Law

There is no right to privacy at international borders. For those of us with laptops, this presents a pretty major problem: How do we get through U.S. Customs with our beloved portable devices, without having Uncle Sam peeking at every e-mail we've sent, every MP3 we've listened to, and every "home movie" we've made?

The obvious solution, encryption, is not enough. Non-Americans have no right to enter the U.S. Don't want to hand over your encryption keys? No problem--but you will be put on the next airplane back to your home country (… Read more

A few weeks ago, I brought you news that Indiana's Governor had signed into law HB 1197, a data breach and encryption bill that I worked on.

What I have not revealed, up until now is the coercion and arm-twisting that accompanied the passage of this bill. While the details may not surprise jaded readers, it certainly gave me a reason to dislike the entire process, as well one particular power-tripping legislator. Now that the bill, albeit a significantly slimmer version, has become law, I'm free to tell the story.

As regular readers of this blog know, I … Read more

In what appears to be a first, the US House of Representatives now has a Congressman who can code...in assembly. That's right, a Congressman with geek skills.

Democratic Representative Bill Foster won a special election this past Saturday in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois. This was the district that former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert held from 1986-2007. Hastert stepped down in November of 2007.

Foster, a physicist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, surprised many when he won the district. After all, it had been a Republican stronghold for more than twenty years. After … Read more

Apple's recent announcement of the iPhone application software development kit is drawing criticism from Net neutrality activists. While the company has previously angered many for its practice of bricking unlocked phones, it is now being accused of anticompetitive behavior.

Could Apple take Comcast's place as the poster child for the Save The Internet movement? Furthermore, by blocking competing Web browser Firefox, could Apple draw Microsoft-like antitrust lawsuits?

Control

Thursday, Apple released its eagerly awaited iPhone software development kit. Putting an end to hopes of user choice, Apple has declared that the only way for users to install applications … Read more

Update 2: MobiTV has backed down, and appears to have kissed and made up with HowardForums. See below.

Updated to include a statement from MobiTV (see below)

In a fantastic demonstration of the Streisand Effect, Silicon Valley startup MobiTV is currently engaged in an almost comedic yet futile effort to scrub a 31 character "secret" URL from the Internet.

MobiTV sells a streaming TV subscription service to mobile phone users. For $9.99 a month, Sprint, AT&T and Alltel customers can view low bandwidth streams of a number of TV channels right on their handsets. The … Read more

After months of lying and evading our questions, Comcast seems to have developed a love affair with the blogosphere. Is this an early Valentine's Day present for bloggers, or is the company up to its usual tricks?

Comcast has gotten into a bit of hot water with the Federal Communications Comission over its widely criticized anti-BitTorrent filtering. The FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced the agency's plans to investigate Comcast last month, stating that "the question is going to arise: Are they reasonable network practices?" He added that "when they have reasonable network practices, they should … Read more

Update: This blog post has been modified since it was first published. Click here for more details, or scroll to the bottom to see the original text.

A pro-consumer, bipartisan data-breach bill was stripped of most its provisions before its feeble remains were finally passed by an Indiana Senate committee on Tuesday.

This came after two weeks of intensive lobbying by AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, and LexisNexis, all of which wanted to kill the bill. For the most part, they were successful.

In a blog post last week, I explained how I had worked with my state Rep. Matt Pierce (D-Bloomington) … Read more

In a direct slap in the face to consumers, tech industry giants including Microsoft, AT&T, and Verizon are frantically engaged in an effort to kill pro-consumer provisions in a data breach notification bill currently being considered by the Indiana State Senate.

The bill would require that the state attorney general act as a single point of contact for data breaches. Any company that suffered a breach impacting one or more Indiana consumers would be required to notify the AG's office. The bill would also make Indiana the only state in the country to to require the attorney … Read more

Slate, a popular news site, seems to be openly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

That law, much hated in cyberrights and computer security circles, is a thorn in the side to many researchers. The interesting question that we must ask is: Will Hollywood let Slate's probable violation slide, or will they lawyer up and go after the site owned by The Washington Post Co.?

A few days ago, Slate released a video mashup of footage of Hillary Clinton and a few scenes from the movie Election, starring Reese Witherspoon. The video is mildly amusing, and did at least … Read more