From the National Journal:
Cyber-defenders know what to prepare themselves for because the United States has used the kinds of weapons that now target the Pentagon, federal agencies, and American corporations. They are designed to steal information, disrupt communications, and commandeer computer systems. The U.S. is forming a cyberwar plan based largely on the experience of intelligence agencies and military operations. It is still in nascent stages, but it is likely to support the conduct of conventional war for generations to come. Some believe it may even become the dominant force.
Senior military leaders didn’t come of age in a digital world, and they’ve been skeptical of computerized attacks. Mostly younger officers, who received their early combat education through video games and Dungeons & Dragons, wage these battles. To them, digital weapons are as familiar and useful as rifles and grenades. [...]
Today, cyber-warriors use the global telecommunications network to commandeer an adversary’s phones or shut down its Web servers. This activity is a natural evolution of the information war doctrine.
[...]
President Obama confirmed that cyber-warriors have aimed at American networks. “We know that cyber-intruders have probed our electrical grid,” he said at the White House in May, when he unveiled the next stage of the national cyber-security strategy. The president also confirmed, for the first time, that the weapons of cyberwar had claimed victims. “In other countries, cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness.”
[...]
Military officers describe cyberspace as the fifth domain of war, after land, sea, air, and space. But cyberspace is unique in one important respect — it’s the only battlefield created by humans.
[..]
In a 2008 article in Armed Forces Journal, Col. Charles Williamson III, a legal adviser for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency, proposed building a military “botnet,” an army of centrally controlled computers to launch coordinated attacks on other machines. Williamson echoed a widely held concern among military officials that other nations are building up their cyber-forces more quickly. “America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere,” he wrote.
[...]
Presumably, China has no interest in crippling Wall Street, because it owns much of it.
[source: National Journal]
From the Albany Times Union:
After a local Schenectady denizen’s FOIA request to access the local city code — to learn whether he was running afoul of any local ordinances due to an unruly dog — is denied, he learns he must pay at least $200 to have access to the city code.
Two options seem unreasonably expensive for an individual: He could purchase a copy of the code in a paper binder from General Code for $656 or on a CD-ROM disk bundled with General Code’s software for $200.
General Code is a private sector company the city has contracted with for about $20,000 “to create a comprehensive, searchable electronic version of the code that eventually will be posted on the Web and available to all.”
Schenectady is not alone — with lovely blue states like Oregon and California in the mix.
See also: Professor Posts “Illegal Copy” of Guide To Oregon Public Record Laws and dares the AG to respond.
Open-access champion Carl Malamud’s “All the Government’s Information” is a must.
Continue reading about Copyrighted city laws available to you for only $200
From the ABA Journal:
An Illinois judge has decided that an anonymous commenter on a newspaper website will be unmasked, even though the mother of a teen about whom “Hipcheck16″ allegedly made “deeply disturbing” comments hasn’t yet decided whether to sue over the posting.
Continue reading about Judge rules anonymous web site commenter will be “unmasked”
From Gawker:
Because he is an idiot, Glenn Beck tried in September to shut down glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, a satirical site that used Beck’s insidious “I’m just asking the question” pose to advance the Fark-inspired meme that Beck may have raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, because, well—have you ever heard him deny it?
The proprietor was anonymous at the time, but he’s come out of the closet as Isaac Eiland-Hall, a Florida computer programmer who was sick of Beck’s posturing and enjoyed funny things on the internet. Beck complained to a World Intellectual Property Organization arbitration panel that the site was defamatory and infringed on the trademark he holds over his own name. Late last month, his complaint was denied.
Read the rest of the article here.
Read the WIPO decision [trust me, it's worth the read!]
The satire site has been taken down, but click here for a mirror site.
Continue reading about Glenn Beck Loses Suit Against Satire Site
From Daily Tech:
One inevitable fact of the holiday season is that airports around the country will be packed. That means that millions of American’s will be schlepping through airports on layovers looking for something to do with their time and keep in touch with friends and family.
Google has already given travelers its holiday gift with free Wi-Fi in selected airports. The free Wi-Fi service is available as of today and will remain free through January 15, 2010. The free service will be offered in many of the largest airports in the country including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis, and Charlotte. The airports at Burbank and Seattle will continue to offer free Wi-Fi to all travelers indefinitely.
Continue reading about Google gives away free wifi in 47 airports for the holidays
From threatpost.com:
Two separate bills that would require organizations to notify consumers when their personal information has been compromised have made their way out of committee in the Senate, a critical step toward the creation of a national data-breach notification bill.
A variety of technology vendors, consumer advocacy groups and privacy groups have been calling for Congress to pass a comprehensive federal data-breach notification bill for a number of years now. Several bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate in recent years, but none has made it to the president’s desk yet.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved two different bills, each of which would mandate that organizations that store consumers’ sensitive data notify consumers if that data is breached. Senate bill 139 would require “Federal agencies, and persons engaged in interstate commerce, in possession of data containing sensitive personally identifiable information, to disclose any breach of such information.” The language in the bill is quite similar to that in existing state notification bills, including the landmark California Senate bill 1386.
Read the rest of the article here
Continue reading about Data Breach/Consumer Protection Bills Advance in Senate
From the Washington Post:
During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a “reasonable suspicion,” according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week.
FBI officials cautioned that each nomination “does not necessarily represent a new individual, but may instead involve an alias or name variant for a previously watchlisted person.”
The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government’s “no fly” list.
Read the rest of the article here.
Continue reading about 1,600 names suggested daily for FBI watchlist
From the WSJ:
Lawyers for years have added language to some contracts that stretches beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. But more and more people are encountering such everywhere-and-forever language as entertainment companies tap into amateur talent and try to anticipate every possible future stream of revenue.
Experts in contract drafting say lawyers are trying to ensure that with the proliferation of new outlets — including mobile-phone screens, Twitter, online video sites and the like — they cover all possible venues from which their clients can derive income, even those in outer space. FremantleMedia, one of the producers of NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” declined to comment on its contracts.
The terms of use listed on Starwars.com, where people can post to message boards among other things, tell users that they give up the rights to any content submissions “throughout the universe and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed.”
Lucasfilm Ltd., Star Wars creator George Lucas’s entertainment company that runs the site, said the language is standard in Hollywood.
[...]
Some legal experts rail against such language as imprecise and unnecessary. Ken Adams, a Garden City, N.Y., attorney and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who advocates for clarity in contract language, says references to outer space and the end time are silly.
That kind of language could even be a way of drumming up business, he says. “It adds an aura of magic — you’re dabbling in the occult and you of course need a lawyer to guide you through the mysteries.”
Read the rest of the article here
Continue reading about Lawyerese that stretches beyond Earth’s atmosphere
The Obama admin has switched from a proprietary content management system in favor of open-source Drupal software. “Open source is a great form of civic participation,” the White House’s new media director Macon Phillips said. Dries Buytaert added, “this is a clear sign that governments realize that Open Source does not pose additional risks compared to proprietary software, and furthermore, that by moving away from proprietary software, they are not being locked into a particular technology, and that they can benefit from the innovation that is the result of thousands of developers collaborating.”
Read the rest of the piece here.
Continue reading about White House Website Switches To Open Source
From ABA Law Journal:
The state of New York has cut off unemployment benefits for a 2008 law grad after she reported collecting $1.30 a day in advertising income from her blog.
The lawyer, who allowed only her first name of Karin to be used, was laid off from her job at a New York City law firm after working there only six months, Forbes reports. Karin publishes a blog called STL Meal Deals highlighting dining bargains in St. Louis, where she moved to take advantage of more affordable rent.
The agency told Karin it’s investigating her business, and she won’t get any benefits while the probe is under way, the story says. State law provides that anyone who earns less than $405, the amount paid in weekly benefits, will have their checks reduced by 25 percent.
Continue reading about Lawyer Loses Unemployment Because of $1.30 Daily Blog Income
In 2004, Micheal Moore went on record:
I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that. I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I’m happy this is happening. Is it wrong for someone who’s bought a film on DVD to let a friend watch it for free? Of course it’s not. It never has been and never will be. I think information, art and ideas should be shared.
I have yet to see Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. The fact that Moore did not release his latest documentary under a Creative Commons License, in my view, undermines his credibility, motivation, intention, and message. It’s not like we have the technology to disseminate and distribute films to a wide audience for free.
My view is, if you’re going to criticize an economic system and advocate for a different, more justiciable economic system, then it behooves you as an activist, journalist, and filmmaker to operate within the structures of the more justiciable economic system — especially when those alternative structures already exist. Lead by example. Walk the walk. Get it? What was it that Mahatma Ghandi said, something about “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
What gives Moore? Why isn’t your latest film released on the internet under a CC license? If you honestly oppose the oppressive structures of capitalism, then why do you continue to prop up those structures?
Continue reading about Michael Moore: pirate my film, please
BBC writes:
Google has confirmed to BBC News that its e-mail system – Gmail – has been targeted as part of an “industry-wide phishing scheme”.
The search giant said that it had taken immediate action to safeguard the affected accounts.
Phishing involves using fake websites to lure people into revealing data such as bank account details or login names.
BBC News has seen two lists that detail more than 30,000 names and passwords that have been posted online.
The FTC has finally announced new regulations to take effect December 1, 2009 to rein in paid reviews and disinformation online. According to the AP:
The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.
The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. The guides are not binding law, but rather interpretations of law that hope to help advertisers comply with regulations. Violating the rules, which take effect Dec. 1, could result in various sanctions including a lawsuit.
[...]
For bloggers, the FTC stopped short of specifying how they must disclose conflicts of interest. Rich Cleland, assistant director of the FTC’s advertising practices division, said the disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous,” no matter what form it will take.
It’s about time the FTC stepped in.
Continue reading about FTC: Bloggers Must Disclose Paid Reviews
It’s important to keep on eye on how this develops as certain corporate conglomerates try to centralize the internet, block the flow of information, and make it less democratic.
“The head of the FCC plans to propose new rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with the free flow of information and certain applications [...]
