Privacy

Berners-Lee Launches Global Campaign to Save the Web From Destruction

Tim Berners-Lee has called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new "Contract for the Web" that aims to protect people's rights and freedoms on the internet. more

Malware and Search Warrant

A recent decision from a federal district court addresses an issue I hadn't seen before: whether searching malware on the suspect's computer was outside the scope of the search warrant issued for that computer. It seems a narrow issue, and unfortunately the opinion issued in the case doesn't tell us a whole lot about what happened; but I thought the issue was worth writing about, if only to note that it arose. more

Skype Messes Up, Badly

The Open Net Initiative's Information Warfare Monitor project has published a stunning report by "Hacktivist" Nart Villeneuve titled: "Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform." It has been covered by both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal... more

Public Private Cooperation: The Zeus Take Down Example

Microsoft took down a Zeus botnet recently. Within days it was publicly accosted by Fox-IT's director Ronald Prins for obstructing ongoing investigations and having used Fox-IT's data. This was followed by the accusation that Microsoft obstructs criminal proceedings... On top of all this EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström announced that cooperation between law enforcement and industry will be forged in the European Cyber Crime Centre as of 2013. Coincidences do not exist. Why? more

We Have a Paradigm for Surveillance That’s Broken, Fit Only for the Analogue Past

As each day brings new revelations about surveillance online, we are starting to see increasing activity in national legislatures intended either to establish more control over what the security services can do to their nationals (in countries like the US), or to limit access by foreign secret services to the personal information of their citizens (countries like Brazil). Unfortunately, neither of these approaches address the underlying problem: we have a paradigm for surveillance that's fit for the analogue past, not the digital present, let alone the future. more

WHOIS Inaccuracy Could Mean Noncompliance with GDPR

The European Commission recently released technical input on ICANN's proposed GDPR-compliant WHOIS models that underscores the GDPR's "Accuracy" principle - making clear that reasonable steps should be taken to ensure the accuracy of any personal data obtained for WHOIS databases and that ICANN should be sure to incorporate this requirement in whatever model it adopts. Contracted parties concerned with GDPR compliance should take note. more

How the NSA is Threatening the Future of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Others

When I read government arguments in defense of the NSA, an oft-repeated line was: We're not targeting Americans. We're targeting foreigners. Foreigners. I really dislike that word. And I'm sure companies like Apple, Google and Facebook do as well. Why? more

Google, Viacom, Privacy and Copyright Meet the Social Web

In all the recent uproar (New York Times, "Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube," Michael Helft, 4 July 2008) about the fact that Google has been forced to turn over a large pile of personally-identifiable information to Viacom as part of a copyright dispute (Opinion), there is a really interesting angle pointed out by Dan Brickley (co-creator of FOAF and general Semantic Web troublemaker)... more

Luddites of the 21St Century Unite?

In the past few weeks doom and gloom stories about the future were printed, discussed and opined in the press. The down and out of the message of futurists is that the middle class is going to be swept away in the coming years because of software and robotic solutions (from here on: automated processes), making humans redundant... Do Luddites of the 21st century need to rise? I want to look at the topic from a few angles. more

Government Officials, Academia, and Advocacy Groups Say Time for US to Get Its Own GDPR

US Congress asked to develop an internet data privacy legislation similar to the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to enhance consumer protections. more

Storm Warning for Cloud Computing: More Like a Miasma

The approach is growing in popularity, and Google, Microsoft and Amazon are among the many large companies working on ways to attract users to their offerings, with Google Apps, Microsoft's Live Mesh and Amazon S3 all signing up customers as they try to figure out what works and what can turn a profit... In the real world national borders, commercial rivalries and political imperatives all come into play... The issue was recently highlighted by reports that the Canadian government has a policy of not allowing public sector IT projects to use US-based hosting services because of concerns over data protection. more

Another ICANN Meeting Concluded With No Action on DNS Abuse or Privacy/Proxy Policy

The ICANN 69 meeting has come to a close, with no progress on DNS abuse or implementation of the Privacy/Proxy Services Accreditation policy (PPSAI). While ICANN is uniquely positioned to do so, it refuses to do anything proactive about DNS abuse, with its executives overtly attempting to limit its role to data collection. Moreover, its refusal to implement community-driven initiatives such as the PPSAI points to a growing trend where ICANN is backing away from its public interest responsibilities, to the detriment of the Internet and its users. more

RIPE 75: Imprssions of the Meeting

RIPE held its 75th meeting in Dubai in mid-October. As usual, there was a diverse set of presentations covering a broad range of activities that are taking place on today's Internet. The topics include issues relating to network operations, regulatory policies, peering and interconnection, communications practices within data centers, IPv6, the DNS, routing and network measurement. If that's not enough, the topic of the Internet of Things has been added as a Working Group in the RIPE pantheon. If you add address policy, database and RIPE services to the mix, you get a pretty packed five days with topics that would appeal to most Internet folks. more

Are We at the Dawn of a New Cold War?

Over the past say six months there are trends and events on and around the Internet that made me come up with this bizarre sounding question. Still it may actually make sense if we look at some facts. I'll be honest up front. This is a contribution that is not totally thought over and more a compilation of ideas and impressions gathered over the past weeks and months. Still, it could well serve as the beginning of a discussion on giving the recent events a place. There's nothing better than a provocative question in that case! Let's start here. more

Internet Governance and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Part 3: Article 6-12

Internet Governance like all governance needs to be founded in guiding principles from which all policy making is derived. There are no better fundamental principles to guide our policy making than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, (UDHR). This article is Part 3 of a series exploring the UDHR as a guide and template for the digital governance and digital citizenship. We discuss UDHR Articles 6 through 12 and address topics such as fundamental digital values, cyberlaw, policymaking and the role of tribunals in digital governance. more