VeriSign reports that it has reached a Settlement Agreement and Mutual Release with the Coalition for ICANN Transparency, Inc. ("CFIT"), CFIT's members, and specified related parties that resolves the over five-year long CFIT litigation. Under the terms of the Agreement, no payment will be made and the parties immediately will file a dismissal with prejudice of all claims in the litigation. Further, the parties executed mutual releases from all claims now and in the future related to the litigation. more»
Wout de Natris writes to report: "EU Commissioner for the Information Society Neelie Kroes today launched the EU co-funded project for the Internet of the future in which everything will be connected to everyone in the cloud. Here's the link to Mrs. Kroes' speech." more»
NameSmash has interviewed Garth Bruen, Internet security expert and creator of Knujon, on some key issues under discussion during the recent ICANN meetings in San Francisco. Topics include Whois, DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) -- issues of critical importance particularly with ICANN's expected roll-out of thousands of new gTLDs in the coming years. more»
Neil Schwartzman writes: "There is a lot of press on the profound effect the take-down of the Rustock botnet, affected by Microsoft, some U.S. federal agencies, and countless others working in the background to assist in the effort. CAUCE has aggregated a few of the best stories and data-points. A community congratulations, and thank-you to all those involved!" more»
Kevin Murphy reporting in The Register: "Cyber cops from both sides of the Atlantic are meeting with domain name registrars in Brussels today to try to figure out ways to crack down on internet crime. This second meeting of the 'EU-US working group on cyber security and cybercrime' is dedicated to increasing cooperation between law enforcement agencies and the companies that unwittingly sell web addresses to online crooks, according to attendees." more»
Reported in TorrentFreak: "The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security's ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes. As part of "Operation Save Our Children" ICE's Cyber Crimes Center has again seized several domain names, but not without making a huge error." more»
Jennifer Baker reporting from IDG News: "Where law enforcement agencies would traditionally have tackled the problem of illegal online content, more powers are being given to ISPs in the name of industry self-regulation, according to a study by the organization European Digital Rights (EDRI). That trend is likely to become stronger with increasing "extra-judicial sanctions" against consumers, EDRI said." more»
TechDirt reviewed the affidavit filed by the United States Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division when seizing various hip-hop and bittorrent-related domain names recently, and discovered some very deep misunderstandings of how content appears on web sites. more»
Garth Bruen writes to report: "On Tuesday, high-tech heavy hitters -- including Google and Microsoft -- announced support for a new non-profit organization pledged to back the Obama administration's effort to crackdown on illegal internet pharmacies. The group, composed of companies that service 'choke points' on the internet, is being formed in response to the President's call for private efforts to police online drug peddlers, according to Bloomberg/Businessweek." more»
Recently, we have witnessed the effective disappearance from the Internet of a website made infamous through international press coverage and political intrigue. The Internet Society is founded upon key principles of free expression and non discrimination that are essential to preserve the openness and utility of the Internet. We believe that this incident dramatically illustrates that those principles are currently at risk. more»
Kelly Jackson Higgins reporting in InformationWeek: "In the wake of federal crackdowns, such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) mass seizure yesterday of 82 domain names of websites illegally selling and distributing counterfeit and copyrighted items, a group is building out a new point-to-point DNS system as a way for sites to dodge future domain takeovers by the feds. ... Meanwhile, the new Dot-P2P Project says its goal is to combat DNS-level censoring with a decentralized, Bit Torrent-powered system. 'By creating a .p2p TLD that is totally decentralized and that does not rely on ICANN or any ISP's DNS service, and by having this application mimic force-encrypted bittorrent traffic, there will be a way to start combating DNS level based censoring like the new US proposals as well as those systems in use in countries around the world including China and Iran amongst others,' the Dot-P2P Project page says." more»
TorrentFreak reports: "Following on the heels of this week's domain seizure of a large hiphop file-sharing links forum, it's clear today that the U.S. Government has been very busy. Without any need for COICA, ICE has just seized the domain of a BitTorrent meta-search engine along with those belonging to other music linking sites and several others which appear to be connected to physical counterfeit goods. more»
From the Economist on the long life of spam: "The criminal businesses that rely on spam are most at risk in law-abiding bits of the real world, such as America. Just like honest businesses, they appreciate its robust networks, reliable web-hosting. But law-enforcement agencies and internet security companies are also more active in such countries and have started working closely together. When Mr Bruen presents evidence to reputable hosting companies in America that their customers are fraudsters, they unplug them. Police agencies are increasingly interested to hear from him and fellow experts about the others. That, says Mr Bruen, reflects an important point. The word “cyber” in cybercrime obscures real crimes committed in real places." more»
Michael Geist writes: "The bills contain a three-pronged approach focused on information disclosure, mandated surveillance technologies, and new police powers. The first prong mandates the disclosure of Internet provider customer information without court oversight. Under current privacy laws, providers may voluntarily disclose customer information but are not required to do so. The new system would require the disclosure of customer name, address, phone number, email address, Internet protocol address, and a series of device identification numbers." more»
Canada's privacy watchdog has accused Google Inc. of violating the rights of thousands of Canadians by inappropriately collecting their personal information in building its Street View service. Data collected include telephone numbers, emails, real names of individuals, residential addresses, instant messenger headers, and medical records according to findings by Canadian technical experts from Canadian Privacy Commissioner who visited Google's offices in Mountain View, California on July 19 and 20, 2010. Canada initiated the investigation following similar complaints from German data protection authority. more»
