Archive for: monitoring
The big news on the interwebs a couple of weeks ago centered around this small little attack on Google by some nefarious hackers originating outside of the county. After some digging around, the general consensus is that it came from China, more importantly the Chinese government. Even a few weeks later, the whole Google/China scene is a cluster and actually finding the people responsible has proven to be quite difficult even for someone with pretty extensive resources such as Google.
Google is done fooling around though. They’re hiring the big guns. Under a new agreement still in the final stages of being hammered out, Google will begin enlisting in the NSA to track down the culprits behind the Google attack from mid-January. Right away privacy watch groups will call out Google for shifty practices as giving the government extensive access to the copious amounts of data collected by Google has trouble written all over it.
Initially, I’m pretty optimistic that the right intentions will be sought. Looking further into the future however, I’m more skeptical. We’ve already seen governments excising full control of user data for their own agendas in secrecy in places such as the UK — which just so happens to have one of the most robust cyber security/monitoring networks in the world.
I’m not trying to over-hype this Google-NSA relationship nor am I trying to drum up fear mongering. I’m merely voicing legitimate worries that I assume any normal human would have. But now I’m turning the tables on you. Is finding those responsible for the Google attack, with a rather slim chance of any actual legal recourse, worth sacrificing vast amounts of user data? And will this unholy union lead to further, more serious privacy issues later on down the road?
Drudge Report > Washington Post
Joining the likes of Metalica’s Lars Ulrich and U2 manager Patrick McGuinness, U2 frontman Bono is starting off 2010 showing his incompetence and complete lack of understanding of the music marketplace in the digital age. In an article in the NYT, Bono claims the entire world needs stricter web copyright policies and more policing. This is the exact opposite of what really needs to happen. The real solution is simple — change your decades old business model (which does not work in a digital world/market) and reinvent your sphere of the commercial market.
Sadly, while I did enjoy U2′s music, it just won’t be the same for me anymore. How can I continue to support someone who automatically thinks I’m a criminal, not to mention wants to make my experience with music harder and full of countless more roadblocks, rules, and stipulations?
It could be worse however. I could live in Britain. Over yonder, rules have been set in motion to attach a £25 fee to every broadband bill in the country to help fund a universal web monitoring program that will set out to weed the internet of illegal files. The only hiccup is that a wide range of groups oppose the measure. Groups such as ISP’s, MI5, and intelligent musicians have all spoken out against the monitoring program as a bad idea. So why press on?
The world is run by lobbyists, not the very people who vote to put those in power in their positions. It’s a cold hard truth. They can push stronger policing efforts all they want. At the end of the day, the pirates and those they’re trying to catch will always get away while the rest of the general public suffers.
Stop on by TechDirt at any point and you can find countless articles showing how countries around the world with less emphasis on copyrights and IP law have more innovation. There’s some false belief in the States that more copyrights and copyright laws will somehow make more inventions. Case in point: Google won’t put multi-touch apps on the Android platform themselves for fear of legal attack by Apple’s lawyers. (Why HTC, Palm, and several others do and get away with it remains a mystery). If it is in fact Apple’s lawyers keeping Google from using the feature, their copyright is preventing innovation. Google could come out with a revamped multi-touch experience or use it in a way we’ve never thought of. Unfortunately we’ll have to forever wonder what it would be like.
The most telling example of Bono’s utter lack of intelligence when all things digital are concerned, he cites the movie industry as succeeding in quelling piracy and online file sharing problems. First of all, I can find any movie I want online just as easily as I can music. They (the movie industry) has not solved anything. Second, the movie industry is even more removed from the equation. With even stricter web/digital policies on movies, they are even worse off. Why someone would want to replicate such a poor example of how to run a business and distribute content is beyond me.
It’s quite sad really. The movie industry has gotten to a point where they’re lobbying congress to pass rules to let them disable analog outputs on TV’s for select movies/TV shows under the guise of “reducing piracy” and help them more easily release movies on TV before being made available via normal retail channels. It’s complete BS. It’s an easy way for them to milk our wallets even more. Just imaging if some music labels banned together and tried to disable outputs and other pieces of our audio gear to prevent file sharing/end of the world? It would be a legal shit storm to put it mildly.
It is people like Lars, Bono, and McGuinness who are destroying the music industry and any chance they have to actually making a good impression/fully maximizing potential in the digital age. With every rule, every DRM scheme, every web monitoring plan, they are pushing themselves further and further into irrelevance. These people completely miss the point of the digital age — it is not to steal, but to share and share openly. That is why the internet was invented for. Intelligent music artists whom are breaking away from the traditional music label structure and instead going it alone or at least commanding more control over their works are finding fans and income greatly benefit.
It is the year 2010. You cannot charge $10-$15 for 8-15 digital files that cost absolutely nothing to reproduce, distribute, or “package”. Plain and simple.
Pocket-Lint > NYT
TorrentFreak
- December 15, 2009 7:21 am
Every time I hear the words DRM, censored, “it’s for the children”, and so on, I get the urge to vomit. So many times in the short time span of the last 10 years, we’ve seen various groups and individuals alike trying to safety proof the world — sanitizing our daily lives because a select few feel it is their duty to encroach on other peoples’ lives. If I were ever thinking of moving to Australia, my hopes, dreams, and ambitions would be severely squelched after learning of the recent “green lighting” of a new internet censoring program being employed by the Australian Federal Government. As you guessed, it’s all for the kiddies.
The main goal of the censorship smackdown is to week out harmful sites such as child abuse, child pornography, sexual violence and anything else along those lines. According to the government, this so called blacklist of “refused classification” is the best method for blocking harmful content and keeping the internet in the land down under running at 100% optimum speed. It’s worth noting that the government and supporting agencies boast of the list method’s extremely quick operation. However, one thing we all have to keep into account is that the list from the start isn’t that big considering how many websites are on the internet. The true test would be after a few years when millions upon millions of sites are clogging this so called “great idea”. Only then will we see how it truly performs.
But the most frightening and sadly unsurprising realization is that the list of blacklisted sites doesn’t just contain your normal allotment of kiddie porn and other “harmful” things. Earlier this year, a blacklist-in-the-making leaked onto the web allowing all to see the direction and scope of this censorship. To the fear of many, the list did in fact contain far more material than one would think. Common sites such as YouTube, countless online gambling sites, various Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, “fringe” religions (Satanists apply here), fetish sites, Christian sites, and even normal gay/straight sex sites. As you can see from this small example of blacklisted content that in no way should be blacklisted, the future consequences of employing a country wide net nanny have far reaching consequences. Consequences that future governments will abuse.
It’s the age old story: Government liberates for the people, returning power to the civilians. Over time, government grows larger. In the end, government is just as oppressive and large as before. Mind you, the U.S. isn’t squeaky clean either. There isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be) a doubt in anyone’s mind that the U.S. government doesn’t enact at least some small scale internet filtering. It’s the sad state of the world we live in today. Australia’s new direction is a sobering one that should scare not only tech geeks, but simple civilians as well.
While the Great Firewall of Australia has the weight and support of the federal government behind it, it still has to be elected into law come spring time. Hopefully Australia has a few more tech minded, competent people in office that actually understand anything digital and realize the terrible idea this is quickly becoming.
Safety proofing the world will never remove harmful content. Those who truly seek socially blacklisted content will always find it. The only people blocked, affected, and ultimately hurt by such things are the vast base of the general population — in this case, the general internet using population. At some point, the human race is going to reach a point where they one day wake up and realize that policing the world, monitoring everything, and having nanny eyes spying on every corner completely ruins the entire aspect of this little thing called life.
Fark > The Age
[Image Source] [Image Source]
- September 21, 2009 11:25 am
In what was one of the worst ideas yet in regards to censorship and “safety”, the forced install of the Green Dam Youth Escort software that was mandated to be installed on every PC in China has been dealt another and potentially fatal blow. The last three major manufacturers whom also started shipping or installing the software from the factory are now backing down as well. Lenovo no longer installs the software from the factory, though, they will provide an install CD if asked. Acer announced that they too will stop shipping PC’s with the Green Dam install CD. Sony meanwhile stopped shipping Green Dam two months ago after the initial July deadline was repealed. It’s worth noting that while the July deadline was repealed for an outright mandatory install on all PC’s, the public sector including schools, cafes, etc. were still required to install the software.
It appears however that the line in the sand will be moved even further back as public domains are starting to blacklist the software with the latest being Number 50 Chinese High School which is requiring the Green Dam software to be uninstalled from all school computers as it caused conflicts with grade and attendance software already in use. If you don’t recall, the original outcries were caused by privacy concerns as Green Dam was extremely invasive as well as the fact that it was being forced on everyone. Now that there has been some secession on the governments part, could one interpret this as a more consumer friendly movement moving through the Chinese government? Can I get a whoop whoop?!
In all reality, the makers of Green Dam are most likely working on the various bugs and maybe even a few privacy concerns so that they can come back at a later date? Have we seen the last of Green Dam?
Tech Vi < Yahoo
Image Source
In case you don’t remember the UK’s plans for a central database of epic proportions, for a quick refresher, it was a database that would store every email, phone call, and web page visited by UK natives. Scared? You should be. Why the extreme evesdropping and invasion of privacy? It was all in the name of “national security”. Because somehow taking the needle in a haystack idea and multiplying it one thousand fold will make it soooo easy to catch the creepers. Well some sort of good news has come to light today as the UK government has announced its plans to abandon their efforts in their central database. And the bad news…yes there is bad news, they are instead proposing that the individual ISP’s take on the added burden and retain private data for 12 months. But they don’t stop there. The UK government is taking unprecedented steps in their fight for “national security”. How bad is it getting? The dirty details are right after the click.
