Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The cover story of this week’s The New Republic is a review by Evgeny Morozov of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. In 10,000 words it is more illuminating about what made Steve Jobs tick than Isaacson’s 656 pages of warmed-over anecdotes and Wikipedia glosses. Morozov gets it right when he draws the connection between [...]
On the podcast this week, Gabriella Coleman, anthropologist and the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy in the Department of Art History & Communication Studies at McGill University, discusses hacktivist group Anonymous. Coleman begins with an overview of Anonymous originating with online pranks that eventually evolved into political activism. The group, according to Coleman, began seeking “lulz” on the message board 4chan. The pranks consisted of Internet memes and practical Internet jokes called trolling. She then discusses how the group moved into activism using denial of services attacks to shut down websites and how it issued a series of videos against the Church of Scientology. The discussion then turns to the recent arrest of several LulzSec members, including Sabu, the hacker turned FBI informant.
On Wednesday, administration and military officials simulated a cyber attack for a group of senators in an attempt to show a dire need for cybersecurity legislation. All 100 senators were invited to the simulation, which “demonstrated how the federal government would respond to an attack on the New York City electrical grid during a summer [...]
Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN correspondent and now Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, discusses her new book, “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.” MacKinnon begins by discussing “Net Freedom,” which she describes as a structure that respects rights, freedoms, and accountability. She discusses how some governments, like China, use coercion to make private companies act a as subcontractors for censorship and manipulation. She goes on to discuss a project she launched called Global Network Initiative, where she urges companies like Google and Facebook to be more socially responsible. MacKinnon believes technology needs to be compatible with political freedoms, and she issues a call to action for Internet users to demand policies that are compatible with Internet freedoms.
After the NSA’s aggressive pursuit of a greater role in civilian cybersecurity, and last week’s statement by Sen. John McCain criticizing the Lieberman-Collins bill for not including a role for the agency, some feared that the new G.O.P. cybersecurity bill would allow the military agency to gather information about U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. So, [...]
Tomorrow Sen. John McCain, along with five other Republican senators, plans to unveil a cybersecurity bill to rival the Lieberman-Collins bill that Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he plans to bring to the Senate floor without an official markup by committee. At a hearing earlier this month, Sen. McCain criticized the Lieberman-Collins bill for [...]
Clay Johnson, co-founder of Blue State Digital and former director of Sunlight Labs at the Sunlight Foundation, discusses his new book, The Information Diet. According to Johnson, America’s diet of mass-produced unhealthy food has resulted in an obesity epidemic and we may be seeing the same thing when it comes to our media diet. He believes the problem is not too much information, rather it is the quality of information that people choose to consume. Johnson encourages more responsibility in choosing information intake, similar to what is required to make healthy food choices. He ends by outlining a plan of action and offers tips on consuming “healthy” information.
On the podcast this week, David Weinberger, senior researcher at Harvard Law’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society and Co-Director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School, discusses his new book entitled, “Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room.” According to Weinberger, knowledge in the Western world is taking on properties of its new medium, the Internet. He discusses how he believes the transformation from paper medium to Internet medium changes the shape of knowledge. Weinberger goes on to discuss how gathering knowledge is different and more effective, using hyperlinks as an example of a speedy way to obtain more information on a topic. Weinberger then talks about how the web serves as the “room,” where knowledge seekers are plugged into a network of experts who disagree and critique one another. He also addresses how he believes the web has a way of filtering itself, steering one toward information that is valuable.
Ahead of today’s cybersecurity hearing in the Senate, I wanted to jot down some thoughts on the issue. For over a year now, I’ve been questioning the need for federal intervention in cybersecurity and calling for a slower and more deliberate process. Perhaps I come across as a refusenik, but I hope that I’m at [...]
Here, in one sentence, is what’s wrong with Stewart Baker’s testimony on cybersecurity before the Senate Homeland Security committee today: If an asset is not designated as “covered critical infrastructure,” then the owner has no obligation under the bill to guard against attack by hackers, criminals, or nation states, leaving those who depend on the [...]
May 27, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
