The swelling of the online data “cloud” is driving an info-privacy cold war between U.S. tech companies demanding freer movement of data in cyberspace, and European Union states that want the amorphous cloud better regulated. Is there a middle way? In April 2010, the German government faced off with Facebook when the latter said it would sell its private user data to third parties. “What is private must stay private,” Ilse Aigner, the German minister of consumer protection, stated plainly in a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “Unfortunately, Facebook ignores this ... Read More
The Government Internet ID Proposal’s Pros and Cons
April 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Last Friday, the U.S. government unveiled its National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, a blueprint for the private-industry development of voluntary tools that would authenticate and consolidate your identity online. We need such a thing, the government says — in a pamphlet titled, well, "Why We Need It" — because our proliferating online passwords are inconvenient and insecure, and because last year 8.1 million adults in the U.S. suffered identity theft or fraud, at a cost of $37 billion. The idea seems like one mandated by the moment. Increasingly, important commerce, ... Read More
How (Not) to Slow the Spread of Computer Viruses
October 13, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
When Scott Charney came to Berlin earlier this month for a conference on Internet security, he discussed an idea — "Internet hygiene" — that's now enjoying some fashionable attention. Internet hygiene is nothing more than good, clean computing practice to keep your machine virus-free. But Charney, Microsoft's vice president of trustworthy computing, took it a step further. He suggested that infected computers ought to be quarantined. "If a device is known to be a danger to the Internet," he said, "the user should be notified and the device should be cleaned before it is allowed ... Read More
