Packed IAB Plenary Debates Pervasive Monitoring Attacks: Internet Society

Packed IAB Plenary Debates Pervasive Monitoring Attacks | Internet Society: "“Surveillance is not a new phenomenon,” Carpenter said. “Don’t have the impression that this is just the NSA or just the US government.”

The first of these IETF debates, held in 1996, dealt with a movement by many governments to restrict the use and sale of strong cryptography, which is a foundational technology for e-commerce. The result of this debate was RFC 1984, signed by both the IAB and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), which encouraged policies that allow ready access to strong cryptographic technology for all Internet users.

In 1999, the IETF had a similar debate about Internet wiretapping. The result of that debate was RFC 2804, also signed by both the IAB and the IESG, which stated that the IETF would not consider wiretapping as a requirement for creating or maintaining IETF standards.

Carpenter said the underlying principal of these two previous IETF debates is that “IETF technology should be able to make the Internet secure, including the ability to provide privacy, but it should be neutral with respect to varying cultural views of legality and privacy.”" 'via Blog this'

French court orders Google to display fine for privacy breach

French court orders Google to display fine for privacy breach | Reuters: "CNIL has objected to Google's method of combining data collected on individual users across services such as YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+. The move towards broad storage was introduced by Google in March 2012 and combined 60 privacy policies into one, giving users no means to opt out.

The web giant appealed the CNIL's fine last month as well as the order to post a notice of the sanction on its google.fr homepage for 48 hours. Google specifically asked the Conseil d'Etat, France's top administrative court, to suspend that order while it re-examines the case." 'via Blog this'

Hacktivists targeted by British spies

Hacktivists targeted by British spies » EDRi: The European Digital Rights organisation is a useful source of anti-censorship and regulatory news:

"According to documents released by Snowden on NSA activities, a secret
British division of GCHQ named Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group
(JTRIG), meant to mount cyber attacks on Britain’s enemies, was
targeting the hacktivists of Anonymous and LulzSec.

The documents reveal that JTRIG launched a “denial of service” (DDOS)
attack (dubbed Rolling Thinder) and other techniques to cut the
communications of 80 percent of the users of Anonymous internet chat
rooms. This is the first known such attack performed by a European
government." 'via Blog this'

High Court Grants Judgement for libel defamation on Facebook

High Court Grants Judgement for libel defamation on Facebook: "Despite Ms Smith having a closed Facebook account and therefore not being visible to all account holders, the fact that her sister had reposted the comments on her wall and taking in to account the very concerning content, the High Court has granted Ms Walder a procedural judgment for libel in her favour following Ms. Smith’s failure to following the procedure of the High Court, namely replying to the claim form and particulars of claim in good time.

The damages for the libel are likely to be substantial and a High Court hearing has been set, in the Queen’s Bench Division, for the 11th February 2014 pertaining to the level of damages and costs that Ms Smith will be ordered to pay Ms. Walder for the libel.

As Ms Walder’s lawyers, we have, along with requesting the Court award Ms Walder damages and aggravated damages for libel defamation, also requested an injunction be granted against Ms Smith to prevent her from libelling Ms Walder in the future. " 'via Blog this'

Lords Hansard text for 16 Jan 2014

Lords Hansard text for 16 Jan 2014 (pt 0002): Viscount Colville of Culross:

"Governments also want ICANN to come into the ITU, opening the possibility that Governments who do not like whole categories of websites could try to cut them off from the internet by banning them from the directory. I, for one, do not think that this offers a guarantee of free speech.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee said that the running of the internet should be left to its users rather than to a UN agency representing the world’s Governments, which would only interfere further with its openness.

 For some years now there have been attempts to set up independent multi-stakeholder control of these crucial internet bodies. That approach would allow internet companies and citizens to be equal partners with national Governments, so that one group does not abuse another. It would enshrine transparency and open up discussion to ensure that national Governments do not dominate the running of the internet. That issue will be central to the agenda of the internet governance conference to be held in April in Brazil, to which the UK will be sending a sizeable delegation." 'via Blog this'

Lords Hansard 16 Jan 2014: On the 25th anniversary of the WWW

Lords Hansard text for 16 Jan 2014 (pt 0002): "Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve (CB):

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox for introducing what must be a central topic for all of us. She also asked the right question: what sort of world wide web do we want? There are also the questions of what sort of web we can have and have now.

We are probably living in the twilight of the cyber-romantics who think that zero regulation of everything online is the way we should head. We obviously are not in that situation. The effective and enriching use of the web is life-transforming but depends on the right sort of legislation and regulation in the right places." 'via Blog this'

The 20-year-old Microsoft memo that came true

COLUMN-The 20-year-old Microsoft memo that came true | Reuters: "Every tech know-it-all was harping on the mayhem Moore's law would unleash, but Myhrvold's essay made the coming revolution palpable. He wrote: 


"It is extraordinarily difficult for people to really grasp the power of exponential growth. No experience in our everyday life prepares us for it. The numbers become so astronomically large so quickly...that it is easy to either dismiss them outright, or mentally glaze over and become numb to their meaning. It is incredibly easy to fool oneself into thinking that you do understand it, but usually this just means that you've mentally done a linear extrapolation from the recent past. This works for a little while, but then rapidly becomes out of date." 'via Blog this'

Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralize the Web

Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralize the Web | Ars Technica: "The kind of balkanized Web he spoke about, as typified by Brazil's home-soil servers argument or Iran's emerging intranet, is partially being driven by revelations of NSA and GCHQ mass surveillance. The distrust that it has brewed, from a political level right down to the threat of self-censorship among ordinary citizens, threatens an open Web and is, said Berners-Lee, a greater threat than censorship. Knowing the NSA may be breaking commercial encryption services could result in the emergence of more networks like China's Great Firewall, to "protect" citizens. This is why we need a bit of anti-establishment pushback, alluded to by Berners-Lee" 'via Blog this'