Sunday, December 13, 2009

For those who thought Cyber War was me going over the top...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/12/2117250/US-and-Russia-Open-Talks-On-Limits-To-Cyberwar?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

US and Russia Open Talks On Limits To Cyberwar

Posted by kdawson on Saturday December 12, @11:26PM from the you-put-down-yours-first dept.

andy1307 passes on this from the NY Times:

"The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace. American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia's overtures. [Must have missed those... Bob] Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race ... While the Russians have continued to focus on treaties that may restrict weapons development, the United States is hoping to use the talks to increase international cooperation in opposing Internet crime. Strengthening defenses against Internet criminals would also strengthen defenses against any military-directed cyberattacks, the United States maintains."

[From the article:

The Russians have focused on three related issues, according to American officials involved in the talks that are part of a broader thaw in American-Russian relations known as the "reset" that also include negotiations on a new nuclear disarmament treaty. In addition to continuing efforts to ban offensive cyberweapons, they have insisted on what they describe as an issue of sovereignty calling for a ban on “cyberterrorism.” American officials view the issue differently and describe this as a Russian effort to restrict “politically destabilizing speech.” The Russians have also rejected a portion of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime that they assert violates their Constitution by permitting foreign law enforcement agencies to conduct Internet searches inside Russian borders. [EPIC didn't like that either. Bob]



Pretty much what I said yesterday, but said gooder.

http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=6259

Government points finger at Internet, Internet points back

December 12, 2009 by Dissent

This has been a busy month for John Young of Cryptome.org. Not only did he post a slew of not-for-public-distribution compliance guides for law enforcement seeking subscriber or customer data, but he also posted an unredacted version of a Transportation Security Administration manual that had been inadequately redacted. To top things off, Cryptome published some government FOUO (For Official Use Only) documents this week, leading to the receipt of correspondence from the Army, an attempt to trick him into downloading a virus attached to an email from a fake Pentagon address, and then a phone call from the Army offering “to help” whoever was providing the documents.

While the Army spun its wheels with Cryptome, Representative Peter King and others on the Homeland Security Committee thumped their chests over the TSA incident and sent an inquiry to Janet Napolitano about what the government could do to stop people from re-posting material that the government never should have made available on the Internet, an approach that I described as legislative whack-a-mole.

Michael Cummings posted an open letter he sent Representative King in response to their letter to Napolitano on his blog that on some level, reiterates a point John Young has made as well: instead of trying to penalize or criminalize those who reveal such poorly secured documents, recognize that those documents may have already been in the hands of terrorists who simply kept quiet about the government’s security failures. If you don’t want unclassified documents being reposted, don’t post them. The Internet is not your enemy, but it is not the friend of government secrecy or governmental incompetence.



I find myself increasingly using video to supplement or illustrate points in my lectures (or just to amuse the students)

http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/vidque-cool-web-videos/

Vidque: Gathers Cool Web Videos From Major Video Sharing Sites

We all know that YouTube is the one-stop-shop for videos on the Internet. But there are several other sites (YouTube, Vimeo, TED and BlipTv) that often feature cool web video content which doesn’t make it to YouTube. Well Vidque is a site which combines all the main user-generated video services on the Internet into one.

www.vidque.com

Similar tools: Magma, VideoFetcher, Snackfeed and Nizmlab.

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