The New York Times recently reported that the NSA, through intermediaries in Australia, was actively engaged in collecting communications between the Government of Indonesia and their U.S. law firm hired in connection with a trade dispute. The case, and its logical consequences, raises the questions of whether or not there is anything left of the…
DetailsPackets is packets, right? Wrong. With the demise of the Net Neutrality standards, Internet providers are free to “prioritize” certain kinds of packets over others. Now this is nothing new. The TCP/IP protocols already prioritize packets based upon their nature, source and destination. Latency is not much of a problem for e-mail, file transfer, or…
DetailsOn Facebook’s 10th Anniversary, many people posted short videos taken from their “life” on Facebook. These included pictures, likes, favorites, etc. from their tenure as Facebook products – um, customers. It made me realize how much information, and indeed how much trivial but potentially important information is stored on Facebook, and searchable (or subpoenable) about…
DetailsOn a bitter cold January day, the President of the United States appeared before a joint session of Congress to fulfill his Constitutional obligation to “from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The President…
DetailsConventional wisdom is that the revelations about the NSA domestic and international surveillance programs are bad news for US security, privacy, cloud and other companies. The revelations include assertions (probably true) that the NSA placed back doors, Trojan horse programs, and other malware into a wide variety of hardware and software, cables, chips and other…
DetailsWith Google’s acquisition of technology company Nest, not only has Big Data met the Internet of Things, we have allowed the camel’s nose into the tent of privacy. The Supreme Court is all over the map when it comes to privacy, allowing for example the government to obtain intimate information about people with or without…
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