In October 2012, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee issued a joint statement warning American companies that were doing business with the large Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE to "use another vendor." The bipartisan statement explains that the Intelligence Committee's Report, "highlights the interconnectivity of U.S. critical infrastructure systems and warns of the heightened threat of cyber espionage and predatory disruption or destruction of U.S. networks if telecommunications networks are built by companies with known ties to the Chinese state, a country known to aggressively steal valuable trade secrets and other sensitive data from American companies." more
Dr. Laura DeNardis, Professor and Interim Dean of the School of Communication at American University and a Faculty Director of the Internet Governance Lab, is a featured panelist at this week's IGF-USA conference. In advance of the event, I would like to draw attention to her sixth book: The Internet in Everything. Freedom and Security in a World with no Off Switch. This treatise is one of those "should/must-reads" that come along from time-to-time as it focuses on a critical issue that is overlooked by either design or neglect: how digital infrastructure determines policy. more
Who would have thought that typewriters and handwritten letters would ever be back in fashion? But back in 2013 it was reported that Russia was buying large quantities of typewriters. When this was further investigated the country denied that this was for security reasons. Since the Snowden revelations there has been a further rush on typewriters, both by government officials and by a range of, mainly corporate, businesses. more
Google's announcement that it will "review" its business operations in China and is no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, is generating a range of reaction in China. Conversation over at the #googlecn hashtag on Twitter -- created shortly after the announcement -- has been raging fast and furious. more
ICANN community has a lot on its plate for 2015, and at this first full meeting of the year, we are all jumping into the work with both feet. Here are some of the main issues for brand owners: Sorting out the long-awaited transition from U.S. Government oversight to a truly multi-stakeholder model of governance; ensuring Registrant data (Whois) accuracy, accessibility and privacy (where appropriate); launching reviews of the new gTLD program; and protecting/preserving the robust business and brand voices in the process. more
The recent adoption at the end of December of the new EU Directive for a high level of cybersecurity across the Union -- commonly referred to as "NIS2" - paved the way for important updates to the domain name system (DNS). Most significantly, Article 28 of NIS2 and its related recitals resolved any ambiguities about the public interest served by a robust and objectively accurate WHOIS system that permits legitimate access by third parties to data... more
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the alleged illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who have ordered or participated in the domestic surveillance. more
As part of a larger effort to make the internet more private, the IETF defined two protocols to encrypt DNS queries between clients (stub resolvers) and resolvers: DNS over TLS in RFC 7858 (DoT) and DNS over HTTPS in RFC 8484 (DoH). As with all new internet protocols, DoT and DoH will continue to evolve as deployment experience is gained, and they're applied to more use cases. more
Admittedly, I'm a not Johnny-come-lately with regards to surveillance, intelligence, telecommunications, network security, law enforcement, and a cross-pollination of all-of-the-above. I actually have a very colorful background of working within all of the aforementioned disciplines - at one time or another - either through the U.S. Military, U.S Government contractors, private industry, etc. ... And unfortunately, I am not generally "shocked" very often by much of the abuses being perpetrated on unwitting Internet users, both by supposedly "trusted" entities (e.g. Democratic Governments, ISPs, etc.) more
Several people abroad have started mailing me and others asking if rumors of new legislation to be passed in Sweden on the 17th of June is for real. There are also reports in international forums starting to pop up. This is fairly old news, and I think that most of us are surprised that this has not generated more press both inside and outside Sweden earlier. This legislation will allow for the Swedish National Defense Radio Agency (FRA) to wiretap Internet traffic leaving the country... more
European Digital Rights organization (EDRi) along with 45 NGOs, academics and companies from 15 countries sent an open letter to European policymakers and regulators on Wednesday warned against the widespread use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology by Internet service providers in the EU. more
The city of Seattle this week will move forward with its own plan to restore broadband user privacy rules despite the recent law passed by U.S. Congress, signed by President Trump in April, which gave ISPs the green light to collect customer data. more
In separate lawsuits, plaintiffs alleged Facebook and Zynga violated the Stored Communications Act (in Zynga's case, also the Wiretap Act). The crux of plaintiffs' allegations was that when a Facebook user clicked on an ad or a link, the HTTP request sent by the browser included the user's Facebook ID and the address of the webpage the user was viewing when he or she clicked the link. An end user's request to play Farmville would result in the transmission of similar information to third parties. more
Trademarks and brands are often among a company's most valued assets. Customers associate trademarks and brands with producer integrity. They engender consumer trust. Without TMs and Brands, companies struggle for attention and find it more difficult to link the company's integrity and trustworthiness in the marketing of its goods and services. Representing company promise and customer expectations, they are uniquely positioned to symbolize common values and aspirations. more
Last week hundreds of privacy regulators, corporate officers, and activists gathered in Jerusalem, Israel for the annual Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner Conference. ... Many acknowledged that longstanding privacy norms are being increasingly challenged by the massive popularity of social networks that encourage users to share information that in a previous generation would have never been made publicly available for all the world to see. more
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