Twitter has filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court seeking to publish its full Transparency Report. In a blog post released this afternoon, Twitter's vice president, Ben Lee writes: "Our ability to speak has been restricted by laws that prohibit and even criminalize a service provider..." more
In early February, free hosting provider Freedom Hosting II, known as one of the largest hosting providers for anonymous websites, was compromised along with all the websites it hosted. The takedown was estimated to have impacted 15-20% of all websites on the Dark Web, however, the actual impact is now reported to have been much larger. more
When farms are connected to the Internet, we all benefit. Agriculture that gains real-time information about plants, soil, atmosphere, and irrigation, dubbed "precision agriculture", can save farmers 20-30% of their water consumption while increasing productivity by 20-70%, according to Valley Vision. The San Francisco-Bay Area Internet Society Chapter is pleased to announce that we have started phase one of our collaborative project, "Bridging California's Rural/Urban Digital Divide with Mobile Broadband"... more
I feel incredibly lucky to work every day with some of the biggest, most recognised and most innovative organisations from around the world on developing strategies for their .brand TLDs. In this capacity, I also have the privilege to meet some of the most knowledgeable and forward-thinking experts in branding, digital marketing, web development and technology, to name a few. One such person is the brilliantly talented Matt Dorville. more
Michael "Mick" Moran, who has helped rescue thousands of child abuse material victims since he started working in the field in 1997, challenged the internet industry to do more to protect innocent children as he received the 2017 M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award. more
The other day several of us were gathered in a conference room on the 17th floor of the LinkedIn building in San Francisco, looking out of the windows as we discussed some various technical matters. All around us, there were new buildings under construction, with that tall towering crane anchored to the building in several places. We wondered how that crane was built, and considered how precise the building process seemed to be to the complete mess building a network seems to be. more
Remember not very long ago when social media experts were preaching the value of a Facebook page over a website? It was not uncommon to be told to dump your website altogether in favor of a Facebook page and Twitter feed. Why bother with HTML when you could simply hashtag your way to global success? My how times have changed. more
US leadership and influence online stems from US innovation and corporate risk-taking. But it also is the direct result of US Government policy. In the early days of the web and e-commerce, the Clinton administration recognized they had to figure out a strategy to reconcile the internet, which is global, with laws and regulations, which are domestic. Instead of demanding negotiations for shared global rules, Administration officials put forward a set of principles, which they called the Framework for Global Electronic Commerce. more
Who do you think deserves recognition in the Internet Hall of Fame? Do you know of someone who has played a key role in the Internet's development who should be recognized? (And is not already among the existing IHOF inductees?) If you know of someone who deserves the recognition, nominations are open until March 15, 2017. As outlined by Internet Society President & CEO Kathy Brown in a blog post today, the Internet Hall of Fame seeks to honor three types of inductee. more
In Part 1 of "Bug Bounty Programs: Are You Ready?" we examined the growth of commercial bug bounty programs and what organizations need to do before investing in and launching their own bug bounty. In this part, we'll discuss why an organization needs to launch a bug bounty program, and what limits the value they will likely extract from such an investment. more
The premise of crowdsourcing the task of uncovering new bugs and vulnerabilities in an organization's web applications or consumer products sounds compelling to many. What's not to like with the prospect of "many eyes" poking and prodding away at a corporate system for a minimal reward -- and preemptively uncovering flaws that could have been exploited by hackers with nefarious intent? more
The new year is upon us and it's time for our annual look at CircleID's most popular posts of the past year and highlighting those that received the most attention. Congratulations to all the 2016 participants and best wishes to all in the new year. more
A new age of openness is coming upon us. At least that's what we're being told. For instance -- "The reign of closed solution suites is over, shifting to the rise of open, heterogeneous software ecosystems." Maybe it's my 30 years in the information technology business (how many people remember Thomas-Conrad ARCnet hardware?), but I'm not convinced. It's worth taking a moment to consider the case. more
There's a new virus infecting the Internet that's more pernicious and more dangerous than any virus that has gone before. It's the first example ever of a hybrid Internet-human virus and probably the universal common ancestor of all hybrid Internet-human viruses to come. The condition the virus leaves behind is increasingly well recognised and goes by the understated label of "post-truth" but the virus itself is so far anonymous and so I propose we name it after the effect it has on those it has infected who, put simply, can no longer distinguish reality from fiction, hence the reality virus. more
I attended AWS re:Invent 2016 about three or four weeks ago. Being new to both AWS and to re:Invent I was an outsider again, observing with virgin eyes. This means I learned a lot. Hopefully it means I saw things a bit differently than those more fully entrenched in this new community. So while others have long since covered the product announcements and other major news from the event, I'll take this opportunity to touch on some of the things that struck me as descriptive and/or indicative of the greater trends at play here. more
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