Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of a new U.S. policy on global Internet Freedom included a bold new statement about the responsibilities of American technology companies:
“…We are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments’ demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not simply what’s a quick profit.”
We couldn’t agree more. While Clinton focuses on media companies — meaning Internet media companies like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft — there are plenty of other companies deserving scrutiny. Specfically, many U.S. (and multinational) technology companies may be knowingly selling Chinese authorities the surveillance equipment used to commit or facilitate human rights abuses. We think it’s high time to pay attention to them as well.
Full Article (EFF - eff.org)
As we continue our collective foray into the brave new world of social networking, we keep learning the same lesson over and over again: don’t post photos of yourself doing stupid things. This is doubly true if said stupid thing is illegal, as yet another intellectually challenged Facebook user has discovered.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
Those with no technical knowledge generally believe that they are anonymous when simply browsing the Web. Those who know more might recognize that IP addresses can be used to do some rough targeting, while browser cookies can be used to track someone across sessions and across IP addresses. But what if your browser itself—even with cookies off and IP addresses out of the picture—was leaving a digital fingerprint at every site you visit?
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
As the practice of high-frequency trading continues to become more widespread, concerns are growing that erroneous trades carried out by “algos gone wild”—a sort of digitally amplified version of the “fat finger” phenomenon—could cause a market crash at Internet speed, a meltdown that no one could stop. Two recent market glitches could provide a preview of what’s to come.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn’t that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated — we knew that already — it’s that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers.
Full Article (CNN - cnn.com)
In the wake of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major speech yesterday on Internet freedom, a speech in which she called out countries like Egypt, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Iran, and China, most governments have yet to respond. China, however, was quick to reply after dealing with the Google issue for a week already.
Full Article (Ars Technica - arstechnica.com)
Following the report earlier this week that the FBI regularly broke the ECPA law, in obtaining information from telcos without going through the proper process (and, in some cases using just a post it note!), some interesting details from the full report have come to light. The two key ones? First, “the Obama administration issued a secret rule almost two weeks ago saying it was legal for the FBI to have skirted federal privacy protections.” And, second, the original idea to use these bogus “exigent letters” didn’t come from the FBI, but from an AT&T employee. We noted in the original report that no one seemed to be placing any blame on the telcos for allowing this, and why they’re clearly abusing the law, in giving out such info without the proper rules being followed, seems like a big question:
Full Article (Techdirt - techdirt.com)
A selection of applications written and uploaded by an Android Marketplace user/developer have been found to contain malicious code that attempts to compromise banking information stored on the device in order to commit bank/credit card fraud.
As the Kindle takes off in popularity, losses and thefts will as well. After hearing one reader’s tale of woe after losing his Kindle, we discovered that there are not that many options for recovery, though there could be if Amazon really wanted to offer them.
Though machines with 4GB are not yet the typical purchase for home or business use, they are readily available from major manufacturers and it won’t be long before they are the typical purchase. But there are problems. You don’t have to stand for long in a computer shop to hear a sales assistant talk of 4GB as some sort of limit for 32-bit operating systems, and it won’t be long before this sales patter develops into outright promotion of 64-bit Windows as the only way to get past this limit.
A new lawsuit from the EFF seeks to shed light on the mysterious “Other Intelligence Activities” that the NSA was engaged in after 9/11, and that the DoJ eventually found to be illegal. Based Ars’ reporting of the government’s datamining efforts, we suggest that it probably looks a lot like social network crawling.
Microsoft has responded to the EU’s antitrust investigation into its bundling of its browser with Windows by deciding to ship Windows 7 in Europe without Internet Explorer 8 installed. Say hello to the spiritual successor of Windows XP N: Windows 7 E.
