Tech Bones

The EU celebrated America's Independence Day by rejecting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with a vote of 478 against and 39 for with 165 abstentions. Despite all the back room negotations and closed meetings, common sense prevailed. Now that's a great way to celebrate freedom. Happy Independence Day!

Prior to the proposed legislation of the Senate's PIPA (Protect IP Act of 2011) and House of Representatives' SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), an international effort to enforce Intellectual Property (IP) rights, known as ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), was already in the works. Though PIPA and SOPA were both left to languish as a result of negative response from the IT user community, ACTA remains alive and well. Public scrutiny over the extent and regulations of both PIPA and SOPA thwarted congressional approval of either act. However, the ACTA effort is not subject to such openness. Negotiations for its enactment continue behind closed doors. With minimal industry or user input allowed, representatives from major industrialized nations continue to negotiate the terms of ACTA. Based upon leaked copies of drafts, the combination of broader controls and even more vague wording will compromise the First Amendment on the internet and erode privacy concerns far beyond ...

If you think battling all the viruses, trojans, malware, and other perpetrators in the internet world is tough enough, imagine trying to defend against someone with a passkey to your backdoor. Virtually everything used on a daily basis is computerized and networked. The latest gadgets, alarm clocks, appliances, houses, cars, and virtually everything else we use for entertainment or work, are computerized and inter-connected. Imagine a nefarious entity, such as Austin Powers' Dr. Evil, who intends to control the world and force his way of life on the rest of us. What if Dr. Evil covertly, over time, gained control of the manufacture of technology by replicating creations throughout the world and selling them at a fraction of the price, thanks to lower labor costs and a willingness to take a short term loss to gain long term control of the market? What if Dr. Evil succeeded in not only becoming the manufacturer of a majority of all electronics produced in the world including mili...

If you are a network manager, a computer systems administrator or a computer security specialist, you have undoubtedly heard about the Flame trojan, a malware program that redefines ones concept of espionage and warfare on the cyber front. In a recent post on The Weekly Standard magazine's Web site, Jonathan V. Last provides an interesting perspective of the Flame pertaining to what Flame means in terms of the evolution of malware. Bride of Stuxnet Webcraft as spycraft. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/bride-stuxnet_646424.html While accurately describing Flame as " the most spectacular computer worm ever made ", Jonathan Last minimizes the true threat it presents by categorizing it as " the perfect spy ." Aside from the obvious espionage threat this malware poses, its potential evolution as a disruptive and destructive threat is far more ominous. The current Flame trojan could be merely a first release in the wild, a recon version on a spy missi...

As I've pointed out in the past, activity tracking and data mining are increasingly becoming more sophisticated. Once they approach being a real science, maintaining personal privacy becomes less feasible. The following article in Forbes' demonstrates how close we are to that time... How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ If you think your browser settings protect you from such efforts, think again... Google tracked iPhones, bypassing Apple browser privacy settings http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/17/google-tracked-iphones-bypassing-apple-browser-privacy-settings/ It's getting harder to maintain any sense of privacy. . . .

Despite being an intellectual property developer, I do not support the proposed Protect IP Act (PIPA Senate Bill 968) or Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA House Resolution 3261) legislation. Granted, piracy of Intellectual Property creates signifcant problems and those who profit by completely ignoring IP rights need to be stopped. However, typical of legislative redress, both proposals overreach in their attempt to resolve the situation. Senate Bill 968 - Protect IP Act of 2011 http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show House Resolution 3261 - Stop Online Piracy Act http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show While this legislation attempts to curb the piracy of IP, it allows the Department of Justice to circumvent due process based upon their interpretation of what constitutes a violation and the justification for immediate action. Protecting property rights should not come at the expense of constitutional rights. If only for that reason, opposition to the proposed legisla...

Recent updates by Facebook have many of its users pounding their keyboards in protest. While the uproar may possibly result in some minor tweaks, the reality remains that it will most likely be short-lived because most users have become so addicted to socializing that they will eventually accept the intrusion. Some might choose to drop Facebook for Google+ in protest, but the vast majority will not be willing to go cold turkey with social networking. Personal Privacy and Social Networking exemplify oxymorons, just like Network Security, Virtual Reality and Legally Drunk. Something " personal " implies private not " social ," and any expectation of " privacy " cannot coexist with " networking " or " socializing ." Such reasoning resembles constructing a billboard of your life in your front yard while expecting that only your best friends will notice. Social Networking provides a lazy way to share information with a vast audience. Why s...