Marvin Ammori

Andy Greenberg at Forbes’ Firewall reports on an upcoming paper written by Harvard professor Yochai Benkler in which the scholar criticizes the public and private sectors’ response to the Wikileaks affair.  From the paper:

“The implicit alliance, a public-private partnership between the firms that operate the infrastructure and the government that encourages them to help in its war on terror, embodied by this particularly irritating organization, was able to achieve extra-legally much more than law would have allowed the state to do by itself.”

The International Music Score Library Project, which makes available thousands of music scores for download, has raised copyright concerns, especially among publishers.

Jeff Hecht writing at the New Scientist reports on claims by Garmin engineers that 4G transmissions “will seriously damage GPS reception,” causing massive GPS signal jamming.  Lightsquared, a company planning on building 40,000 new 4G base stations throughout the country, claims that the problem rests with GPS receivers and not the 4G signals.

As expected, Amazon has announced its new and improved Amazon Prime service that now offers more than 5,000 streaming TV shows and movies to customers. Those who already pay the $79 per year for Prime won’t have to pay any extra to get access to the streams. Video will be available on Macs and PCs in the US, as well as a number of set-top boxes.

Bill Gertz at the Washington Times reports that a group calling itself the “Iranian Cyber Army” has claimed credit for hijacking the Voice of America’s website yesterday.  The group is suspected to be linked to the Iranian government.

Ars Technica is offering the first three chapters of Johnny Ryan’s forthcoming book “A History of the Internet and the Digital Future.” Worth a gander.

House Communications and Technology Sub-Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) described the funding as unnecessary to guarantee a completely free Internet:

“We all want an open and thriving Internet. That Internet exists today. Consumers can access anything they want with the click of a mouse thanks to our historical hands-off approach,” [Walden said].

The National Journal quotes one telecom analyst as guessing the defunding proposal will not make it through the Senate:

In the long run, the cut potentially “has a shot” of actually making it past the Senate and President Obama’s pen, but final passage is not likely, said Paul Glenchur, a senior telecommunications analyst for Potomac Research Group.

This is just one in a potentially long list of defunded projects that both Bush and Obama supported, including funding for:

The United Nations

The Census

Planned Parenthood

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s travel allowance

Renovations to the White House

Foreign aid to Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Israel, Jordan and Egypt

Climate change diplomacy

Spending over $200 million a year on military bands

Pay hikes for federal employees

Attorneys fees in the case of the United States v. The State of Arizona and Janice K. Brewer

Talk of a government shutdown is growing:

A proposal by Texas Republican Ted Poe to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to issue regulations on global warming passed by a 249-177 vote…. Democrats [have] charged that Boehner was maneuvering Congress to the precipice of a government shutdown.

In 1995, Bob Dole and other Senate Republicans joined Senate Democrats to defeat House Republicans’ proposals to defund the EPA, OSHA, and the NLRB.  Perhaps a similar dynamic will emerge prior to a government shutdown in 2011 or 2012.  However, during the government shutdown in 1995, many federal services ground to a halt, leading to higher bond yields:

During the nearly four-week shutdown, Social Security checks were not mailed and Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements were disrupted. According to a Center for American Progress report entitled “The Big Freeze,” the shutdown ultimately “cost the American taxpayer over $800 million and rattled the confidence of international investors in U.S. government bonds.”

According to the Associated Press, stocks lost $100 billion in value, and a “sell-off” of U.S. treasuries sent interest rates higher.

Gopal Ratnam and Rachael King writing for Bloomberg News report that  the DOD is seeking $500 million for research in cyber security technologies, including seed money for private companies to develop dual use technologies that can support DOD cyber security efforts.

Greg Weston writing for the CBC reports on what is being called an “unprecedented cyber attack” against the Canadian government.  The attack was traced to servers in China, but officials are reluctant to immediately assign blame to the Chinese given possibility that the attack may have been routed through those servers from another location.

New surveillance footage and code investigation provide stronger evidence that the Stuxnet worm indeed targeted the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant in Iran.