For nearly the past four years, the Trump Administration has purported to treat 5G supply chain security through empty political gestures such as network equipment banning. The disinformation reached its absurd zenith subsequent to the election with the Q-Anon myth of the Kraken. (The Myth advanced by Trump attorneys asserted the long-deceased Hugo Chavez working with China was corrupting voting machine software to deprive Trump of another term.) more
Jules (Julius Genakowski) may soon have a stark choice: should U.S. wireless prices go up or down? Jules talks a good game about wanting more competition and the evidence is overwhelming that going from 6 to 4 majors resulted in higher prices. Merrill Lynch a while back calculated margins went up $billions each year because of the consolidation. You can hire an economist to say almost anything, and two at the University of Chicago happily stretched the truth on this in the past. But the evidence both academic and common sense is clear. more
The transition of the IANA contract oversight is, of course, the topic du jour at ICANN 50 in London. From the sessions to the hallway banter, it's the hottest topic I can recall in ICANN's history. It's an inherently over-the-top political topic, merging partisan politics in Washington with Internet governance. On numerous occasions in Singapore, Larry Strickling raised the domestic politicking on the part of the Republican Party regarding the IANA oversight transition, cautioning us of the discourse fuelled by opportunism. more
What could the Cuban government do with Russia-style access to Facebook data? What sorts of fake news could they create and circulate on YouTube and Pinterest? What can be done to control the dark side of the Cuban Internet? Cuba is about to hold a referendum on a proposed constitution that the government supports and Eduardo Sanchez posted a test showing that SMS messages with anti-referendum terms. more
ICANN realized during the Mexico City public meeting that its draft proposals for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) did not take sufficient account of the trademark problems that might arise if the new top level domains become havens for cybersquatters. ICANN sensibly asked the trademark and brand owners to propose rules and procedures that might address these problems... more
It's that time of the year for me to get out the crystal ball and peer into 2022... I have no idea why it took a year for the administration to tee up a new Chairman and recommend a fifth FCC Commissioner. But once a new Commissioner is seated, the new FCC will tackle reinstating some version of Title II regulation, accompanied by net neutrality regulations. For yet another year, this won't come from Congress, which is the only permanent solution. more
The Canadian government released a statement saying "Facebook committed serious contraventions of Canadian privacy laws and failed to take responsibility for protecting the personal information of Canadians." more
We learned from The Wall Street Journal yesterday that "Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski gets a little peeved when people suggests that he wants to regulate the Internet." He told a group of Journal reporters and editors today that: "I don't see any circumstances where we'd take steps to regulate the Internet itself," and "I've been clear repeatedly that we're not going to regulate the Internet." We're thankful to hear Chairman Julius Genachowski to make that promise. We'll certainly hold him to it. But you will pardon us if we remain skeptical... more
When discussions with overseas colleagues made it clear to me how fast things are changing here in Australia compared with the rest of the world, I was prompted to write this update about the developments in Australia, particularly in relation to its incumbent telco, Telstra. Most people overseas have not yet fully caught up with the fact that the destructive regime of Telstra's former CEO is well and truly over -- in the past there has been plenty of international reporting of the shocking behaviour of Telstra under Sol Trujillo (former US West) and his persistent attacks on the government included suing Ministers and abusing the Regulator. more
This seemed to be the reaction this morning worldwide to the leaked alleged PowerPoint slides detailing the White House strategic options for a U.S. national 5G infrastructure. The gist of the slides has apparently been confirmed to Reuters by unnamed "Trump security team members." The options apparently range between creating a U.S. Ministry of 5G resembling the old world of government Post, Telegraph and Telecommunication (PTT) agencies of bygone years, and sawing off the U.S. ICT infrastructures and services from the rest of the world. more
On February 5th, while many (including the author) were on route to ICANN 52 in Singapore, the U.S. Senate passed S.Res. 71, a non-binding, "Sense of the Senate" Resolution declaring February 8th–14th as "Internet Governance Awareness Week". Those dates overlap the now ongoing ICANN meeting in Singapore, and the congruence is intentional. more
German regulators have released a set of guidelines addressing network security for companies wanting to help build next-generation 5G infrastructure. more
One of the RSS feeds that I read is Reason magazine, which is a web site for libertarians. In general, libertarians want less government intervention both in our personal lives and in the economy. The idea behind libertarians is that today's Republicans want less government intervention in our economy but are perfectly fine to have them dictate some aspects of morality. Similarly, today's Democrats want less government intervention in our personal lives but are perfectly fine with creating government bureaucracy to deliver social services. That's an oversimplified summary, but is more or less correct. About two months ago I got an article in my RSS feed where Reason was commenting on the government's response to the cyber war threats. more
In a move that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, the EU Commission has given a rather mixed welcome to the IANA bid. While they obviously like a lot of what they are seeing, they're also not overly impressed with the contract only being open to US companies. more
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a new rule under the Privacy Act of 1974 in the Federal Register last week, detailing how it intends to expand the information it collects when determining a person's immigration status to include social media handles and potentially even search histories. more