Israel's Supreme Court Says Yes To Internet Anonymity
Posted by timothy on Sunday March 28, @01:08AM
jonklinger writes
"The Israeli Supreme Court ruled this week that there is no civil procedure to reveal the identity of users behind an IP address, and that until such procedure shall be legislated, all internet postings, even tortious, may remain anonymous. The 69-page decision acknowledges the right to privacy and makes internet anonymity de facto a constitutional right in Israel. Justice Rivlin noted that revealing a person behind an IP address is 'an attempt to harness, prior to a legal proceeding, the justice system and a third party in order to conduct an inquiry which will lead to the revealing of a person committing a tort so that a civil suit could be filed against him.'"
[From the article:
His decision rules, actually, that until a procedure will be legislated, petitions to reveal anonymous users may not be granted (and according to estimations, there is at least one daily request per ISP).
… The supreme court ruled that:
Shattering the ‘illusion of anonymity’, in a reality where a user’s privacy feeling is a myth, may raise associations of a “big brother”. Such violation of privacy should be minimized. In adequate boundaries the anonymity shelters should be preserved as a part of the Internet Culture. You may say that anonymity makes the internet what it is, and without it the virtual freedom may be reduced.
Those who do not study history (even the history of Computer Security) are doomed to repeat it. This has been true of every evolutionary step in the industry, from Mainframes to mini-computers, to microcomputers, to the Internet, to the web, to hand-held devices and now to “smart” devices.
Security Holes Found In "Smart" Meters
Posted by timothy on Sunday March 28, @08:11AM
Hugh Pickens writes
"In the US alone, more than 8 million smart meters, designed to help deliver electricity more efficiently and to measure power consumption in real time, have been deployed by electric utilities and nearly 60 million should be in place by 2020. Now the Associated Press reports that smart meters have security flaws that could let hackers tamper with the power grid, opening the door for attackers to jack up strangers' power bills, remotely turn someone else's power on and off, or even allow attackers to get into the utilities' computer networks to steal data or stage bigger attacks on the grid. Attacks could be pulled off by stealing meters — which can be situated outside of a home — and reprogramming them, or an attacker could sit near a home or business and wirelessly hack the meter from a laptop, according to Joshua Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians Inc, a vendor-independent consultant that performs penetration tests and security risk assessments."
"Wright says that his firm found 'egregious' errors, such as flaws in the meters and the technologies that utilities use to manage data (PDF) from meters. For example, smart meters encrypt their data but the digital 'keys' needed to unlock the encryption are stored on data-routing equipment known as access points that many meters relay data to so stealing the keys lets an attacker eavesdrop on all communication between meters and that access point (PDF). 'Even though these protocols were designed recently, they exhibit security failures we've known about for the past 10 years,' says Wright."
Clear, simple, do-able.
8 Layers of Security Every Computer Should Have
Posted by Sue Marquette Poremba Mar 26, 2010 4:17:58 PM
Firewalls.
A traditional scanner, such as antivirus, antimalware, and antispyware software.
A specialist Web-scanning layer to block most of the attacks immediately.
A behavior monitoring layer.
Newest version of your favorite browser.
Network-based restrictions and user management software.
Data encryption software.
Online backup system.
Making sense?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/023859.html
March 27, 2010
Political Considerations Another Facet of Google's Decision to Exit China
Follow up to Google Discontinues Censored Search in Mainland China and An Interview with David Drummond of Google about the company's new policies in China, additional perspective as follows:
New York Times, Google Searches for a Foreign Policy:"When Google announced last week that it would shut its censored online search service in China, it was doing more than standing up to a repressive government: it was showing that, with the United States still struggling to develop a foreign policy for the digital age, Internet companies need to articulate their own foreign policies."
Washington Post - On Leadership: Views on Google's refusal to continue censorship in China by Benjamin W. Heineman Jr., business ethics expert and senior fellow at Harvard University's schools of law and government.
We should be able to determine (rather quickly) if this will be a “voice of reason” or simply a “make sure those celebrity endorsements and contributions keep coming” voice.
Big Content: stopping P2P should be "principal focus" of IP czar
By Nate Anderson Last updated 2 days ago
Thanks to the recent PRO-IP Act, the US has for the first time has an "Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator" responsible for pulling together all the resources of the federal government. What should the IPEC be doing with her time and resources? The "core content industries" have an answer: she should turn the online world from a "thieves' bazaar to a safe and well-lit marketplace" by encouraging network admins to deploy bandwidth shaping, site blocking, traffic filters, watermark detectors, and deep packet inspection.
… One of Espinel's key interests was in gathering good data on IP infringement and what it costs the US economy. She asked for metrics, methodologies, and rigorous research (many of these sorts of numbers are pretty transparently bogus). What she got from the core copyright industries was two pages that cited four reports, all done by the same guy at the same think tank. As for methodology, etc., Espinel can just go look it up "in the text of the cited report."
One tool to grab them all?
http://www.killerstartups.com/Video-Music-Photo/savevideo-me-download-save-videos-to-your-hd
SaveVideo.me - Download & Save Videos To Your HD
… In general terms, it is a young site that will let you save video files hosted on the following portals: YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Veoh, Flickr, Google and Blip.tv.
The process is the standard one in these cases: you paste the relevant URL in the provided box and after choosing the screen resolution that will suit you best you proceed to have the video downloaded. You can also set the format of the video itself from FLV, MP4 and 3GP.
Peek around your organization's Firewall.
http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/variablysfw-peek-nsfw-websites-opening
VariablySFW: Peek NSFW Websites Before Opening Them
VariableSFW is a web app that lets you preview a questionable link and see if it is safe to open or not.
… To use VariablySFW, you only need to copy and paste the link into the text bar and click “Preview”. The app will then load a filtered preview of the page that you want to open. Adjust the slider to slowly see the page. You can fade in and fade out as you like. This way, you can check what the page is all about before the lurkers behind you find out what you are looking at.
VariablySFW is a handy tool for those who do not want to get caught looking at NSFW pages.
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