Computer Weekly interviewed Vint Cerf, who outlined three challenges facing the Internet as we know it: (1) the diminishing number of web addresses under the current addressing scheme; (2) security and reliability of web applications; and (3) how to fully accommodate mobile access. Listen to the interview here.
FBI Director Robert Mueller recently traveled to Silicon Valley to discuss his proposal to expand the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to Internet companies like Google or Facebook. Such a proposal would require those companies, like telephone and broadband companies presently, to have technology in place to immediately comply with a wiretap order.
Some net neutrality supporters expressed their ideas in poetry last night at a public hearing featuring FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, going so far as to insert portions of the 1934 Communications Act into the poem. (Fortunately, it’s in free verse.)
Erica Marat writing at the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia blog reports on the Kazakh government’s recent move to lift a two year ban on access to the blog portal LiveJournal. Marat notes that LiveJournal has become a valuable tool for dissidents in Russia and other countries, providing an open forum in an otherwise propaganda-saturated environment.
Ranjit Lall writing at FT’s Beyondbrics discusses a Google White Paper in which the company calls for governments to ensure a free and open Internet. Lall highlights three measures for which Google advocates:
- Focus on and publicly highlight as unfair trade barriers those practices by governments that restrict or disrupt the flow of online information services.
- Take appropriate action where government restrictions on the free flow of online information violate international trade rules.
- Establish new international trade rules under bilateral, regional, and multilateral agreements that provide further assurances in favor of the free flow of information on the Internet.
Lall points out the uncertainty of Google’s motives, as the company has been somewhat weak-kneed in standing against Internet censorship. You can read Google’s whitepaper here.
Stew Magnuson at National Defense Magazine has a post on how in April 2010, China Telecom Corp. triggered many US-based ISPs to route their traffic through China. He notes that the company was able to absorb the information (15% of Internet traffic) and continue routing it without any noticeable disruption. Magnuson writes:
Also, the list of hijacked data just happened to include preselected destinations around the world that encompassed military, intelligence and many civilian networks in the United States and other allies such as Japan and Australia, he said. “Why would you keep that list?” Alperovitch asked.
William Maclean reporting for Reuters discusses the mounting evidence that the Stuxnet worm was aimed at particular converter drive frequencies which have limited applications – including control of gas centrifuges. An excerpt:
“This finding strongly points to a controller for a module in a gas centrifuge cascade,” [Leading German cyber expert Ralph Langner] blogged. “One reasonable goal for the attack could be to destroy the centrifuge rotor by vibration, which causes the centrifuge to explode.
As the House reorganizes itself to accommodate Republican control in a couple months, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) seeks the Democrat’s top spot in the House telecom subcommittee that opened up as a result of Rick Boucher’s (D-Va.) recent loss.
The Justice Department antitrust division and the FCC may predicate their approval of the NBC-Comcast merger on the company’s assurance that it open up its programming to platforms outside the company, such as Time Warner Cable or Netflix.
Marvin Ammori 