February 25, 2009 · 4:51 am

Security, Privacy, Interoperability

These terms are strongly related, inter-related to be more precise, and have a significant effect upon the level of trust and confidence that any information system engenders with its users.  Separately dealing with each attributed of a network, as though the relationship between each term were independent, is not good design.  Yet, read the following taken from Cnet article on problems building a new healthcare system:

Lawmakers and health care representatives also asked the HISPC to clarify why privacy issues were such a critical part of maintaining electronic health records.

“It seems to me there is a big concern about the digitization of data as separate, but if we have the right security measures, that data is no different from the data physically sitting in my office,” said Herb Conway, a physician who sits on the New Jersey state legislature. “Are we going to be designing laws that interfere with our ability to have interoperability?

…

“While we appreciate that different states have different rules, we’re trying to find a way to streamline the process so patient treatment is not affected by delays in sharing information,” he said.

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February 24, 2009 · 8:50 am

Darwinian View to Cybersecurity

Interesting….

Take A Darwinian Approach To A Dangerous World: Ecologist Preaches ‘Natural’ Security For Homeland Defense

ScienceDaily (2009-02-23) — Global society is undergoing rapid political and socioeconomic changes, to which our security measures must adapt. Fortunately, we’re surrounded by millions of examples of security measures from nature that do just that.

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February 24, 2009 · 5:54 am

Cost of Information

Chronicle reports on recent court decision stating, effectively, that a public employee can’t exercise first amendment speech rights if the credibility of the speaker is based upon the employee’s position (yeah, take that whistleblowers!).

First the context:

As an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Mr. Renken says he felt obliged to speak out about his belief that administrators there were mishandling a National Science Foundation grant to him and several colleagues. When the university subsequently reduced his pay and returned the grant, he sued, alleging illegal retaliation.

Because he is a tenured faculty member, and he viewed the public university’s use of public funds as a matter of clear public interest, Mr. Renken figured his complaints qualified as legally protected free speech.

Now the punch line:

“In order for a public employee to raise a successful First Amendment claim, he must have spoken in his capacity as a private citizen and not as an employee,” the court said.

The professor, the AAUP, and others see this as a breach in the wall of protection they claim is provided by Academic Freedom.  However, referring to the 1915 Declaration of Principles, I do not see a case to be made here, as the utterances were within the confines of the professor’s job. Continue reading →

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February 24, 2009 · 5:43 am

Regulatory Transparency – will it change your behavior?

A relatively new policy tool, mandatory disclosure of infromation with a regulatory intent, is being proposed as a means to deal with the net neutrality issue.  In an article announcing Obama’s choice of Leibowitz as FTC chair,  Cnet reports:

On the issue of Net neutrality, Leibowitz stood out from his colleagues in June 2007 when the FTC released a report stating no new laws were necessary. Leibowitz issued an opinion saying existing antitrust laws may not have been “adequate to the task” of Internet broadband regulation.

“Will carriers block, slow or interfere with applications?” Leibowitz asked at a public hearing held by the FTC in November 2006. “If so, will consumers be told about this before they sign up? In my mind, failure to disclose these procedures would be…unfair and deceptive.”

Researchers believe that in order for such transparency to be effective a) the user behavior must be changeable via better information and b) the disclosers’ behavior (i.e. internet access providers AT&T and Comcast) must be changeable in reaction to the users’ choices.  I question whether the users will have a choice even if they possess perfect information to act upon (not even gonna get into the details of whether the information disclosed is comprhensible by the average user)>

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February 23, 2009 · 9:15 am

CyberSecurity Updates

Univ Florida – breach – 97,000 id’s

Norton unveils product to help parents manage children’s access to the web.  Has the market done what Government could not?

Citing a Rochester Institute of Technology study that found a huge gap between the percentage of parents versus children who report no online supervision, Symantec says that Online Family is intended to bridge that gap by “fostering communication” between parents and their kids. According to the RIT study, only 7 percent of parents think their children have no online supervision, while 66 percent of kids think they go unsupervised.

Perhaps this tool will alleviate this columnist’s fears (tip to Parry Aftab ) regarding making wireless available throught the house:

It’s not a matter of trust. It’s about trying to be a responsible online parent by keeping cyber-dangers away from vulnerable kids.

However, no matter how weak the signal, Mayhem Manor will have to keep logs for two years of all who access the internet should these proposals become law— primarily for law enforcement to help protect children from predators, the authors say:

“While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. “Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level.”

However, it seems that the Recording Industry, Motion Picture Industry, and publishers are salivating over this prospect to provide them names, instead of John Does, to occupy the banners of their lawsuits:

So would individuals and companies bringing civil lawsuits, including the Recording Industry Association of America and other large copyright holders, many of which have lobbied for similar data retention laws in other countries.

When filing lawsuits over suspected online piracy, lawyers for the RIAA and other plaintiffs typically have an Internet Protocol address they hope to link with someone’s identity. But if the network operator doesn’t retain the logs, the lawsuit can be derailed.

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February 23, 2009 · 8:47 am

Zealotry, Credibility and Knowledge on the Web

A friend of mine recently offered a post lamenting the hooligans that currently terrorize Wikipedia.

Based on my past and recent experiences, my impression is that Wikipedia has become dominated by an entrenched group of individuals who are territorial rather than collegial. Any newcomer is treated as an interloper and is subjected to a hazing process that is likely to discourage them from returning.

Her zeal to contribute and support Wikipedia is contrary to this attitude,  otherwise known as the common wisdom,  expressed in today’s Chronicle:

The rise of Wikipedia seems to have afflicted some scholars with a mild case of existential panic. And understandably so: When the world’s most popular reference tool is such an egalitarian outfit, that can be interpreted as a fairly stiff challenge to the value of expertise, right?

To be fair, the Chronicle article focuses on the philosophy of Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, who left because “he felt the site’s credentials-be-damned approach benefited vandals and kept away scholars.”  Dr. Sanger (Phd. Philosophy with a bent towards epistemology — he knows whereof he speaks) offers this hypothesis:

“The quality of a given Wikipedia article will do a random walk around the highest level of quality permitted by the most persistent and aggressive people who follow an article.”

I believe Dr. Butcher’s experience offers anecdotal evidence of the truth of his hypothesis.

So, if the public seeks knowledge (a value determined by the market) and knowledge is thwarted by a minority of the marketplace – whose failure is this?

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February 20, 2009 · 8:55 am

Responses to Cyber Leap Year

CAIDA —

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February 20, 2009 · 8:51 am

Cyber Policy – Tracking law breakers

Seems some folks in Congress believe that all access point providers should maintain a log of users to be accessible by law enforcement.

Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.

…Translated, the Internet Safety Act applies not just to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and so on–but also to the tens of millions of homes with Wi-Fi access points or wired routers that use the standard method of dynamically assigning temporary addresses. (That method is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or DHCP.)

Good synopsis by DeClan McCullagh.

And this headline sums up the Congressional approach to problem solving that the two bills above represent:

New Congress SO last century

And one last comment, taken from Scott Cleland at precursor, indicating where policymakers should be focusing their energies:

Out of sight — out of mind.

It is very troubling that in all the public discourse about the future of the Internet, cloud computing, and appropriate Internet public policy, there is so little discussion or coverage of the real and growing threat of Internet cyber attacks on our people, economy, government, and network-infrastructure.

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February 19, 2009 · 10:11 am

Stem Cell Debates

New Post article updates discussion regarding impending federal policy changes. One possible change:

Among the issues the guidelines will address is whether funding should be limited to cells from leftover embryos that are destined for destruction at infertility clinics.

The arguments by opponents to “liberalization” of federal policy include:

Opponents have argued that research on human embryonic stem cells has become unnecessary because of scientific advances in the interim, including promising studies involving adult stem cells and the ability to turn adult cells into cells that appear to have many of the properties of embryonic cells..

Legislation has been proposed, include SB 169 in Georgia, to prohibit the use of  “left over” embryo’s from IVF procedures.  And, the definition within SB 169 would also seem to prohibit using adult stem cells that mimic embryonic stem cells as such stem cells may indeed lead to cloning a human, or at the very least fulfill the definition of cloing, see:

‘Human embryo’ means an organism with a human or predominantly human genetic
constitution from the single-celled stage to approximately eight weeks development that
is derived by fertilization (in vitro or in utero), parthenogenesis, cloning (somatic cell
nuclear transfer), or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid
cells.

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February 19, 2009 · 9:59 am

Cyber Security Policy Tools – parental control

What you don’t know, can hurt your kids:

Because parents generally don’t understand that Internet features exist on these devices, they are not supervising their use (other than for choice of game content for sex or violence). They are often shocked to learn that their kids are using voice-over-Internet phone technologies (VoIP) to scream at or chat with anyone else playing the game.

Even when strong parental controls exist, such as with Xbox 360 or Wii, parents don’t think about setting them and rarely know they are available.

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