Cody Taylor

Federating energy-saving applications could provide more secure privacy for consumers than aggregating them in the data flood that impends.

Deep Packet Inspection, or DPI, is at the heart of the debate over Network Neutrality — this relatively new technology threatens to upset the balance of power among consumers, ISPs, and information suppliers. An anonymous reader notes that the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has published a Web site, for Canadians and others, to educate about DPI technology. Online are a number of essays from different interested parties, ranging from DPI company officers to Internet law specialists to security professionals. The articles are open for comments. Here is the CBC’s report on the launch.”

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“In 2007 and 2008, telecommunications pioneers, consumer activists and privacy advocates in the United Kingdom and the United States were disturbed to discover that a few telecommunications providers were participating in experiments to test the use of a network management tool in targeting marketing campaigns and advertisements at specific . . .”

Forget Street View, there is a far more subtle – and pervasive – invasion of your private life being carried out – this time through your mobile phone. A week before, Google had, without any fanfare, released 11 software applications for mobile phones that spell a fundamental change in our lives.

Nicolas Dawson points out coverage in Mother Jones of the early stages of a new cybersecurity bill that conveys sweeping powers on the President. Quoting: “The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to ‘declare a cybersecurity emergency’ and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any ‘critical’ information network ‘in the interest of national security.’ The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president. The bill… also grants the Secretary of Commerce ‘access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.’ This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws.”

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FreedomFighter writes “In a Cloud Standards breakthrough, the FSF is teaming up with major cloud computing vendors to form the Free and Open Cloud Alliance (FOCA), a trade marketing association supporting Free(TM) and Open Cloud Computing (FOCC). The new CloudLeft Public License (CPL) is based on the ideas that data wants to be Free(TM) and all your Cloud(TM) are belong to us. It closes the ‘user data loophole’ by requiring the release of not only the source code for a CloudLeft platform but also the data passing through it. This renders most security issues void while appropriately setting the users’ expectation of privacy. ‘In the past, I’ve said that “cloud” is complete gibberish, but while discussing fashion during my weekly squash game with Stallman he convinced me that this was a great opportunity.’ said Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. RMS, who previously said that ‘cloud’ is worse than stupidity was also pleased about the return of the advertising clause, requiring the use of the ‘GNU/Cloud’ name, as he is ‘tired of haranguing the GNU/Linux community about this.’ Full details will be available next Monday, including the first marketing and outreach program — ‘FOCC: IT in 2009.'”

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The European Commissioner for Consumers today called out Facebook, Web advertisers, and Internet companies of all kinds to get better about transparency, privacy, and data protection—or regulators will step in.

An Ottawa-area MP is calling for an investigation of Google’s massive photo database it’s collected. he says there are privacy concerns that have not yet been addressed.

LiveScience examines humanoid robots and cybernetic enhancement of humans, as well as the exciting and sometimes frightening convergence of it all.

Death Metal sends along an Ars Technica piece about The Pirate Bay’s plans for a virtual private network service to help ensure its users’ privacy. “The Pirate Bay is planning to launch a paid VPN service for users looking to cover their tracks when torrenting. The new service will be called IPREDator, named after the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) that will go into effect in April. IPREDator is currently in private beta and is expected to go public next week for €5 per month. … IPREDator’s website says that it won’t store any traffic data, as its entire goal is to help people stay anonymous on the web. Without any data to hand over, copyright owners won’t be able to find individuals to target. … The question remains, however, if any significant portion of The Pirate Bay’s users will decide to fork over 5 per month solely to remain anonymous. It seems more likely that the majority either won’t care, or will simply start looking for lesser-known torrent trackers to use.”

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