Archives
Categories
Tag Archives: privacy
Some Big Providers To Quietly Begin Monitoring Users
The people who want control over the Internet are nothing if not persistent. They are quite capable of learning from their mistakes, too. So it should perhaps come as no surprise that they have licked their wounds and regathered their forces after the resounding defeat of SOPA. They’ve come up with a new scheme to protect their precious copyrights; a kinder, gentler version of SOPA that, while it enables spying, supposedly has education more in mind than punishment. Continue reading
Posted in News, Security
Tagged CAS, DMCA, file sharing, Net neutrality, peer-to-peer, privacy, Protect IP Act, SOPA
Comments Off
Beyond Passwords: Online Identity Standards
Virtually everyone’s been stuck one time or another trying to remember a online password and thought, “There has to be a better way.” A recent article in our newsletter talks about the problem and suggests tricks to make it a little easier to deal with. But although a lot of smart people have tried to figure out a safe, reliable, and more convenient system, nobody’s come up with one yet. Now, however, the US Government has decided to gently encourage efforts. In the spring of last year, the Obama Administration announced the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, NSTIC. Like the National Broadband Plan, it’s not legislation or even regulation. Instead, NSTIC is a hopeful collection of idealistic principles and goals to promote development rather than a concrete plan with real funding and hard, measurable results. Nevertheless, many agencies and corporations are very interested. It’s easy to see why. Identity theft has become a major problem, costing millions each year, and passwords remain the weakest link in cybersecurity. Commerce might also be helped if you could buy books on Amazon with your Google account or download tax forms from iTunes. And public safety would benefit if your child could be automatically denied entrance to adult websites, or doctors could check in online to help provide medical services after a disaster. The dream is to build a safe method of sharing relevant sensitive information about users with online entities while … Continue reading
ACTA: The Internet Fight Goes International
Internet activists who are celebrating the apparent defeat of the SOPA and PIPA bills have found their party already interrupted by the appearance, or rather, re-appearance of a piece of legislation that could have an even more significant effect: ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Whereas SOPA and PIPA were merely proposed US laws, ACTA is an international treaty, so its scope is much wider. It will become law for all signatory states and override any contrary provisions in US codes. On January 26, the European Union and 22 member states formally signed ACTA, and apparently it now goes before the European Parliament. Last, October, ACTA was signed by 10 nations, including the US which helped sponsor it. However, though the President signed it as an executive agreement, constitutionally the treaty must still be ratified by the US Senate. Mexico, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus, and Slovakia are some of the most important nations that have still not signed on. There is a huge amount of suspicion across the Internet surrounding the treaty because it was negotiated in secrecy by industry and government trade representatives of some of the richest countries without any input from anyone else. In fact, time after time, parliaments and interest groups around the world were told they could not see it while it was being worked on. For a long time the only information about the provisions of the proposed treaty came through diplomatic cables … Continue reading
Posted in Interesting Items, News
Tagged ACTA, copyright, privacy, Protect IP Act, SOPA
Comments Off