Global treaty could ban file-sharers from Internet after ‘three strikes’
File-sharers could be jailed under proposed ACTA provisions

Raw Story
November 4, 2009

Leaked details of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated in secret by most of the world’s largest economies suggest Internet file-sharers could be blocked from accessing the Internet if they are repeatedly accused of sharing copyrighted material, say media and digital-rights watchdogs.

“The provisions would pave the way for a globalized three-strikes and you’re out system,” Geist blogged Wednesday, referring to a proposal from copyright holders to have Internet service providers cut off service to anyone accused at least three times of illegally sharing copyrighted material.

Artykuł został wygłoszony w formie referatu na konferencji: Com.unikowanie w zmieniającym się społeczeństwie, organizowanej przez Uniwersytet Jagielloński, w dniach 26-27 czerwca 2008. Tekst został oddany do druku w tomie pokonferencyjnym [w druku].

Rok 2006 był rokiem niezwykłym. Było to czas:

[…] wspólnoty i współpracy na niespotykaną dotąd skalę. To historia kosmicznego kompendium wiedzy Wikipedii i ludzkiej sieci miliona kanałów YouTube i sieciowego metropolis MySpace. To historia wielu, wyciągających władzę z rąk nielicznych, pomagających sobie nawzajem, za darmo. Zmieni to nie tylko świat, ale też sam sposób, w jaki zmienia się śwat. […] Web 2.0 zbiera głupotę tłumów, jak i ich mądrość […] Ale to właśnie czyni ją interesującą. Web 2.0 jest masowym eksperymentem społecznym. (Grossman 2006)

Można spierać się o istotę i ukryte cele tego eksperymentu zaplanowanego w Silicon Valley, jak również o to, czy jest to działanie ekonomiczne i marketingowe ― czy raczej z zakresu psychologii tłumu i zarządzania zasobami ludzkimi na skalę globalną. Zjawisko to ma zarówno swoich zwolenników, jak i zagorzałych krytyków (Lessig 2005, Keen 2007).

Zanim stało się globalnym ruchem społecznym, dwa lata wcześniej, w 2004 roku zostało zaobserwowane ― lub też, jak chcą krytycy, cynicznie zaplanowane i wypromowane ― przez Tima O’Reilly’ego, Dale’a Dougherty’ego i Johna Battelle’a, czy szerzej korporację O’Reilly Media, organizatora słynnej konferencji, na której wprowadzono pojęcie „Web 2.0” do globalnego obiegu. Termin odnosił się do szeregu zjawisk z zakresu usług internetowych i charakteryzował przedsiębiorstwa, które nie poddały się dotkomowej bańce finansowej, albo też były jej pozytywnym pośrednim rezultatem (O’Reilly 2005). Zjawiska, które kryły się za terminem Web 2.0, takie jak umożliwienie internautom darmowego generowania i publikowania treści w Internecie, dostosowanie usług sieciowych do potrzeb użytkowników oraz angażowanie ich w interakcję z dostawcami usług, zmieniły powszechne społeczne i biznesowe rozumienie Sieci, a przy okazji sam Internet. I choć usługi tego typu istniały w Sieci od dłuższego czasu, opisywane przemiany nabrały tempa po roku 2004, osiągając w przełomowym roku 2006 zainteresowanie ze strony milionów użytkowników. Wtedy właśnie, zgodnie z ideologią O’Reilly Media, użytkownik stał się głównym aktorem sieciowej komunikacji, twórcą i dostarczycielem treści, opiniodawcą i doradcą, a nawet ― dziennikarzem i autorytetem lokalnym na skalę globalną.

Mimo niezwykłej popularności trendów klasyfikowanych jako Web 2.0 oraz tego typu usług, problemem nadal pozostaje precyzyjna definicja terminu Web 2.0, mimo propozycji Tima O’Reilly’ego (2005). Interesujące wnioski związane z kwestią terminologiczną przedstawiają autorki raportu przygotowanego dla Pew Internet & American Life Project w znaczącym roku 2006:

Pisarze i analitycy technologii poświęcili w istocie niezliczone godziny na meta-pracę dotyczącą wykorzystywania aplikacji Web 2.0 (blogów, wiki, podcastów etc.), aby przedyskutować i i rozwinąć definicję terminu. A jednak nadal nie osiągnięto konsensusu w kwestii, gdzie kończy się 1.0, a zaczyna 2.0. Czy na przykład grupy usenetowe, które oparte są na treściach generowanych przez użytkowników (user-generated content), ale nie wymagają koniecznie dostępu przez klienta Sieci, powinny być uznawane za 1.0 czy 2.0? W pewnym sensie, nie ma znaczenia czy wyznaczony cel był złudny, czy też, że niektórzy sprytni sprzedawcy po prostu wykorzystują hasło, aby zdystansować się do porażek firm Web 1.0. Fakt, że termin poddawany był ciągłym zmianom znaczenia i wielu różnym interpretacjom jest znakiem jego użyteczności. Taka jest natura tej bestii konceptualnej [conceptual beast] wieku cyfrowego i jednego z bardziej wymownych przykładów tego, co czynią aplikacje Web 2.0: zastępują autorytatywną wagę tradycyjnych instytucji wzrastającą mądrością tłumów. (Madden & Fox 2006, s. 1-2)

Minęły dwa lata od czasu, gdy „Time” docenił internautów i powstał powyższy raport Pew Internet. Popularność serwisów typu Web 2.0 wciąż wzrasta, choć można widzieć w tym procesie „efekt śnieżnej kuli”, zaprojektowany przez marketing koncernów telekomunikacyjnych, i ożywiony przez wywołany przezeń marketing szeptany, a nie ― świadomy ruch obywatelski internautów. Web 2.0 przyciąga zarówno użytkowników, jak i ― coraz częściej ― badaczy procesów społecznych. Dotyczy praktycznie wszystkich dziedzin życia, zwłaszcza takich, które ― jak na przykład turystyka ― związane są z wyszukiwaniem informacji, zarówno nieoficjalnych, jak i komercyjnych (Maj 2008). Warto przyjrzeć się bliżej omawianym tendencjom i zapytać o skutki kulturowe rozwoju Sieci partycypacji, rekomendacji, folksonomii, „wikinomii” (Tapscott & Williams 2007) i wikiwiedzy.

W badaniach wykorzystania Internetu przez społeczeństwo amerykańskie prowadzonych na przestrzeni ostatnich lat przez Pew Internet & American Life Project dostrzec można wzrastającą aktywność użytkowników, związaną z kreatywnym wykorzystaniem potencjału Web 2.0, polegającym nie tylko na amatorskiej twórczości i tworzeniu sieci społecznych, ale także na funkcjonalizacji Web 2.0 w postaci biznesu, edukacji czy indywidualnych poszukiwań określonych informacji. Internet traktowany jest jako źródło wiedzy naukowej, czy też medium pomagające rozwiązywać problemy (źródło pierwszej pomocy w kwestiach zdrowotnych, biznesowych, informacyjnych etc.). W badaniach Pew Internet ze stycznia i lutego 2006 roku 87 % respondentów wskazało, że Internet stanowi dla nich główne narzędzie badawcze, 34 % badanych przyznało, że przede wszystkim w Sieci szuka informacji naukowych, a 67 % uznało, że gdyby potrzebowało takiej informacji ― szukałoby jej najpierw w Sieci (Horrigan 2006, s. 3-4). Wzrost wpływu społecznego tendencji związanych z Web 2.0 widoczny jest zwłaszcza w aktywności nastolatków, którzy traktują Sieć przede wszystkim jako środowisko interakcji społecznej i publikacji własnej twórczości, a zatem forum autoprezentacji i ekspresji. Zauważono przy tym wyraźny wzrost popularności w tej grupie serwisów typu user-generated content ― w 2007 roku korzystało z nich 64 % amerykańskich nastoletnich internautów, którzy stanowią 93 % ogółu nastolatków w USA (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, Smith 2007, s. 2). Raporty dotyczące dorosłych użytkowników Sieci wskazują, że trend nie ominął również starszych pokoleń, nawet w wieku postprodukcyjnym. Jak wskazują Madden i Fox, opierając się na ilościowych analizach komparatystycznych dokonanych przez firmę badawczą Hitwise, zmiana z Web 1.0 na Web 2.0 nie dotyczy czynności i celów wykorzystywania Sieci, ale polega na „uspołecznieniu” serwisów oferujących określone usługi i na wykorzystaniu tradycyjnych sposobów użycia Sieci, takich jak wzmacnianie więzi społecznych (Madden & Fox 2006, s. 3-5).

Zastanawiając się nad podstawowymi dla współczesnej Sieci kwestiami społecznej transmisji znaczeń i rozwoju nowych strategii komunikacyjnych, w tym takich, które modelują i redefiniują znaczące dla kultury pojęcia „wiedzy”, „inteligencji”, „mądrości” i „autorytetu”, warto wrócić do korzeni idei Web 2.0, wyznaczonych przez O’Reilly’ego w szczegółowej analizie tranformacji medium. W perspektywie antropologicznej istotną cechą Web 2.0 jest zwłaszcza „zbieranie zbiorowej inteligencji” (O’Reilly 2005, s. 2-3). Oznacza to przede wszystkim oddanie inicjatywy w ręce użytkowników ― konsumentów, którzy generują treści serwisów ― stając się tym samym prosumentami. To ilość i jakość hiperlinków (Google PageRank, blogosfera), ilość znaczników nadanych przez użytkowników (Flickr, Del.icio.us, Blogger etc.) czy popularność danych treści (YouTube, Vimeo, DotSub, Overmundo, Blogger, WordPress, MySpace etc.), produktu (eBay, Amazon, Hostelworld etc.), oprogramowania (zwłaszcza open source) czy serwisu (Wikipedia, Wikitravel, Couchsurfing etc.) decydują o jego wartości. O’Reilly zauważa, że usługi Web 2.0 nie potrzebują marketingu, wykorzystują bowiem społeczną popularność i rekomendacje usług, serwisów i produktów, dokonywane dobrowolnie przez użytkowników. „Kluczem do dominacji rynku w erze Web 2.0 jest sieć, będąca efektem udziału użytkowników.” (O’Reilly 2005, s. 2)

Serwisy społecznościowe, takie jak MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo, YouTube, Flickr, Digg i inne, umożliwiają nie tylko komunikację, ale przede wszystkim prezentację i publikację indywidualnych profili i kreacji różnych treści ― a zatem implikują społeczną interakcję i tworzenie więzi społecznych w oparciu o podobieństwa profilu psychologicznego, gustów i zainteresowań. Nowa formuła serwisów rozszerza możliwość kreowania i redagowania treści przez użytkowników, wymuszając aktywizację w sferze komercyjnej, wykorzystując potencjał partycypacji i sprawnie zamieniając ruch w serwisie na dochody. Z drugiej strony Web 2.0 zmusza działające w Internecie firmy do weryfikacji własnej polityki dostarczania informacji i otwarcia się na opinię publiczną. Skala społecznego zainteresowania usługą, produktem czy marką, a także ocena wystawiana przez użytkowników w procesie peer review decyduje o biznesowym krachu lub sukcesie.

Dla użytkownika Web 2.0 oznacza natomiast przejście od percepcji stron prywatnych (trudnych do edycji) do aktywnego blogowania (prostej edycji wpisów). Pośrednio chodzi także o przejście od taksonomii do folksonomii ― waga informacji zależna jest nie od decyzji odgórnych czy logiki systemowej, lecz od poszczególnych wyborów użytkowników, ich subiektywnych preferencji oraz sposobów kategoryzacji wiedzy. Istotna staje się opinia innych użytkowników-konsumentów na temat usług i produktów oraz ich ocena (system rekomendacji i peer review) lub samo ulotne zainteresowanie, które zostaje symbolicznie „zamrożone” (popularność i „przepływ wokół produktu” ― jak nazywa to Amazon ― stanowią miernik sukcesu produktu). Mowa tu o „mądrości tłumów” i o dynamizacji procesu dostępu do informacji (RSS) oraz egalitaryzmie w dostępie do wiedzy i społecznej kreacji znaczeń (wiki).

Folksonomia jako system klasyfikacji i kategoryzacji wiedzy wydaje się stanowić przeciwieństwo taksonomii. Znaczniki nadawane w procesie social bookmarking, social tagging i social networking stanowią zarazem prywatne, jak i społeczne sposoby porządkowania świata sensów, metody negocjacji znaczeń i elementy gry społecznej. Specyficzne działania związane z nadawaniem znaczników (tagów) polegają w istocie na takim opisywaniu treści, by ułatwić ich selekcję, odnalezienie i ewaluację w jak najkrótszym czasie.

Doskonałym przykładem funkcjonowania folksonomii jest serwis Del.icio.us, który służy społecznemu oznaczaniu treści w Sieci i publicznemu udostępnianiu zakładek. Interesujące serwisy internetowe opisywane są przez użytkowników za pomocą prywatnych i subiektywnych znaczników przynależących do różnych kategorii, prezentowanych w serwisie w postaci chmur tagów, ułatwiających wyszukiwanie tematyczne oraz statystyczne (ocena popularności). Paradoksalnie, ten niezwykle subiektywny system opisu jest społecznie użyteczny ― jest bowiem intuicyjnie czytelny dla innych użytkowników. Spowodowane jest to tym, że ludzie posługują się podobnymi kategoriami poznawczymi, a także ograniczonym zakresem strategii porządkujących rzeczy i informacje. David Weinberger uważa, że strategii tych uczymy się, porządkując świat wokół nas, począwszy od przestrzeni domowej, po przestrzenie służące przechowywaniu wielu towarów i ich konsumpcji (Weinberger 2007, s. 10-11).

Folksonomie stanowią zatem systemy porządkujące treści dzięki podświadomym intersubiektywnym zasadom porządkowania, funkcjonującym w kulturze. Warto zauważyć, że folksonomie są w istocie subiektywnymi reprezentacjami porządku edukacyjno-wychowaczego, właściwego dla danej kultury i kręgu cywilizacyjnego. Folksonomia zawiera jednak także element reprezentacji wiedzy potocznej, co z perspektywy tradycyjnej nauki stanowi jej istotny mankament jako alternatywnego systemu porządkowania informacji. Należy dodać, że aspekt wpływu kultury na poszczególne typy systemów porządkujących typu folksonomicznego wymaga jeszcze dalszego rozpoznania i badań komparatystycznych.

W eseju poświęconym przejściu od taksonomii do folksonomii, David Weinberger zauważa, że porządek obiektywnie logiczny wywodzi się z tradycji Arystotelesowskiej, w której przeświadczenie o jednoznaczności wiedzy, a zatem również o precyzji i obiektywizmie dostępnych klasyfikacji było niezachwiane (Weinberger 2005, s. 76). Pewność ta sprowadzała się do „zasady pojemnikowej”: znając przynależność danej rzeczy do określonej kategorii, możemy zawsze opisać jej cechy w odniesieniu do całości systemu (a zatem także określić, jakich cech nie posiada). Tradycja ta zrodziła takie taksonomie, jak biblioteczny system dziesiętny Deweya, Linneuszowską systematykę gatunków roślin, Darwinowskie drzewo życia, czy też tablicę pierwiastków chemicznych Mendelejewa.

Rozwój Sieci ukazuje jednak mniej przejrzystą naturę rzeczy ― jak twierdzi Weinberger ― Sieć wymaga alternatywnego systemu porządkowania informacji, porządku, który wydaje się być raczej w tradycyjnym rozumieniu chaosem. Sam Weinberger opisuje go jako messiness, a zatem jako nieład czy bałagan, stan pewnej niesubordynacji rzeczy i pojęć wobec przestrzeni geograficznej, badź kognitywnej (Weinberger 2005, s. 76-78). A zatem folksonomia oznacza pewne pomieszanie kategorii potocznych z kategoriami przyswojonymi w procesie edukacji (na podstawie lektury i percepcji). Weinberger zastanawia się, jakimi metodami porządkującymi posługujemy się w życiu codziennym, by dojść do wniosku, że ― podobnie jak w Sieci, układamy pozornie nieprzystające elementy w logiczne ciągi, wykorzystując przy tym kilkanaście wzorów i kategoryzacji. Dotyczy to w takim samym stopniu procesu segregacji ubrań przeznaczonych do prania, jak i książek na półkach domowej biblioteki czy informacji zgromadzonych na twardym dysku komputera osobistego (Weinberger 2005 & 2007).

Należy dodać, że messiness, pojmowana jako nowy porządek właściwy Sieci, wynika z samej natury sieciowości ― a zatem stosuje się do praw matematycznych właściwych dla wszystkich systemów tego typu. Oznacza to, że z czasem chaos ulegnie uporządkowaniu i regulacji pod wpływem wielu aktów oznaczania treści przez użytkowników (Barabasi 2002). Dotyczy to jednak przede wszystkim folksonomii szerokich (broad folksonomies), czyli takich systemów, w których sensy (tagi) generowane są przez znaczną grupę osób posługujących się własnymi słownikami i kategoriami, ale w sposób, który pozwala innym na korzystanie z tych słowników i kategorii. Oznacza to, że opisy muszą dotyczyć treści ogólnie dostępnych do wyszukiwania oraz, że słowniki wykorzystywane przez poszczególne osoby posiadają wspólne elementy (Vander Wal 2005). Teoretycznie treści można zatem tagować na wiele różnych sposobów, podstawowym warunkiem jest jednak stosowanie kategorii społecznie zrozumiałych. Oznaczaniu musi zatem przyświecać idea tworzenia „inteligencji otwartej” (de Kerckhove 2001). Serwis Del.icio.us jest przykładem właśnie takiej szerokiej folksonomii, nakierowanej na wymianę wiedzy o zasobach Sieci.

Nieco inny charakter ma porządek wiedzy w różnych wiki oraz w Wikipedii i jej siostrzanych projektach. Nie można tu mówić o wiedzy potocznej, choć z całą pewnością jej elementy przenikają do treści ― choćby na poziomie wyboru tworzonych haseł czy opisywanych problemów, istotnych dla danej grupy autorów. Wikiwiedza jest jednak przede wszystkim wiedzą społeczną, powstającą w procesie dialogu społecznego i negocjacji znaczeń (Maj 2007). Istotna jest świadomość tworzenia wspólnego archiwum i procesualnego charakteru powstawania wiedzy. Można mówić wręcz o świadomości konstruktywistycznej, zwłaszcza w takich środowiskach, jak wikipedyści, wikipodróżnicy czy eksperci tworzący profesjonalne wiki. Problem relewancji wiedzy i jej dyskusyjności związanej z aktami wandalizmu lub rozwojem danej dyscypliny również wzmaga tę świadomość.

Wikiwiedza zawiera jednak elementy zarówno folksonomii, jak i tradycyjnych taksonomii, które dziedziczy choćby ze względu na cechy gatunkowe (encyklopedia). Podobnie można postrzegać hierarchiczny układ kompetencji i monitoring społeczny, które składają się na obecny tu system nadzoru nad treściami. Są jednak także pewne podobieństwa pomiędzy porządkiem wiki i folksonomią ― w obydwu przypadkach korpus wiedzy powstaje na bazie zainteresowań i spontanicznych decyzji poszczególnych użytkowników. Obydwa porządki wynikają także z działań oddolnych i zdecentralizowanych, opartych na ideologii konstruktywistycznej, dobrej woli, chęci współpracy i hojności użytkowników. Jak ujmuje to Weinberger (2005, s. 77), „najlepsze definicje są dwuznaczne” ― porządek Sieci powinien wzbudzać świadomość wielości dyskursów oraz ciekawość.

Zjawiska zwane Web 2.0 zmieniły znacząco nie tylko samą Sieć, ale i jej społeczne przeznaczenia. Inne są dziś także metafory związane z Internetem, przestrzeń informacji postrzegana jest w sposób bardziej precyzyjny i mniej metafizyczny, niż w poprzedniej dekadzie. Jak zauważają Mary Madden i Susannah Fox (2006, s. 6), metafory miasta, sąsiedztwa i stron domowych (np. Geocities) zastąpione zostały w Web 2.0 przez metafory osoby (profile, blogi i linki do multimediów), co można zaobserwować zwłaszcza w serwisach społecznościowych, których prekursorem pod tym względem był portal MySpace.

Z antropologicznego punktu widzenia interesująca wydaje się także zmiana rozumienia Sieci, jaka dokonała się na przestrzeni ostatniej dekady. Pośrednio dzięki procesom Web 2.0 postmodernistyczna metafora Sieci jako kłącza została zastąpiona konstruktywistyczną metaforą Sieci jako mapy metra (Maj & Derda-Nowakowski 2008, s. 6-7). Można zauważyć tu postępującą racjonalizację metafor operacyjnych, stosowanych do opisu istotnych dla kultury pojęć ― w tym wypadku zarówno medium, technologii, jak i środowiska komunikacji. Myślenie o Internecie wiąże się z wyobrażeniem przestrzeni poznawczej ― nastąpiła jego ewolucja od kosmicznej nieskończoności ku przestrzeni codziennej komunikacji, możliwej do ogarnięcia, również dzięki społecznie wyznaczanym drogowskazom w postaci tagów, tworzonych zgodnie z licznymi folksonomiami i wikiporządkami.

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Lenhart, Amanda, Madden, Mary, Macgill, Alexandra R., Smith, Aaron 2007, Teens and Social Media, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 19 December [raport], pozyskano 15 czerwca 2008, serwis internetowy Pew Internet & American Life Project, URL: <http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Social_Media_Final.pdf>.

Lessig, Lawrence 2005, Wolna kultura, przekład zbiorowy, Warszawa, Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne.

Madden, Mary & Fox, Susannah 2006, Riding the Waves of „Web 2.0”, Pew Internet & American Life Project, 5 October [raport], pozyskano: 15 czerwca 2008, serwis internetowy Pew Internet & American Life Project, URL: <http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Web_2.0.pdf>.

Maj, Anna & Derda-Nowakowski, Michał 2008, ‘Cyber-communities in Their Quest for Free Culture. User-generated Content Portals in the Anthropological Perspective’, w: Riha, Daniel (red.) Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction, Oxford, Inter-Disciplinary Press[eBook], URL: <http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/idp/ebooks.htm>.

Maj, Anna 2007, ‘Konstruktywizm społeczny jako ideologia społeczeństwa sieciowego’, w: Kamińska-Szmaj, Irena, Piekot, Tomasz, Zaśko-Zielińska, Monika (red.), Oblicza komunikacji 2: Ideologie w słowach, gestach i obrazach, seria: Język a komunikacja, Wrocław, Uniwersytet Wrocławski [w druku].

Maj, Anna 2008, Media w podróży, Katowice, Wydawnictwo Naukowe ExMachina.

O’Reilly, Tim 2005, ‘What is Web 2.0. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software’, w: O’Reilly News [online], 30 września, pozyskano: 2 września 2007, serwis internetowy O’Reilly, URL: <http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html>.

Tapscott, Don & Williams, Anthony D. 2007, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, New York, Atlantic Books.

Wal, Thomas Vander 2005, ‘Explaining and Showing Broad and Narrow Folksonomies’, w: Personal InfoCloud, [blog], URL: <http://www.personalinfocloud.com/2005/02/explaining_and_.html>.

Weinberger, David 2005, ‘When Things Aren’t What They Are’, w: Schöpf, Christine, Stocker, Gerfried (red.), Hybrid – Living in Paradox. Ars Electronica 2005, Linz, Hatje Cantz.

Weinberger, David 2007, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, New York, Times Books.

The SEC and Department of Homeland Security are saying we need a web backup plan in the event the H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic forces people to stay in their homes to use computers even more than usual for work or play.

Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth….Private Internet providers might need government authorization to block popular websites, it said, or to reduce residential transmission speeds to make way for commerce.  http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2620750120091026?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Are politician looking craft new ways to get more control on the last free media frontier we have? We believe it is essential that the Internet remain unrestricted with an open platform. 365 days a year, 24/7.  President Obama on the other hand has not been quiet about pushing for Internet legislation.

The government wants to make sure everyone has access to the Internet and have set aside $7.2 billion in stimulus dollars for construction.http://www.examiner.com/x-10317-San-Diego-County-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m10d21-Net-Neutrality-enforcement-may-reach-into-your-computer Again with the stimulus dollars.  Private investment and the private sector is what has spurned it’s growth.  As we have been witness to banks and car companies who accept bailout funds, they also accept government control and regulations. 

Last week the FCC begin consideration of the rules that would protect and promote open broadband pipes to the Internet. Over the next several months, an official rule making proceeding will take place, along with public workshops and technical advisory discussions, allowing everyone to provide feedback before the Commission adopts a final set of rules.  The proposed rules can be found here as a pdf http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-93A1.pdf  We found it interesting that on p. 97  the document quotes Thomas Jefferson, “The course of history shows that as the government grows, liberty decreases.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam showed in a joint blog post that stakeholders can work together with mutual respect to find common ground, even as we acknowledge and defend important policy differences.  http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/10/finding-common-ground-on-open-internet.html

One significant issue, is that the government apparently uses the same Internet protocols and the same operating systems as the private sector, making cyber security a universal problem as opposed to a governmental problem.  Hackers may find a greater payload in targeting critical infrastructure such as power grids, financial or communication networks or air traffic control systems than in attacking the CIA or the Pentagon.  An attack by an adversary nation, much less a cyber extortionist or terrorist, is not so far-fetched. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-zirin14-2009oct14,0,603775.story 

The federally funded Next Generation Internet (NGI) project (http://www.ngi.gov/) exists parallel to and complementary with Internet2, http://www.internet2.edu/ We have trouble believing that America’s nuclear weapons arsenal operate on the standard net. Internet2 is not available to the general public, even though our taxpayer dollars support it.  More about that here http://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/internet-censorship-shocking-treatment-of-taxpayer/ The speed of information-sharing network on Internet2 is now 100 Gbit!

Thomas has the draft of the Rockefeller Cybersecurity Act S 773 here,  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.773.  It  gives the president powers to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.”  More of our previous thoughts here http://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/obama-internet-controcybersecurity/

The proposed rules claim that Cisco’s built Internet routers have over 28.1 million lines of code- does anyone realistically foresee the government being able to regulated something so large?  Are attacks of the Swine Flu more common than cyber security breaches?  We we do know that the nation has done a pretty miserable job coordinating it’s response to past emergencies as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina, the financial bailouts, and now the H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic.  If big brother takes over the Internet, the last bastion of freedom of speech in what is left of our democracy, could be gone.

photo props to Bikes Over Baghdad http://bkachinsky.transworld.net/,

Open wide, say ahhh and check out these posts on the A/H1N1 Swine Flu from Ahrcanum, where the conspiracy spreads as fast as the virus itself.  http://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/swine-flu-report/

Subscribe Now for free in the top right margin.

Autore: Leonardo Bellini
Editore: Bruno Editore
Formato: Ebook PDF in 386 pagine
Anno di Uscita: 2009
ISBN: 978-88-6174-195-9

Categorie: Internet, Marketing
Disponibilità: immediata
Prezzo: €18 +iva invece di €29

Descrizione: Definisci la tua direzione all’interno del tuo business, seleziona il tuo target di riferimento, cerca di acquisire un gran numero di visitatori e inizia a sviluppare il tuo progetto online! (coedizione Lupetti)

Clicca qui per scaricare subito il primo capitolo gratis!

1: THINK: L’IMPOSTAZIONE STRATEGICA DEL PROGETTO

• Come definire la tua rotta.
• Capire a chi devi rivolgerti e perché.
• Come fare l’analisi dei profili per centrare il tuo target.
• Come scegliere un brand.
• Come stimare le dimensioni del target online.

2: PLAN: LA PIANIFICAZIONE DEL PROGETTO

• Come fare una pianificazione a strati (onion planning).
  
• Qual è il ciclo di vita del cliente online.
• Come fare a calcolare i profitti online (revenue planning).
  
• Come calcolare il prezzo della notorietà (promotion planning).
  
• Come pianificare la crescita (growth planning).
• Calcolare i costi della crescita.
• Come correlare costi e ricavi della crescita.

3: DESIGN: LA PROGETTAZIONE DEL SITO IN BASE AGLI OBIETTIVI DI BUSINESS

• Come pensare al design per obiettivi e per target.
  
• Come passare dal prodotto al servizio all’esperienza.
  
• Come fare per ottimizzare la conversione.
  
• Scoprire qual è l’azione perfetta.
• Diventare amici dei motori di ricerca:cura e stile del sito.

4: PROMOTE: L’UTILIZZO DI TUTTI GLI STRUMENTI DI COMUNICAZIONE E PUBBLICITA’

• Conoscere le nuove regole della pubblicità.
  
• Come riuscire a portare i visitatori sul sito.
  
• Come fare PR con l’email.
  
• Come impostare il media mix online.
  
• Come impostare una campagna di keyword advertising.

5: INTERACT: LA COSTRUZIONE DEL DIALOGO ONLINE E OFFLINE

• Come fare per gestire la multi-canalità.
• L’importanza di conoscere come acquistano i consumatori.
  
• Come profilare una newsletter.
  
• Come fare per monitorare la crescita del tuo business.
  
• Come aumentare la profittabilità del tuo business.
• Come incrementare la curva di fedeltà del cliente.

6: LEARN: MISURARE, ANALIZZARE E APPRENDERE DAL COMPORTAMENTO DEI VISITATORI

• L’importanza di saper classificare i visitatori.
• Imparare a classificare i clienti in base al valore.
  
• Capire il ciclo di vita del cliente.
  
• Come misurare la capacità di acquisire visitatori.
  
• Come raggiungere la capacità di convertire i visitatori.

7: REFINE: TRADURRE LE ANALISI E LE MISURAZIONI IN AZIONI E MODIFICHE SUL SITO

• Come ottimizzare il redesign della newsletter.
• L’importanza di paragonare le campagne su canali diversi.
• Come ottimizzare una campagna pay per click.
• Come ridefinire le regole di business.

Clicca qui per scaricare subito il primo capitolo gratis!

Kiwi's must now fight to keep New Zealand free.

4:00AM Friday Oct 23, 2009
By Patrick Gower

Sweeping powers to spy, bug conversations and hack into private computers could be given to a web of state agencies as diverse as Inland Revenue and the Meat Board

The Human Rights Commission yesterday warned Parliament of the “chilling” implications of a proposed law that would see the intrusive powers usually only available to the police extended to all agencies with enforcement responsibilities.

It said that under the law, council dog control officers would be able to enter homes to install a surveillance device and the Commerce Commission would be able to detain people.

Inland Revenue would get the powers to assist its tax investigations, while the Meat Board would get them to enforce breaches of export rules.

The Human Rights Commission chief commissioner, Rosslyn Noonan, said the Search Surveillance Bill was giving the powers away to a “grab-bag of every possible agency”.

It is the second major public watchdog to issue a warning about the bill after the Privacy Commissioner last week said it needed more safeguards.

Ms Noonan said the Government needed to justify to the public why it was giving the powers to each agency.

She said while the police were largely respected by the public, and subject to scrutiny and constraints, “most of these other agencies the community as a whole would notknow who they are – and suddenly they are all getting these powers”.

Can Rossyln Noonan Save New Zealand?

Ms Noonan told the justice and electoral select committee search and surveillance were among the state’s most coercive powers and open to abuse if sufficient human rights safeguards are not put in place.

The New Zealand Law Society also objected to the expansion of the powers, citing how the Overseas Investment Office or the Environmental Risk Management Authority could “remotely and covertly access an IT network”.

National MP Chester Borrows, who chairs the select committee, told the Herald it also heard from Law Commission deputy president Warren Young, who wrote the bill and disagreed with the submitters.

He said Dr Young believed it did not give agencies any added powers but merely prescribed how they used what they already had.

Mr Borrows said if that was the intent, the submitters’ views meantthe bill was obviously so unclearthat it would need to be amended.

Ms Noonan raised concerns about the bill’s effect on journalists and their commitment to protecting sources.

She said the bill needed to more explicitly preserve the tradition that journalists should be able to protect confidential sources unless otherwise ordered by a judge.

WHAT’S IN THE BILL

THE POWERS:

Video surveillance, watching private activity on private property, installing tracking devices, detaining people during a search, power to stop vehicles without a warrant for a search, warrantless seizure of “items in plain view”, power to hack into computers remotely, power to detain anyone at scene of search.

WHO WILL GET THEM:

Every agency with enforcement responsibilities, such as: Inland Revenue, Meat Board, local councils, Overseas Investment Office, Accident Compensation Corporation, Environment Risk Management Authority, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Pork Industry Board.

Source: Human Rights Commission, New Zealand Law Society.

Con su piano mágico y una cantidad ingente de sampleados, por fin nos presenta internet 2 su disco de debut, disco al que le teníamos muchas ganas. La primera impresión que tenemos al escucharlo es que se trata de una fantasía, que bien acabada o inacabada, está llena de música increíble, de onomatopeyas, de humor y en general, de bonitas canciones, con gusto por lo estético, por la belleza, por la eufonía y sobre todo por la música como elemento creativo en constante cambio.

Myspace

Internet moves towards Global Government

EU Observer
October 1, 2009

Read Full Article Here

Internet game that awards points for people spotting real crimes on CCTV is branded ’snooper’s paradise’

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 12:27 PM on 05th October 2009

A new internet game is about to be launched which allows ’super snooper’ players to plug into the nation’s CCTV cameras and report on members of the public committing crimes.

The ‘Internet Eyes’ service involves players scouring thousands of CCTV cameras installed in shops, businesses and town centres across Britain looking for law-breakers.

Players who help catch the most criminals each month will win cash prizes up to £1,000.

The Internet Eyes’ website will also feature a rogue’s gallery of the so-called ‘criminals’ along with a list of their offences and which internet user caught them. But civil rights campaigners today condemned the game, which launches in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, next month, and branded it ‘a snoopers paradise’.

They claim nosey neighbours could snoop on homeowners putting the wrong rubbish in bins and even motorists guilty of the most minor misdemeanors.

But businessman Tony Morgan, a former restaurant owner, said it would give local businesses protection against petty criminals, and act as a deterrent once ‘Internet Eyes patrol here’ signs are prominently displayed.

He will charge those who use the service, which could eventually include local authorities and even police forces as well as shop owners, £20 a week per camera to have their CCTV included on the site – amounting to thousands each year.

The Internet Eyes’ website will also feature a rogue’s gallery of the so-called ‘criminals’ along with a list of their offences and which internet user caught them.

But civil rights campaigners today condemned the game, which launches in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, next month, and branded it ‘a snoopers paradise’.

They claim nosey neighbours could snoop on homeowners putting the wrong rubbish in bins and even motorists guilty of the most minor misdemeanors.

But businessman Tony Morgan, a former restaurant owner, said it would give local businesses protection against petty criminals, and act as a deterrent once ‘Internet Eyes patrol here’ signs are prominently displayed.

He will charge those who use the service, which could eventually include local authorities and even police forces as well as shop owners, £20 a week per camera to have their CCTV included on the site – amounting to thousands each year.

He said: ‘This could turn out to be the best crime prevention weapon there’s ever been.

‘I wanted to combine the serious business of stopping crime with the incentive of winning money.

‘There are over four million CCTV cameras in the UK and only one in a thousand gets watched.

‘Crimes are bound to get missed but this way people the cameras will be watched by lots of people 24-hours-a-day.

‘It gives people something better to do than watching Big Brother when everyone is asleep.

‘We’ve had a lot of interest from local businesses and hope to roll it out nationwide and then worldwide.’ He said the team had seen a wave of support and denied that liberties were being affected. ’There are more than four million cameras in the UK so everybody is on camera already, it is just that no one is watching the cameras.’

Players collect points by watching the cameras, which show CCTV images in real-time, and click a button every time they see something suspicious taking place. An SMS or text message, along with a still image of the alleged crime, is sent to whoever controls the camera. They can then decide whether or not to take action.

The camera controller will send a feedback email back to the player indicating whether a crime has taken place.

Players are awarded one point for spotting a suspected crime and three points if they see someone committing an actual crime.  Players also lose points if the camera operator rules that the alert was not a crime.

The game has been condemned by civil rights campaigners who claim it will encourage people to spy and snitch on each other.

Charles Farrier, director of the No-CCTV pressure group, said: ‘It is an appalling idea for a game and will create a snoopers paradise.

‘It is something which should be nipped in the bud immediately. It will not only encourage a dangerous spying mentality by turning crime into a game but also could lead to dangerous civil rights abuses.

‘What if a group of racists decide to send alerts every time a black person is seen on screen and what’s stopping criminals using the cameras to scope out where to commit crimes.’

James Woodward, head of the technical team for Internet Eyes, which is based in Devon and Stratford-upon-Avon, said safeguards – including blocking players out for sending three incorrect alerts – would prevent the game being abused.

He said: ‘For privacy reasons users will not know the location of the cameras. They will find it very difficult to work out where the camera is.

‘It is possible that someone who is blocked out could see a crime taking place but be unable to alert the operator. ’But it is probably safe to assume someone else looking at the same camera will raise the alarm.

‘Whoever has a CCTV camera, be it the police, local authorities or business or home owners can sign up to have their cameras watched. We hope to include police cameras very soon.’ The game will initially use CCTV cameras in shops and businesses in Stratford-upon-Avon but will be rolled out across Britain by December before going worldwide next year.

Last month it was revealed that Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras – the equivalent of one per 14 people – one-and-a-half-times as many as Communist China.

ISP’s have resolved to restrict the Internet to a TV-like subscription model where users will be forced to pay to visit selected corporate websites by 2012, while others will be blocked, according to a leaked report. Despite some people dismissing the story as a hoax, the wider plan to kill the traditional Internet and replace it with a regulated and controlled Internet 2 is manifestly provable.

“Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP’s all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These ‘other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet,” warns a report that has spread like wildfire across the web over the last few days.

The article, which is accompanied by a You Tube clip, states that Time Magazine writer “Dylan Pattyn” has confirmed the information and is about to release a story – and that the move to effectively shut down the web could come as soon as 2010.

People have raised questions about the report’s accuracy because the claims are not backed by another source, only the “promise” that a Time Magazine report is set to confirm the rumor. Until such a report emerges many have reserved judgment or outright dismissed the story as a hoax.

What is documented, as the story underscores, is the fact that TELUS’ wireless web package allows only restricted pay-per-view access to a selection of corporate and news websites. This is the model that the post-2012 Internet would be based on.

People have noted that the authors of the video seem to be more concerned about getting people to subscribe to their You Tube account than fighting for net neutrality by prominently featuring an attractive woman who isn’t shy about showing her cleavage. The vast majority of the other You Tube videos hosted on the same account consist of bizarre avante-garde satire skits on behalf of the same people featured in the Internet freedom clip. This has prompted many to suspect that the Internet story is merely a stunt to draw attention to the group.

Whether the report is accurate or merely a crude hoax, there is a very real agenda to restrict, regulate and suffocate the free use of the Internet and we have been documenting its progression for years.

The first steps in a move to charge for every e mail sent have already been taken. Under the pretext of eliminating spam, Bill Gates and other industry chieftains have proposed Internet users buy credit stamps which denote how many e mails they will be able to send. This of course is the death knell for political newsletters and mailing lists.

The New York Times reported that “America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.”

The first wave will simply attempt to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.

The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database and marketing tool. The Nation magazine reported in 2006 that, “Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.”

Over the past few years, a chorus of propaganda intended to demonize the Internet and further lead it down a path of strict control has spewed forth from numerous establishment organs:

Time magazine reported last year that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.
The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

In a display of bi-partisanship, there have recently been calls for all
out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.

The White House’s own recently de-classified
strategy for “winning the war on terror” targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to “diminish” their influence.

The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate
the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.

In a speech last October, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a “terror training camp,” through which “disaffected people living in the United States” are developing “radical ideologies and potentially violent skills.”
His solution is “intelligence fusion centers,” staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will go into operation next year.

The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.

A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web – and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.

A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.

The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to shut down “terrorists” who use the Internet to spread propaganda.

The EU data retention bill, passed last year after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, SMS messages, emails and instant messaging services.

The EU also recently proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.

The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. “At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites.”
The development of a new form of internet with new regulations is also designed to create an online caste system whereby the old internet hubs would be allowed to break down and die, forcing people to use the new taxable, censored and regulated world wide web.

Make no mistake, the internet, one of the greatest outposts of free speech ever created is under constant attack by powerful people who cannot operate within a society where information flows freely and unhindered. Both American and European moves mimic stories we hear every week out of state controlled Communist China, where the internet is strictly regulated and virtually exists as its own entity away from the rest of the web.

The Internet is freedom’s best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate their populations under tyranny by eliminating the right to protest and educate others by the forum of
the free world wide web.

Editor’s Note: This could be the start of the New World Order MATRIX, where every ‘thing’ in the world can be located and tracked on the internet
Augmented Google-Earth Tracks Real-Time People, Cars, Weather

Cryptogon
September 30, 2009

The surveillance side of this is the chickenfeed. There’s something far more sinister than the simple surveillance… an angle we haven’t heard about yet.

Up next, they say they want to add weather, birds, and motion in rivers.

Ubiquitous Computing: Big Brother’s All-Seeing Eye

Chertoff: 9/11 Truth Is Akin To Holocaust Denial

NBC’s Meet The Press Attacks Internet & Bloggers

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Declan McCullagh
CNet News
August 28, 2009

Read Full Article Here

Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed

Obama wants internet control!

by Declan McCullagh

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller’s aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

When Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced the original bill in April, they claimed it was vital to protect national cybersecurity. “We must protect our critical infrastructure at all costs–from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records,” Rockefeller said.

The Rockefeller proposal plays out against a broader concern in Washington, D.C., about the government’s role in cybersecurity. In May, President Obama acknowledged that the government is “not as prepared” as it should be to respond to disruptions and announced that a new cybersecurity coordinator position would be created inside the White House staff. Three months later, that post remains empty, one top cybersecurity aide has quit, and some wags have begun to wonder why a government that receives failing marks on cybersecurity should be trusted to instruct the private sector what to do.

Rockefeller’s revised legislation seeks to reshuffle the way the federal government addresses the topic. It requires a “cybersecurity workforce plan” from every federal agency, a “dashboard” pilot project, measurements of hiring effectiveness, and the implementation of a “comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy” in six months–even though its mandatory legal review will take a year to complete.

The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. “As soon as you’re saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it’s going to be a really big issue,” he says.

Probably the most controversial language begins in Section 201, which permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.” The White House is supposed to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government. (“Cyber” is defined as anything having to do with the Internet, telecommunications, computers, or computer networks.)

“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF’s Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review. That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”

Translation: If your company is deemed “critical,” a new set of regulations kick in involving who you can hire, what information you must disclose, and when the government would exercise control over your computers or network.

The Internet Security Alliance’s Clinton adds that his group is “supportive of increased federal involvement to enhance cyber security, but we believe that the wrong approach, as embodied in this bill as introduced, will be counterproductive both from an national economic and national secuity perspective.”

Update at 3:14 p.m. PDT: I just talked to Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee, on the phone. She sent me e-mail with this statement:

The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a “government shutdown or takeover of the Internet” and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government’s response.

Eugenics America 2009!

The Eugenics Movement in the U.S.

Many people are unaware that Hitler’s extermination policies began with the large-scale elimination of people with disabilities. Proponents of physician- assisted suicide are offended when allusions are made to this piece of disability history in the course of debate over the so-called “right to die”. The fact is that Hitler stole most of his ideas on eugenics from publications originating in the USA.

Popularity of eugenics and social Darwinism continued in the USA during WWII. In 1942, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a “debate” on the ethics of killing children with severe disabilities. The following was written by Foster Kennedy:

I believe when the defective child shall have reached the age of five years – and on the application of his guardians – that the case should be considered under law by a competent medical board; then it should be reviewed twice more at four-month intervals; then, if the board, acting, I repeat, on the applications of the guardians of the child, and after three examinations of a defective who has reached the age of five or more, should decide that that defective has no future or hope of one; then I believe it is a merciful and kindly thing to relieve that defective – often tortured and convulsed, grotesque and absurd, useless and foolish, and entirely undesirable – of the agony of living.

In an unsigned editorial in the same issue, Kennedy’s views were enthusiastically endorsed in this official publication of the American Psychiatric Association. It is probable that the opening of the concentration camps (built by a regime devoted to eugenics) was a major factor in driving this sentiment underground.

That was over 50 years ago. Proponents of physician assisted suicide would argue, as many would, that times have changed.

Perhaps, on the other hand, they haven’t.

Below is an excerpt from an invited “Commentary” by Peter Singer that appeared in a 1983 issue of Pediatrics. Singer is a philosopher whose contributions to the field of “bioethics” have included the assertion that there is no justification for regarding infants as having any more rights than animals and that parents of babies with certain disabilities be given the right to order the death of the infant within those first 30 days. First, on the issue of treatment withdrawal or refusal:

Although many doctors would sharply distinguish the active termination of life from a decision not to treat a patient for whom the foreseen outcome of this decision is death of the patient, the distinction is a tenuous one, and the claim that it carries moral weight has been rejected by several academic philosophers.

Singer complains in this same article that the “right” to release from pain (through euthanasia) will be denied to individuals unable to espress themselves.

This was a bad year for people with disabilities in Pediatrics. Three issues later and article appeared with the title Early Management and Decision Making for the Treatment of Myelomeningocele. A medical team at Oklahoma Children’s Memorial Hospital used a “quality of life” formula to decide whether to give parents of infants with spina bifida an “optimistic” or “pessimistic” prognosis. Parents given an optimistic prognosis were informed of all available treatments and urged to start them immediately. All parents so informed agreed to treatment. The parents of children given “pessimistic” prognoses were advised to forego intervention and treatment as the child would be too disabled to ever enjoy life even if they survived. Most parents, having been told this was in the best interest of their children, agreed. A very few did not. Here are the results in the authors’ own words:

The “untreated survivor” has not been a significant problem in our experience. All 24 babies who have not been treated at all have died at an average of 37 days.

Ignored were the implications of the fact that three out of the five babies who were given treatment (surgery and antibiotics) were alive and doing well at the time the article was written. It could be fairly assumed that a majority of children deprived of treatment would also have been alive and well with appropriate medial intervention.

The trail on this issue in professional journals is clear. There is a ready acceptance of the physician’s “duty” to judge the quality of life of patients, to deem when it will be unacceptable, and to act as executioner when it is felt to be desirable according to professionally determined criteria. None of the current debate is really new. It just took 50 years to come back out in the open.

References

Gross, R.H., et al. (1983). Early Management and Decision Making for the Treatment of Myelomeningocele. Pediatrics, 72 (4), 450-458.

Kennedy, F. (1942). The problem of social control of the congenital defective – Education, sterilization, euthanasia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 99, 13-16.

Singer, P. (1983). Sanctity of life or quality of life? Pediatrics, 72 (1) 128-129.

This post goes well with the one preceding it as they both illustrate what kind of tremendously creative thought is going into our infrastructure for the 21st century.  Not by any means have these stories penetrated the main stream of things, but nonetheless they are staring right at the core of what Earth Night is attempting to understand.

Robin Chase, as you will see, is advocated a “permaculture-like” approach to how to design and use our Internet (mycelium 2.0).  If each node (meaning computer) also served a purpose besides mere consumption, but rather opted to offer its services to increase the bandwidth of the network – we could further decentralize the web, offering it greater security as well as enhanced performance.  She likens our current situation to a bunch of cars trying to cross one bridge, whereas each individual could throw a rock down in order to cross the river.

Hands down – one of my favorite articles of the year.

From Wired – The Grid, Our Cars, and the Net:

Editor’s note: Robin Chase thinks a lot about transportation and the internet, and how to link them. She connected them when she founded Zipcar, and she wants to do it again by making our electric grid and our cars smarter. Time magazine recently named her one of the 100 most influential people of the year. David Weinberger sat down with Chase to discuss her idea.

Robin Chase considers the future of electricity, the future of cars and the internet three terms in a single equation, even if most of us don’t yet realize they’re on the same chalkboard. Solve the equation correctly, she says, and we create a greener future where innovation thrives. Get it wrong, and our grandchildren will curse our names.

Chase thinks big, and she’s got the cred to back it up. She created an improbable network of automobiles called Zipcar. Getting it off the ground required not only buying a fleet of cars, but convincing cities to dedicate precious parking spaces to them. It was a crazy idea, and it worked. Zipcar now has 6,000 cars and 250,000 users in 50 towns.

Now she’s moving on to the bigger challenge of integrating a smart grid with our cars – and then everything else. The kicker is how they come together. You can sum it up as a Tweet: The intelligent network we need for electricity can also turn cars into nodes. Interoperability is a multiplier. Get it right!

Robin Chase

Chase starts by explaining the smart grid. There’s broad consensus that our electrical system should do more than carry electricity. It should carry information. That would allow a more intelligent, and efficient, use of power.

“Our electric infrastructure is designed for the rare peak of usage,” Chase says. “That’s expensive and wasteful.”

Changing that requires a smart grid. What we have is a dumb one. We ask for electricity and the grid provides it, no questions asked. A smart grid asks questions and answers them. It makes the meter on your wall a sensor that links you to a network that knows how much power you’re using, when you’re using it and how to reduce your energy needs – and costs.

Such a system will grow more important as we become energy producers, not just consumers. Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will return power to the grid. Rooftop solar panels and backyard wind turbines will, at times, produce more energy than we can store. A smart grid generates what we need and lets us use what we generate. That’s why the Obama Administration allocated $4.5 billion in the stimulus bill for smart grid R&D.

This pleases Chase, but it also makes her nervous. The smart grid must be an information network, but we have a tradition of getting such things wrong. Chase is among those trying to convince the government that the safest and most robust network will use open internet protocols and standards. For once the government seems inclined to listen.

Chase switches gears to talk about how cars fit into the equation. She sees automobiles as just another network device, one that, like the smart grid, should be open and net-based.

“Cars are network nodes,” she says. “They have GPS and Bluetooth and toll-both transponders, and we’re all on our cell phones and lots of cars have OnStar support services.”

That’s five networks. Automakers and academics will bring us more. They’re working on smart cars that will communicate with us, with one another and with the road. How will those cars connect to the network? That’s the third part of Chase’s equation: Mesh networking.

In a typical Wi-Fi network, there’s one router and a relatively small number of devices using it as a gateway to the internet. In a mesh network, every device is also a router. Bring in a new mesh device and it automatically links to any other mesh devices within radio range. It is an example of what internet architect David Reed calls “cooperative gain” – the more devices, the more bandwidth across the network. Chase offers an analogy to explain it.

“Wi-Fi is like a bridge that connects the highways on either side of the stream,” she says. “You build it wide enough to handle the maximum traffic you expect. If too much comes, it gets congested. When not enough arrives, you’ve got excess capacity. Mesh takes a different approach: Each person who wants to cross throws in a flat rock that’s above the water line. The more people who do that, the more ways there are to get across the river.”

Cooperative gain means more users bring more capacity, not less. It’s always right-sized. Of course, Chase points out, if you’re trying to go a long distance, you’re ultimately forced back onto the broadband bridge where the capacity is limited. But for local intra-mesh access, it’s a brilliant and counter-intuitive strategy.

Mesh networking as a broad-based approach to networking is growing. A mesh network with 240 nodes covers Vienna. Similar projects are underway in Barcelona, Athens, the Czech Republic and, before long, in two areas of Boston not far from the cafe we’re sitting in. But the most dramatic examples are the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and tanks and airplanes are running around using mesh networks,” said Chase. “It works, it’s secure, it’s robust. If a node or device disappears, the network just reroutes the data.”

And, perhaps most important, it’s in motion. That’s what allows Chase’s plural visions to go singular. Build a smart electrical grid that uses Internet protocols and puts a mesh network device in every structure that has an electric meter. Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform. Add a mesh router. A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network. It’s cooperative gain gone national, gone mobile, gone open.

Chase’s mesh vision draws some skepticism. Some say it won’t scale up. The fact it’s is being used in places like Afghanistan and Vienna indicates it could. Others say moving vehicles may not be able to hook into and out of mesh networks quickly enough. Chase argues it’s already possible to do so in less than a second, and that time will only come down. But even if every car and every electric meter were meshed, there’s still a lot of highway out there that wouldn’t be served, right? Chase has an answer for that, too.

“Cars would have cellular and Wi-Fi as backups,” she said.

The economics are right, she argues. Rather than over-building to handle peak demand and letting capacity go unused, we would right-size our infrastructure to provide exactly what we need, when we need it, with minimum waste and maximum efficiency.

“There’s an economy of network scale here,” she says. “The traffic-light guys should be interested in this for their own purposes, and so should the power-grid folks and the emergency responders and the Homeland Security folks and, well, everyone. Mesh networks based on open standards are economically justifiable for any one of these things. Put them together – network the networks – and for the same exact infrastructure spend, you get a ubiquitous, robust, resilient, open communication platform — ripe for innovation — without spending a dollar more.”

The time is right, too. There’s $7.2 billion in the stimulus bill for broadband, $4.5 billion for the smart grid and about $5 billion for transportation technology. The Transportation Reauthorization bill is coming up, too. At $300 billion it is second only to education when it comes to federal discretionary spending. We are about to make a huge investment in a set of networks. It will be difficult to gather the political and economic will to change them once they are deployed.

“We need to get this right, right now,” Chase says.

Build each of these infrastructures using open networking standards and we enable cooperative gain at the network level itself. Get it wrong and we will have paved over a generational opportunity.

by Mike Whitney

Ben Bernanke

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a man who knows how Washington works and uses that knowledge to great effect.  His appearances on Capital Hill are always worth watching. He sits politely with his hands folded in front of him playing the bashful professor while one one preening congressman after another makes a fool out of themself. In contrast, Bernanke looks like a modest and thoughtful academic faithfully upholding the public’s trust.  But things aren’t always as they seem. The Fed chief is sticking it to the American people big-time and no one seems to have any idea of what’s really going on. Former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler sums it up in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “The Bernanke Market”. Here’s a clip:

“By buying U.S. Treasuries and mortgages to increase the monetary base by $1 trillion, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke didn’t put money directly into the stock market but he didn’t have to. With nowhere else to go, except maybe commodities, inflows into the stock market have been on a tear. Stock and bond funds saw net inflows of close to $150 billion since January. The dollars he cranked out didn’t go into the hard economy, but instead into tradable assets. In other words, Ben Bernanke has been the market.”

What does it mean?

It means the revered professor Bernanke figured out a way to circumvent Congress and dump more than a trillion dollars into the stock market by laundering the money through the big banks and other failing financial institutions. As Kessler suggests, Bernanke knew the liquidity would pop up in the equities market, thus, building the equity position of the banks so they wouldn’t have to grovel to Congress for another TARP-like bailout. Bernanke’s actions demonstrate his contempt for the democratic process. The Fed sees itself as a government-unto-itself.

Over at Zero Hedge, Tyler Durden did the math and figured that the recent 45% surge in the S&P 500 had nothing to do with the fictional economic “recovery”, but was just more of the Fed’s hanky panky. Durden noticed that the money that’s been sluicing into stocks hasn’t (correspondingly) depleted the money markets. That’s the clue that led him to the truth about Bernanke’s 6 month stock rally.

Zero Hedge: “Most interesting is the correlation between Money Market totals and the listed stock value since the March lows: a $2.7 trillion move in equities was accompanied by a less than $400 billion reduction in Money Market accounts!

Where, may we ask, did the balance of $2.3 trillion in purchasing power come from? Why the Federal Reserve of course, which directly and indirectly subsidized U.S. banks (and foreign ones through liquidity swaps) for roughly that amount. Apparently these banks promptly went on a buying spree to raise the all important equity market, so that the U.S. consumer who net equity was almost negative on March 31, could have some semblance of confidence back and would go ahead and max out his credit card. Alas, as one can see in the money multiplier and velocity of money metrics, U.S. consumers couldn’t care less about leveraging themselves any more.”

So, the magical “Green Shoots” stock market rally was fueled by a mere $400 billion from the money markets. The rest ($2.3 trillion) was main-lined into the market via  Bernanke’s quantitative easing (QE) program, of which Krugman and others speak so highly.

Wouldn’t you like to know if Bernanke sat down with G-Sax and JPM executives and mapped out the details of this swindle before the printing presses ever started rolling?

So, how long can this kind of fakery go on before our creditors grow weary of dealing with chiselers and stop buying US Treasuries altogether? Here’s a blurp from Friday’s Wall Street Journal on that very topic:

“Shaky auctions of Treasury notes this week reignited concerns about whether the government can attract buyers from China and elsewhere to soak up trillions in new debt.

A fuse was lit this week when traders noted China’s apparent absence from direct participation in two Treasury bond auctions. While China may have bought Treasurys just before the auctions, market participants read the country’s actions as a worrying sign that China and other foreign investors may be ratcheting back purchases at a time when the U.S. is seeking to fund a $1.8 trillion budget deficit.

This week alone, the U.S. deluged the bond market with more than $200 billion in record-size sales. The U.S. has had little trouble finding buyers in recent months. But that demand is fading, and the Treasury market has become volatile.”

Uncle Sam is goosing the bond market just like he is the stock market. Take a look at Treasury’s latest bit of chicanery which was stuffed in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal back in June:

“The sudden increase in demand by foreign buyers for Treasurys, hailed as proof that the world’s central banks are still willing to help absorb the avalanche of supply, mightn’t be all that it seems.

When the government sells bonds, traders typically look at a group of buyers called indirect bidders, which includes foreign central banks, to divine overseas demand for U.S. debt. That demand has been rising recently, giving comfort to investors that foreign buyers will continue to finance the U.S.’s budget deficit.

But in a little-noticed switch on June 1, the Treasury changed the way it accounts for indirect bids, putting more buyers under that umbrella and boosting the portion of recent Treasury sales that the market perceived were being bought by foreigners.” (“Is foreign Demand as Solid as it Looks, Min zeng)

Nice touch, eh? So, someone doesn’t want you and me to know when foreign demand drops off a cliff, so they just bend-and-twist the definitions so they meet the Fed’s requirements.  How’s that for transparency?. Apparently, Bernanke et al. don’t believe the Chinese have translators who can make sense of all this subterfuge. That may be a miscalculation, however, given recent rumblings from the Orient.

Greetings program! A tiny Internet hiccup delayed today’s summary of the TechStuff episodes we published this week. Fortunately, it wasn’t anything like the trouble Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal had to deal with yesterday. CNET’s Elinor Mills reports that the source of those sites’ woes was a massive attack directed at a specific user in an effort to silence political dissent. I suppose that’s one way to silence criticism — but I’m betting the perpetrator didn’t win too many fans with that particular tactic.

Chris and I didn’t talk about denial of service attacks or Twitter or Facebook this week. We didn’t even talk about Google or Apple. Somehow we found it within ourselves to chat about two other subjects.

On Monday, we discussed Internet 2. No, it’s not the sequel to the Internet. It’s a consortium of universities and research organizations that use dedicated hardware to run an Internet separate (but connected) to the Internet the rest of us depend upon. Why have a second Internet? It clears the way for these organizations to send massive amounts of information at blinding speeds without getting bogged down in the traffic the rest of us generate. There’s nothing more annoying than having to wait for your particle physics experiment results to download because Bob down the hall is downloading an HD copy of the third season of “Steel Magnolias.” We also make a flub and suggest that 50 megabits per second is about half the speed of a gigabit per second. Actually it’s about one-twentieth. But what’s an order of magnitude between friends?

Wednesday’s episode was all about cell phones and the places you aren’t supposed to use them. No, we don’t talk about movie theaters, even though I personally think people who leave their cell phone ringer on (or worse yet answer a call) during a movie should be forced to buy a ticket for everyone else in the crowd. We talk about hospitals and planes. Why do some hospitals have policies against using a cell phone in the building? Why do some have no policy at all? And what’s up with having to turn your cell phone off once the airplane door is shut? We take a stab at demystifying the topic. Oh, and Chris makes lots of jokes that I wish I had thought of first.

Thanks for listening, and remember you can learn more about the topics we discuss at HowStuffWorks.com:

How Internet Infrastructure Works
What’s the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?
Why am I not allowed to use my cell phone in airplanes or hospitals?

I feel it’s now time for some articles detailing my thoughts on the future of technology, and where better for me to start than on one of, if not the most, influential technology companies in the world – Microsoft.

I’m not going to patronise everyone by detailing the history of Microsoft, if you are genuinely interested in that then you should read up on the company. Instead I’m going to look at the state of play in the industry just now and hypothesize on the future of the company.

Microsoft has a firm grip on home computing with Windows being all but compulsary on all computers bought from almost any retailer. Their web browser is the standard and their software such as Microsoft Office is again an industry standard. Ignoring how they came to power, how will they move from this position?

I feel that Microsoft, as many would, has become complacent with its position and this will ultimately lead to the loss of that monopolistic position. For instance when using a Windows computer seldom does an entire stint go without a frustratingly long pause or a crash for what is seemingly nothing to do with the users input. This lack of testing and unstable nature has gone unpunshed for so long but I feel it will catch up to Microsoft in the end.

Other systems are available and are less popular, Linux for instance is a daunting prospect for all but the keenest users and Apple’s OSX has a heavy cost associated with it for the ‘exclusivity’ factor. Up until recently the position of control was Microsofts almost through default – better the devil you know – and may have led to the common idea that computers are a technical nightmare.

2009 is the year when I think this will begin to level off and signs of change will emerge. Look at the current breed of mobile ‘phones’ that are out. I recently got a new handset that has almost as many features as my three year old laptop (slight exageration I’ll admit)! All this jammed into a tiny, touchscreen mobile that my mother or sister could pick up and use. They are genuinely intrigued by it due to the touchscreen and gyro interface, little do they know they are actually handling a highly sophisticated and complex piece of kit. It is this break from the traditional keyboard-and-mouse image that seems to be moving us forward – the Nintendo Wii has revolutionised the gaming market with a similar system based upon movement.

Where does Microsoft fit into this? They have themselves established in the keyboard-and-mouse world and through their complacency may miss the transition from computer to the next gen equivalent where others are innovating and leading the way. Apple and Google for instance have their mobile OS on their mobile phones, imagine this combined with the current craze of Netbooks [cheaper, lower spec, more portable Laptops - often come installed with Linux].

The future is this – a merge of all technical devices into smaller and cheaper units. Access for anyone. Where does Windows begin to lose its hold? Simplicity, I don’t want to be able to look and open all my system files. I don’t want an error code or n error for that matter. Hide things from me, automatically sort my things into a consistent heirarchy for me, this is what the future is. Look at what Apple do, my three year old laptop takes all my music files and arranges it in my music file in album and artist based folders, all when I add the file to itunes. It does the same for my photos through iphoto and consequently I never have to worry about it. Simple!

Even further into the future and I support the idea that Android will reign. Android is a Google backed opperating system much like the Apple equivelant on iPhone. A more polished Android OS coupled with an ‘always on’ approach to internet (through WiFi and 3G) will allow hardware to get even less powerful. As bandwidth becomes cheaper we will store all our files online and simply download them [virtually instantaniously] to the unit we are using when we need them. Our programs like MS Word, CAD etc. will all be installed on one mainframe which then we can access fromt he internet to use the program for a fee thus reducing piracy as well as removing the limits that client based programs face (hardware limited by affordability, if a program is run server side they can have one very good computer running the program with the users simply tapping in to access it). For example edit your photos with an online Photoshop equivelant – already this is possible with Picasa and FlickR.

Microsoft would do well to either follow suit with Windows, stay and try keep a niche with client side computing and/or take its best programs such as Microsoft Office and make them cloud compatible.

All your files online means you can get to them from your PC, TV, mobile phone, work computer, friends, anywhere! Any changes you do are global and your files are backed up and secure 100% of the time.

This is the future. Welcome to the concept of ‘The Cloud’.

How noble to not have your brain shocked when using the Internet.

Chinese media reported that a clinic in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong had been treating teenagers suffering from Internet addiction with shock treatment. Yang Yongxin, a doctor of the clinic, reportedly used a current of 1-5 milliamperes on the young patients and described the treatment as “therapy to clear the mind” which he claimed would not cause brain damage.  http://www.sinolinx.com/frame/?url=http://www.chinatechnews.com/2009/07/15/10144-ministry-of-health-halts-electric-shock-treatment-for-internet-addiction-in-china/

Turn to Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs- things like the Internet and blogs.

Prison Planet http://www.prisonplanet.com/cass-sunsteins-despicable-ideas-on-regulating-the-internet.html  says “Sunstein’s book is a blueprint for online censorship as he wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading “rumors.”

Rep. Linda T. Sanchez has this bill http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.1966 pending that says, “`Sec. 881. Cyberbullying. (a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.`(b) As used in this section-(1) the term `communication’ means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; and(2) the term `electronic means’ means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.’

If one were to comment on your blog or call text that you are a butt head and I disagree with you, this wording could be interpreted as causing severe distress to said butt head and he/she  could sue.  WTF is wrong with people?  WAKE T F UP.

In an attempt to again reduce freedom of speech, I wonder if Obama has plans to torture and do a little shock and awe on internet users in the USA?  With the coming of Internet 2, 3, 4, 5 etc we are already restricted. The federally funded Next Generation Internet (NGI) project (http://www.ngi.gov/) exists parallel to and complementary with Internet2.

“The very high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS) “is a network that will connect around one-hundred research institutions – and already links five NSF supercomputer centers – at 2.4 gigabits per second by the year 2000.” The vBNS has been around since 1995. Gigabits per second (G/bps)” refers to a billion bits (or ten to the ninth power – 1,000,000,000 – bits of information) when used to describe data transfer rates,” and these are carried over GigaPoPs,…blah blah. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FWE/is_11_3/ai_57785870/

“Eventually, these applications will be available to non-members, though estimates of when that will take place vary from one to many years.” 

Translation- Internet2 is filled with bits of information that the common internet user does not have access to.  I am just betting some of those research institutions get some of our federal tax dollars and probably stimulus dollars. National Security sites aside, if  U.S. tax dollars are paying for a full upload of the Library of Congress, then U.S. taxpayers should have full acess.

Shocking indeed.

New Enhanced RFID Passport vs. Non-Chip Version

By TODD LEWAN

Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he’d bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.

It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker’s gold.

Zipping past Fisherman’s Wharf, his scanner downloaded to his laptop the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians’ electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he’d “skimmed” four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.

Increasingly, government officials are promoting the chipping of identity documents as a 21st century application of technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the country.

But Paget’s February experiment demonstrated something privacy advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge.

He filmed his heist, and soon his video went viral on the Web, intensifying a debate over a push by government, federal and state, to put tracking technologies in identity documents and over their potential to erode privacy.

Putting a traceable RFID in every pocket has the potential to make everybody a blip on someone’s radar screen, critics say, and to redefine Orwellian government snooping for the digital age.

“Little Brother,” some are already calling it – even though elements of the global surveillance web they warn against exist only on drawing boards, neither available nor approved for use.

But with advances in tracking technologies coming at an ever-faster rate, critics say, it won’t be long before governments could be able to identify and track anyone in real time, 24-7, from a cafe in Paris to the shores of California.

On June 1, it became mandatory for Americans entering the United States by land or sea from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean to present identity documents embedded with RFID tags, though conventional passports remain valid until they expire.

Among new options are the chipped “e-passport,” and the new, electronic PASS card – credit-card sized, with the bearer’s digital photograph and a chip that can be scanned through a pocket, backpack or purse from 30 feet.

Alternatively, travelers can use “enhanced” driver’s licenses embedded with RFID tags now being issued in some border states: Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York. Texas and Arizona have entered into agreements with the federal government to offer chipped licenses, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has recommended expansion to non-border states. Kansas and Florida officials have received DHS briefings on the licenses, agency records show.

The purpose of using RFID is not to identify people, says Mary Ellen Callahan, the chief privacy officer at Homeland Security, but “to verify that the identification document holds valid information about you.”

An RFID document that doubles as a U.S. travel credential “only makes it easier to pull the right record fast enough, to make sure that the border flows, and is operational” – even though a 2005 Government Accountability Office report found that government RFID readers often failed to detect travelers’ tags.

Critics warn that RFID-tagged identities will enable identity thieves and other criminals to commit “contactless” crimes against victims who won’t immediately know they’ve been violated.

Neville Pattinson, vice president for government affairs at Gemalto, Inc., a major supplier of microchipped cards, is no RFID basher. He’s a board member of the Smart Card Alliance, an RFID industry group, and is serving on the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

In a 2007 article published by a newsletter for privacy professionals, Pattinson called the chipped cards vulnerable “to attacks from hackers, identity thieves and possibly even terrorists.”

RFID, he wrote, has a fundamental flaw: Each chip is built to faithfully transmit its unique identifier “in the clear, exposing the tag number to interception during the wireless communication.”

Once a tag number is intercepted, “it is relatively easy to directly associate it with an individual,” he says. “If this is done, then it is possible to make an entire set of movements posing as somebody else without that person’s knowledge.”

Echoing these concerns were the AeA – the lobbying association for technology firms – the Smart Card Alliance, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Business Travel Coalition, and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security has been promoting broad use of RFID even though its own advisory committee on data integrity and privacy issued caveats. In its 2006 draft report, the committee concluded that RFID “increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security,” and recommended that “RFID be disfavored for identifying and tracking human beings.”

For now, chipped PASS cards and enhanced driver’s licenses are not yet widely deployed in the United States. To date, roughly 192,000 EDLs have been issued in Washington, Vermont, Michigan and New York.

But as more Americans carry them “you can bet that long-range tracking of people on a large scale will rise exponentially,” says Paget, a self-described “ethical hacker” who works as an Internet security consultant.

But Gigi Zenk, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Licensing, says Americans “aren’t that concerned about the RFID” in a time when “tracking an individual is much easier through a cell phone.”

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks – and the finding that some terrorists entered the United States using phony passports – the State Department proposed mandating that Americans and foreign visitors carry “enhanced” passport booklets, with microchips embedded in the covers.

In February 2005, when the State Department asked for public comment, it got an outcry: Of the 2,335 comments received, 98.5 percent were negative, with 86 percent expressing security or privacy concerns, the department reported in an October 2005 notice in the Federal Register.

Identity theft and “fears that the U.S. Government or other governments would use the chip to track and censor, intimidate or otherwise control or harm them” were of “grave concern,” it noted. Many Americans worried “that the information could be read at distances in excess of 10 feet.”

Those citizens, it turns out, had cause.

According to department records obtained by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, under a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by the AP, discussion about security concerns with the e-passport occurred as early as January 2003 but tests weren’t ordered until the department began receiving public criticism two years later.

When the AP asked when testing was initiated, the State Department said only that “a battery of durability and electromagnetic tests were performed” by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, along with tests “to measure the ability of data on electronic passports to be surreptitiously skimmed or for communications with the chip reader to be eavesdropped,” testing which “led to additional privacy controls being placed on U.S. electronic passports … “

In 2005, the department incorporated metallic fibers into the e-passport’s front cover, to reduce the read range, and added encryptions and a feature that required inspectors to optically scan the e-passport first for the chip to communicate wirelessly.

But what of concerns about the e-passport’s read range?

In its October 2005 Federal Register notice, the State Department reassured Americans that the e-passport’s chip would emit radio waves only within a 4-inch radius, making it tougher to hack.

But in May 2006, at the University of Tel Aviv, researchers directly skimmed an encrypted tag from several feet away. At the University of Cambridge in Britain, a student intercepted a transmission between an e-passport and a legitimate reader from 160 feet.

The State Department, according to its own records obtained under FOIA, was aware of the problem months before its Federal Register notice and more than a year before the e-passport was rolled out in August 2006.

“Do not claim that these chips can only be read at a distance of 10 cm (4 inches),” Frank Moss, deputy assistant Secretary of State for passport services, wrote in an April 22, 2005, e-mail to Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. “That really has been proven to be wrong.”

The chips could be skimmed from a yard away, he added – all a hacker would need to read e-passport numbers, say, in an elevator.

In February 2006, an encrypted Dutch e-passport was hacked on national television, and later, British e-passports were hacked. The State Department countered that European e-passports weren’t as safe as their American counterparts because they lacked safety features such as the anti-skimming cover. Recent studies have shown, however, that more powerful readers can penetrate that metal sheathing.

The RFIDs in enhanced driver’s licenses and PASS cards contain a silicon computer chip attached to a wire antenna, which transmits a unique identifier via radio waves when “awakened” by an electromagnetic reader.

The technology they use is designed to track products through the supply chain. These chips, known as EPCglobal Gen 2, are intended to release their data to any inquiring Gen 2 reader within a 30-foot radius.

The government says remotely readable ID cards transmit only RFID numbers, which correspond to records stored in secure government databases. Even if a hacker were to copy an RFID number onto a blank tag and place it into a counterfeit ID, officials say, the forger’s face still wouldn’t match the true cardholder’s photo in the database.

Still, computer experts say government databases can be hacked. Others worry about a day when hackers might deploy readers at “chokepoints,” such as checkout lines, skim RFID numbers from people’s driver’s licenses, then pair those numbers to personal data skimmed from chipped credit cards (though credit cards are harder to skim). They imagine stalkers skimming RFID tags to track their targets, and fear government agents compiling chip numbers at peace rallies, mosques or gun shows, simply by strolling through a crowd with a reader.

Others worry more about the linking of chips with other identification methods, including biometric technologies, such as facial recognition.

Should biometrics be coupled with RFID, “governments will have, for the first time in history, the means to identify, monitor and track citizens anywhere in the world in real time,” says Mark Lerner, spokesman for the Constitutional Alliance, a network of nonprofit groups, lawmakers and citizens opposed to remotely readable identity and travel documents.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. agency that sets global standards for passports, now calls for facial recognition in all e-passports.

]]> http://afteramerica.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/congress-should-stop-al-gore%e2%80%99s-job-killing-economy-ruining-global-warming-tax/ Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:08:18 +0000 afteramerica http://afteramerica.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/congress-should-stop-al-gore%e2%80%99s-job-killing-economy-ruining-global-warming-tax/

Al Gore (Cap and Tax Czar)

Thank goodness for the Chinese. Together with India, China helped guarantee that this week’s G-8 meeting failed to reach any agreement on limiting carbon-dioxide emissions. Ironically, the actions of the People’s Republic should help America avoid going further down the road of over-regulation.

The refusal of China and India to go along with the carbon-dioxide limits should be the death knell for the Cap and Trade bill currently being considered by the Senate. The legislation is a pretty hard sell. Even advocates admit restrictions would only have a small effect — only a fraction of 1 degree Celsius, a virtually unnoticeable .07 degrees — on global temperatures by 2050.

Even if a worldwide agreement made sense, an agreement without China, India and other developing countries can be counterproductive. It could actually mean more, not less, carbon-dioxide emissions. With massive increases in energy costs for the United States, Europe and Japan, energy-intensive manufacturing will move to countries without limits. That would negate some of the carbon-dioxide reductions in countries with limits.

But the problem is worse than that. China, India and other less-developed countries generally use energy less efficiently. That means that any given product built in China or India results in even more carbon dioxide than if it were built in the West. If more energy-intensive manufacturing moves to China and India, the volume of shipping will grow to get those products to consumers around the world. Shipping consumes a great deal of fossil fuels.

Democrats in the House of Representatives partially understood these problems and tried to stop this flight of manufacturing with a provision that would tax imports from countries that don’t regulate their carbon emissions. The Obama administration correctly warned that this provision would lead to a trade war, which would completely dislocate the economy. This week, Senate Democrats, led by Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, announced that they would strip that House provision out of the Senate bill.

Without China and India, Cap and Trade will mean an even bigger loss of manufacturing jobs. Without these other countries on board for the regulation, Americans will suffer punitive energy taxes and still face a possible increase in carbon emissions. From every angle, Cap and Trade is a lose-lose proposition.

The American people are under assault by officials in the federal government. Under the specious guise of saving the planet, they intend to fleece the people to benefit political allies, powerful money interests and a political agenda that is in direct opposition to the American way of life.

By President Obama’s own admission, with a cap and trade scheme like the Waxman- Markey Bill, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill, also known as ACES (the American Clean Energy and Security Act – HR 2454), is projected to impose annual energy cost hikes in excess of $1,000 per household. The total cost to the flagging American economy is projected at $650 billion to over $1 trillion.

Even if the hotly contested claims of carbon-driven manmade global warming were to be believed, the touted climate benefit of the Waxman-Markey bill is that global surface temperatures will be one tenth of one degree cooler than currently projected in one hundred years.

ACES comes with an incredible price tag and promises no significant short or long-term benefit to either the American people or the global climate. This bill is nothing but another attempt to at a massive power and money grab by Washington’s elite.

To enrich a few powerful financial beneficiaries, like producers of wind turbines, and carbon trading firms such as the one former vice president and climate-alarmist-in-chief Al Gore profits from, Waxman-Markey is poised to decrease our national gross domestic product by $7 trillion dollars or more and cost another 1.9 million jobs, while adding sharply to the average families’ financial burden. Electricity rates could increase as much as 90% (nearly double what you now pay), Gasoline prices could rise 75%.

If this cap and trade scheme prevails, a select group of the rich will get richer on the backs of hard working American families who will literally see no benefit, not even after paying for this scheme for one hundred years.

A vote on this bill could come up in the House as soon as Friday. Call your congressman and senator today. Let them know that you wont stand for this despicable, fraudulent fleecing of America’s honest hard-working families.