Over the weekend, the Obama administration issued a potentially game-changing statement on the blacklist bills, saying it would oppose PIPA and SOPA as written, and drew an important line in the sand by emphasizing that it “will not support” any bill “that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Yet, the fight is still far from over. Even though the New York Times reported that the White House statement “all but kill[s] current versions of the legislation,” the Senate is still poised to bring PIPA to the floor next week, and we can expect SOPA proponents in the House to try to revive the legislation—unless they get the message that these initiatives must stop, now. So let’s take a look at the dangerous provisions in the blacklist bills that would violate the White House’s own principles by damaging free speech, Internet security, and online innovation:

Computer hackers plan to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit. The scheme was outlined at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

The project’s organisers said the Hackerspace Global Grid will also involve developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites. Longer term they hope to help put an amateur astronaut on the moon.
[...]
“The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space. Let’s take the internet out of the control of terrestrial entities,” Mr Farr said.

I can’t even remember the last time I saw a dialup modem, much less used one. When was the last time you used one? Still use one?

Laugh all you want, but as of the end of September, AOL still had 3.5 million subscribers to its dialup Internet access service — a lot more than the number of people who pay for, say, Spotify. And the decline from last year — about 630,000 subs — was AOL’s smallest Q3 shrinkage yet. (AOL credits a “price rationalization program” last quarter that helped them convert 200,000 people to an AOL access subscription.) This time in 2006 and 2007, AOL was losing 5 million customers a year.

For you young’uns who have never experienced a modem, click pic to see and hear what dialing with a modem is like.

Why is this state tax issue a federal concern? Unless it’s preparation for a national sales tax…

CNET has learned that two Republican senators are preparing to introduce new legislation that would allow states to force Amazon.com and other out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes.

Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are currently putting the final touches on their bill, which is backed by Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, Home Depot, and other companies that are currently required to collect sales taxes.

Google+ hasn’t been getting much love from users in recent days–its traffic reportedly plummeted 60 percent from its peak–but the most damning criticism seems to be coming from Google itself.

A post penned by Google engineer Steve Yegge has surfaced and in it, the software engineer trashes Google+ as a “pathetic afterthought” and “knee-jerk reaction.”

Yegge describes Google+ as “a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.”

Imagine that President Obama could order the arrest of anyone who broke a promise on the Internet. So you could be jailed for lying about your age or weight on an Internet dating site. Or you could be sent to federal prison if your boss told you to work but you used the company’s computer to check sports scores online. Imagine that Eric Holder’s Justice Department urged Congress to raise penalties for violations, making them felonies allowing three years in jail for each broken promise. Fanciful, right?

Think again. Congress is now poised to grant the Obama administration’s wishes in the name of “cybersecurity.”

The little-known law at issue is called the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. It was enacted in 1986 to punish computer hacking. But Congress has broadened the law every few years, and today it extends far beyond hacking. The law now criminalizes computer use that “exceeds authorized access” to any computer. Today that violation is a misdemeanor, but the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to meet this morning to vote on making it a felony.

The problem is that a lot of routine computer use can exceed “authorized access.”

Some of those issues were headed off, but that’s only some and who knows if the amendments will survive. Here’s the latest.

Just because hackers now can do what the FBI, CIA, etc have probably been doing for years — looking at your purchases, banking transactions, etc online — doesn’t mean they’ll HAVE to steal your money and charge your credit cards. That would just be rude.

Researchers have discovered a serious weakness in virtually all websites protected by the secure sockets layer protocol that allows attackers to silently decrypt data that’s passing between a webserver and an end-user browser.

The vulnerability resides in versions 1.0 and earlier of TLS, or transport layer security, the successor to the secure sockets layer technology that serves as the internet’s foundation of trust. Although versions 1.1 and 1.2 of TLS aren’t susceptible, they remain almost entirely unsupported in browsers and websites alike, making encrypted transactions on PayPal, GMail, and just about every other website vulnerable to eavesdropping by hackers who are able to control the connection between the end user and the website he’s visiting.

At the Ekoparty security conference in Buenos Aires later this week, researchers Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo plan to demonstrate proof-of-concept code called BEAST, which is short for Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS. The stealthy piece of JavaScript works with a network sniffer to decrypt encrypted cookies a targeted website uses to grant access to restricted user accounts. The exploit works even against sites that use HSTS, or HTTP Strict Transport Security, which prevents certain pages from loading unless they’re protected by SSL.

The demo will decrypt an authentication cookie used to access a PayPal account, Duong said.

Found by Brother Uncle Don on the Chicago Tribune website

How dare people wanting to have fun! This is all bound up in the new tactic — a favorite of Middle East dictators — to shut down social networks to prevent whatever they don’t like. The SF Bay Area’s BART system is currently using it against those protesting the killing of a passenger by BART cops. And although not social media crackdown related, there’s this.

A man will appear before magistrates next month for allegedly trying to organise a mass water fight via his mobile phone. The prime minister said last week that the government would investigate whether social networking platforms should be shut down if they helped to “plot” crime in the wake of the riots. The 20-year-old from Colchester was arrested on Friday after Essex police discovered the alleged plans circulating on the BlackBerry Messenger service and Facebook. The unnamed man has been charged with “encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence” under the 2007 Serious Crime Act, police said.
[...]
Speaking during last Thursday’s parliamentary debate on the riots, David Cameron said he would investigate whether social-networking sites should be shut down if they helped to “plot” crime. The prime minister said he would “look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”.

Searches made by millions of internet users are being hijacked and redirected by some internet service providers in the US. Patents filed by Paxfire, the company involved in the hijacking, suggest that it may be part of a larger plan to allow ISPs to generate revenue by tracking the sites their customers visit. It may also be illegal.

Reese Richman, a New York law firm that specialises in consumer protection lawsuits, today filed a class action against one of the ISPs and Paxfire, which researchers believe provided the equipment used to hijack and redirect the searches. The suit, filed together with Milberg, another New York firm, alleges that the process violated numerous statutes, including wiretapping laws.

The hijacking seems to target searches for certain well-known brand names only. Users entering the term “apple” into their browser’s search bar, for example, would normally get a page of results from their search engine of choice. The ISPs involved in the scheme intercept such requests before they reach a search engine, however.

This explains a lot. And yet, as with all statistics, it doesn’t.

If you use Internet Explorer, your IQ might be below average–at least, according to one study.

AptiQuant, a “psychometric consulting” firm that provides hiring exams for businesses, gave online IQ tests to more than 100,000 people. Visitors arrived either through organic searches or through advertisements on other sites, and Aptiquant made a note of which browser each test taker was using.

On average, Internet Explorer users fared the worst, with IE6 users at the bottom of the pile and IE8 users performing slightly better. Firefox, Chrome and Safari fell in the middle with little difference between them. IE with Chrome Frame and Camino landed on top, along with Opera, whose users scored the highest (on average).

“The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser,” AptiQuant concluded. “From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers.”

This is like the “no anonymity” on the web campaign which is pushed as being anti-bullying, anti-predator, revenue enhancing (Facebook and other websites), etc, but would have the real effect of discouraging people who might be afraid of retribution if they say something online someone in power doesn’t like.

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year–in case police want to review them in the future–under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall’s elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored. It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill.

Lofgren said the data retention requirements are easily avoided because they only apply to “commercial” providers. Criminals would simply go to libraries or Starbucks coffeehouses and use the Web anonymously, she said, while law-abiding Americans would have their activities recorded.
[...]
“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

Hacked, pwnd and your tax money stolen in 5, 4, 3…

The federal government plans to shut 40 percent of its computer centers over the next four years to reduce its hefty technology budget and modernize the way it uses computers to manage data and provide services to citizens.
[...]
The federal government is the largest buyer of information technology in the world, spending about $80 billion a year. The Obama administration, in plans detailed Wednesday, is taking aim at some of that by closing 800 of its sprawling collection of 2,000 data centers. The savings, analysts say, will translate into billions of dollars a year and acres of freed-up real estate.
[...]
In an interview, Vivek Kundra, chief information officer for the federal government, explained that the data center consolidation was part of a broader strategy to embrace more efficient, Internet-era computing. In particular, the government is shifting to cloud computing, in which users use online applications like e-mail remotely, over the Internet. These cloud services can be provided by the government to many agencies or by outside technology companies.

Tapping cloud computing services, Mr. Kundra said, could save the government an additional $5 billion a year, reducing the need for individual government agencies to buy their own software and hardware.