net reedom as a core value that the US will promote – and by all accounts, the various tentacles of the US government apparatus have gotten the message. The US is aggressively promoting the Freedom to Connect around the world using all the different tools at its disposal. In the State Department, […]
We pick a lot on authoritarians around here – try it, it’s fun! *poke poke* *GROWL* *ARGH MY ARM IS GONE!!!!* However, there’s a lot of unexpected players acting like bad guys in terms of internet censorship these days. Australia has draconian filtering laws. South Korea does everything possible to suppress anonymity online. (Care to […]
Senate Homeland Security pushed through a comprehensive cybersecurity reform bill last week. (Writeup; bill text). It appears that cyber, for now, remains one of the areas in which the parties can work productively together, as it is co-sponsored by a Republican (Collins), Democrat (Carper), and Weasel Independent (Lieberman). It’s an interesting and important idea that the […]
Great presentation by Eli Pariser at PDF 2010 on the Filter Bubble. What’s the filter bubble? Well, you’re living in it. In the Internet Age, we’re used to seeing many, many results for any search. “Why Am I Lonely?”: 150,000 hits. “Why Am I Happy?”: 141,000 hits. (Not as bad as I expected.) A huge, colossal amount of information. […]
I’m writing from the Personal Democracy Forum, a big yearly conference on the intersection of politics, governance, technology and activism. Great set of speakers – Eli Pariser of MoveOn, Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, and even Newt Gingrich. Things got off to an exciting (if technically flawed) start with a conversation between Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon […]
Time for another roundup of great stories I’m not great enough to get to. The immediate response mechanism of Twitter and other instant tech systems can be good for our altruistic side, too, whatever it might cost when… I’m sorry, what were we talking about? Some great old tech commercials. Ah, those were the days. […]