No Fluff News » Internet

Understanding there’s no Anonymity in the Technological Age

rampage — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 03:02:24 +0000

“Don’t think for a second that cleaning out your browser cookies, hoisting that firewall, and installing identity theft software makes a dent in protecting your privacy in the new digital world.

Every time we activate our cell phone, swipe a credit card, or use EZ-Pass to sail through toll booths, we leave a record of our whereabouts and clues to our behavior for others to tap that never even existed 20 years ago. All that Web browsing you do on your Android or iPhone device, all the weather updates you may get via that connected GPS unit—these things not only tell someone somewhere what data matters to you but also reveal where you accessed it. As the Web moves off the desktop and into every niche of the physical world, with it goes all of the privacy concerns that still aren’t resolved online. Clean out those Firefox cookies if you like, but Web privacy is only the beginning. At the same time the privacy front evolves, experts in the field are also rethinking the ramifications of these mountains of data. In the future, they warn, governments and corporations may be able to violate your privacy without even having to identify who you are.

‘It has grown by orders of magnitude since the birth of the Internet and our use of cell phones,’ says Stephen Baker, BusinessWeek journalist and author of a new book on digital data gatherers, ‘The Numerati.’ From email replacing letters to downloading music from iTunes instead of purchasing CDs, our habits, tastes, and movements now are recorded in ways that can be connected…”

source: computerpoweruser.com

How to Protect Yourself from Big Brother on the Internet

rampage — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:35:02 +0000

“…The Internet remains one of the most powerful means ever created to give voice to repressed people around the world. Unfortunately, new technologies have also given authoritarian regimes new means to identify and retaliate against those who speak out despite censorship and surveillance. Below are six basic ideas for those attempting to speak without falling
victim to authoritarian surveillance and censorship, and four ideas for the rest of us who want to help support them…

1. Understand Risk Assessment
2. Beware of Malware
3. Choose the Least-Risky Communications Channels
4. Use Encryption to Prevent Surveillance and Censorship of your Web Usage
5. Be Careful of What and Where You Publish
6. Should I use a Tor Bridge…”

source: eff.org

Associated Press Trying to Lace Their Articles with DRM but Will Fail

rampage — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:41:23 +0000

“The Associated Press last week rolled out its brave new plan to “apply protective format to news.” The AP’s news registry will “tag and track all AP content online to assure compliance with terms of use,” and it will provide a “platform for protect, point, and pay.” That’s a lot of “p”-prefaced jargon, but it boils down to a sort of DRM for news—”enforcement,” in AP-speak…But how could that possibly work?It was good enough for music…

Turns out that it won’t, not really, not if the goal is to exercise control over AP content by those not voluntarily disposed to play by the AP’s rules. First, let’s try to make sense of what’s being proposed. According to the AP’s announcement, the news registry it plans to set up relies on a new ‘microformat’…”

source: arstechnica.com

Down Under, Internet Filtering Trial Declared a Success

rampage — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:51:47 +0000

“Although not without controversy, the initial testing of the Australian government’s Internet filtering system has gone off fairly well, according to reports from some of the participating ISPs. Five of the nine ISPs testing the government’s filtering system reported few problems during testing, even though only 15 customers participated at one and a couple of customers at another were unable to access a completely legal porn site. The other four IPs have either yet to comment on the filter’s performance or have refused to talk publicly about the results.

Australia’s government first announced its intention to add a Great Barrier Reef of sorts around the nation’s virtual shores nearly two years ago, in August 2007. Initial testing began in the island state of Tasmania in February 2008, with cost estimates running as high as AUS$189 million (about US$154 million). The filters were originally intended to be on by default, with consumers able to opt out.

Much to the dismay of the program’s critics, things changed last October. As details about the country’s Cyber-Safety Plan emerged, we learned that all ‘illegal’ content would be blocked for everyone, with no possibility for individuals to opt out. The main government-supplied blacklist would be applied universally, while an “additional material” blacklist targeting age-appropriate content would be optional for users.”

source: arstechnica.com

Ma Bell Becomes Big Brother by Blocking 4chan

rampage — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:41:51 +0000

“As if AT&T wasn’t already bad enough. In an act that is sure to spark internet rebellions everywhere, AT&T has apparently declared war on the extremely popular imageboard 4chan.org, blocking some of the site’s most popular message boards, including /r9k/ and the infamous /b/. moot, who started 4chan and continues to run the site, has posted a note to the 4chan status blog indicating that AT&T is in fact filtering/blocking the site for many of its customers (we’re still trying to confirm from AT&T’s side).

Reports of the blocking began to surface on reddit this afternoon, and a number of blogs are beginning to pick up on the story, though it doesn’t seem like any have managed to get a comment from AT&T (we’ve reached out to the company and will update once we hear back)… “

source: techcrunch.com

Germany Readies Internet Censorship

rampage — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:14:46 +0000

“Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture.

The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and led the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government. “

via wikileaks.org

Raytheon to become Obama’s Internet Watchdog

rampage — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:25:04 +0000

“Defense and intelligence contractor Raytheon is moving into the lucrative realm of cyber warfare, and wants to hire hundreds of ‘cyber warriors’ to ‘play offense and defense,’ according to an advertisement on the company’s web site.

‘President Obama recently announced that cyber security is one of our country’s most urgent national security priorities,’ reads the ad. ‘Raytheon is answering that call by hiring more cyber warriors this year to help fight the digital cyber war.’

The ad says the company has 250 positions available in its Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS) division. The jobs are for, among others, reverse engineers, kernel developers, and vulnerability and intrusion detection engineers. Raytheon also has positions available for something called “media sanitation specialists.””

via wired.com