Week in review: Policing the Net

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The bill would effectively make it illegal to use any kind of portable electronic device--a music or video player, cell phone, smart phone, gaming device, etc.--while crossing the street in cities such as New York, Albany and Buffalo. Offenders would be slapped with a $100 fine and a criminal court summons. Joggers and bicyclists would have to limit their iPod use to city parks in which no street crossing would be involved.

Security in the spotlight
Though Microsoft has made leaps in security over the years, even more challenges lie ahead as additional devices go online, company executives told attendees at the RSA Security Conference. The company has been developing its "Trustworthy Computing" initiative for five years, but that doesn't mean Microsoft products are now watertight, said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at the company.

"This won't make (the products) perfect," Mundie said in a joint keynote speech with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at the San Francisco event. "The challenges we face in building our products, and the challenges everybody faces in administering and using them, is that humans are humans and they make mistakes."

As more devices connect to the Internet, and as people demand access to data from anywhere, the security job will only get bigger and more complex. "This challenge is going to get a lot tougher," Mundie said.

Indeed, companies that offer only security products will be relegated to the history books in a few years, according to one speaker at the conference. Art Coviello, president of RSA Security, predicted the end of the standalone security industry--those companies that offer only protective services such as antivirus or encryption--within two to three years.

"Our industry is ripe for a transformation. In fact, it's already under way," Coviello declared. "With the exception of a few exceptional start-ups, there will be no standalone security businesses within three years."

In a keynote address that criticized the security industry for the way it has operated in recent years, Coviello argued that a more integrated response is needed to combat the scale of the threat facing Internet users and businesses today.

Meanwhile, online criminals are turning away from threatening companies with massive cyberattacks in favor of encrypting a victim's data and then demanding money to decrypt it, an antivirus expert said. Eugene Kaspersky, head of antivirus research at Russia's Kaspersky Labs, said the use of so-called "ransomware Trojans" is a key trend for 2007.

This malicious software infects a PC, encrypts some data and then displays an alert telling the victim to send money to get the decryption key needed to access their data again. Such malicious software isn't new. Early examples include Cryzip, discovered in March 2006, and GPCode, discovered in May 2005.

Also of note
Google said its Gmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account...President Bush's proposed $2.9 trillion budget for next year calls for increases in some scientific research funding, along with boosts for counterterrorism surveillance and screening programs...A Silicon Valley figure who fled the country after being convicted in part because of a Usenet joke about Tom Cruise and Scientology has been arrested in Arizona...Microsoft has decided to keep the venerable Hotmail brand as it works to overhaul its free Web e-mail service.

[index2006]

Abuse of Privileges

--Has anyone realised that we live in a world full of lies and that there are unscrupulous people at all levels of society and that honest people who believe in truth can be deliberately harmed? Justice is blind, mind you, some are more equals than others.

[wone123]

what is justice?

certainly not a job with the feds... a job? well, sort of. but we shouldnt be deprived enough to think so.. with all the fingering and sniffing going on.. appears to be land of the apes

[swift2--2008]

St. McCain

I used to like McCain, I really did. But in order to have a chance to
be president, he seems to be prepared to do anything -- whatever
it takes -- to make nice with the right wing that doesn't support
him anyhow. Is this centrist or genuine, both of which qualities he
used to have? Not on your life. If put into place, this measure would
end privacy on the Internet and make your ISP into a spy. He ought
to be ashamed of himself; if he still had a soul he would be.

[CapoNumen]

Ban children from the internet

It?s the same old tired propaganda.
?Protect the poor little kiddies from the big bad world?.

It's just a ploy to further erode civil rights.
The democrats and the republican?s puppet masters are scared to death of any real freedom of speech.
They already control the agenda and content of most all the other mass media.
So expect ever greater efforts to silence descent and stifle free speech on the internet.

And to you well meaning parents out there; it will be your children that suffer the most
from these laws; for they are the real targets of this oppression.