U.S. bank regulators on Wednesday outlined cyber security standards meant to protect financial markets and consumers from online attacks against the nation's leading financial firms," Patrick Rucker reporting in Reuters. more
United States and China are in negotiation to establish a cyberattack agreement, according to reports. If successful, it "could become the first arms control accord for cyberspace, embracing a commitment by each country that it will not be the first to use cyberweapons to cripple the other's critical infrastructure during peacetime," reports David Sanger in the New York Times. more
Despite previous attempts1 I think it is safe to say that the discussion about Human Rights in ICANN was, until recently, fairly dead, even taboo. Nowadays, there seems to be a renewed demand for ICANN to have a future, and it needs to take Human Rights considerations seriously. During the ICANN Cancun meeting, representatives from several stakeholder groups mentioned HR and how they might support ICANN by informing its policy-making processes. more
Reports suggest China is reviewing a controversial cybersecurity law to allow authorities to shut down the internet and block all communications online during a so-called "emerging social security events" occur. more
Satellites make it possible for governments to provide essential services, such as national defense, navigation, and weather forecasting. Private ventures use satellites to offer highly desired services that include video program distribution, telecommunications, and Internet access. The Russian launch of a satellite, with nuclear power and the likely ability to disable satellites, underscores how satellites are quite vulnerable to both natural and manmade ruin. more
The IETF met in November 2022 in London. Among the many sessions that were held in that meeting was a session of the Decentralised Internet Infrastructure Research Group, (DINRG). The research group's ambitions are lofty: DINRG will investigate open research issues in decentralizing infrastructure services such as trust management, identity management, name resolution, resource/asset ownership management, and resource discovery. more
Facebook lobbyists are working behind the scenes for a major cyber bill set for a final Senate vote Tuesday despite growing opposition to the bill among tech companies, according to a digital rights advocacy group fighting against the measure. more
Internet Society President and CEO, Kathy Brown has released a public note today stating that the U.S. entry ban has places an unwarranted burden on people in the organization. more
One of the biggest opportunities for Internet companies of all sizes can be to get a U.S. government contracts. This kind of business partnership is highly desirable as the U.S. government spends about $500 billion for contracts annually. The government contracting in an extremely competitive field, as the huge number of businesses bid for the same contracts. After all, there is a lot of money involved here and those are all big jobs that can prove vital for any company. more
Are Human Rights, both traditional and digital, at risk of becoming an empty promise? (a) The political environment for Human Rights has notably deteriorated since the United Nation's (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. How have things changed? more
In a post last week, I advised Cuban President Díaz-Canel that investment in fixed broadband Internet would benefit both the Cuban people and his regime. This week, I've got advice for US President Biden -- don't try to out-pander the Republicans and call President Díaz-Canel's bluff by offering support for fixed broadband. What won't work... more
The digital domain encompasses the different spaces and spheres we use to relate and interact with the people and things that surround us using digital technologies. The digital domain is not limited to the technologies itself, but it has an important ethical dimension that encompasses the values, principles and instruments that inform and govern it. Created by humans for humans, our beliefs, cultural backgrounds, and biases are reflected in the codes we write and the algorithms we create. more
The Group of Seven industrial powers today announced an agreement on guidelines aimed at protecting global financial sector from cyberattacks amidst a series of cross-border bank thefts by hackers. Jason Lange from Washington reporting in Reuters. more
Members of the European Parliament have taken stock of the lack of action taken to safeguard citizens' fundamental rights following revelations of electronic mass surveillance. more
We're all used to crazy advertising about telecom products that make industry folks shake their heads -- many of the ads about 5G come to mind. Most people don't realize that carriers in the industry routinely challenge the claims made by competitors to force them to modify or drop deceptive ads. Most of the largest corporations in the country belong to the National Advertising Division (NAD), which is part of the Better Business Bureau and arbitrates disputes about advertising between participants in the plan. more