Russian Internet users, apparently manipulated by the Kremlin, began conspicuously surfacing online after Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. These paid “trolls” work all day to flood online articles and social media with praises towards Russian President Vladimir Putin and condemnation of the West.
Many experts reckon the first cyberwar is already well under way. It’s not exactly a “cold war,” as the previous generation understood the term, because serious damage valued in millions of dollars has been done, and there’s nothing masked about the hostile intent of state-sponsored hackers. What has been masked is the sponsorship.
A light bulb flashed in Darcel Jackson’s head one night, while lying in bed in a homeless shelter in San Francisco, that the greatest thing he could do for homeless people would be to connect them to the internet.
In a speech in South Korea, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the Internet needs heavier regulations to “be able to flourish and work properly.”
CNN’s report on the hunt for ISIS terrorists in the darkest corners of the Internet begins with a remarkably dour assessment of the war effort thus far: “After months of bombing by the U.S. and coalition forces, ISIS remains undefeated on the ground and has now entered a new phase, using the cyber-world as a weapon… It’s a trend that has captured the attention of law enforcement and now the military.”
The Wall Street Journal’s tech blog sees the new anti-hacking mutual defense treaty between Russia and China as a headache for United States intelligence analysts. Not only will the two notoriously aggressive Cyber War powers be able to concentrate their hacking fire on other targets while pooling defensive resources, but the Internet balance of power continues to shift away from the U.S., just as critics of the Obama administration’s decision to hand over Internet domain control to a nebulous international body predicted.
Over the weekend Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Ajit Pai said he anticipates that, as a result of the passage of net neutrality regulations, federal regulators will attempt to control political websites – such as the Drudge Report – through the FCC or Federal Elections Commission (FEC).
John Malone, Chairman of Liberty Media, the dominant shareholder of Charter Communications, reportedly called Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus in recent days about a friendly merger following the collapse last week of an offer by Comcast to buy Time Warner, according to the Wall Street Journal blog. Malone and Marcus appear be discussing a 3-way merger that would challenge Comcast’s industry dominance.
A new survey of all forms of radio reveals that online radio has surged in popularity, but satellite radio and AM/FM radio are still growing, though at a lower rate.
Sharmila Seyyid, a Muslim woman journalist and human rights activist from Sri Lanka, received so much backlash from a comment in a BBC appearance that she left her home country. She did not receive a warm welcome in India, which forced her into hiding. Now outlets are pressuring both countries to protect Seyyid.
The European Union has been involved in what seems like a permanent investigation of Google for abusing its search-engine dominance. There is a certain through-the-looking-glass quality to Reuters’ report on the latest developments, as Google is punished with anti-competitive regulations for allegedly engaging in anti-competitive practices.
China recently flooded American websites with a barrage of Internet traffic known as a “denial of service attack” to block providers that allowed China’s Internet users to circumvent websites blocked by government policies. The action was initially thought to be another example of China’s use of a program called the “Great Wall.” But academic researchers have determined that China appears to have reverse-engineered the capabilities of a powerful National Security Agency (NSA) program that was first described to the public in the leaked Edward Snowden files two years ago.
Last week, terrorists from a Marxist gang in Turkey called the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party–Front took prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage in an Istanbul courthouse and shot him dead. In response to a widely-circulated photograph of Kiraz shortly before his death, the Turkish government banned social media giants Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Despite the best efforts of Internet porn users to mask their web history, it may be possible for hackers to trace and expose every porn site visited.
Ahead of his campaign’s launch this week, Rand Paul released a viral video teasing his presidential campaign. People will expect the “different kind of Republican” presented in this video to have an enormous digital footprint.
New York’s NBC affiliate perpetrated what is becoming the worst sin in media today by using a clickbait-style headline on Twitter. Worse, it was a clickbait headline to sell the story of a 10-year-old’s suicide. Clickbait headlines are fast becoming
The Turkish Parliament is considering an extensive Internet regulation bill that has been expanded this week to include a ban on sharing content prohibited by the state–not just punishment for those who publish the content originally.
Democrat members of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are now admitting that new net neutrality regulations may allow them to determine pricing for Internet service, an admission that’s seen as “a vindication to critics of the new Internet rules, who have long warned that the agency’s powers will give it unprecedented control over the Web,” according to a report from The Hill.
The government of Thailand has issued a warning that the Ministry of Culture would begin prosecuting women who post “underboob selfies” on the Internet: photos exposing the bottom half of their breasts. The photos, usually taken so that the woman cannot be identified, have become a growing trend internationally.
We’ve known for years that most Americans support the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance apparatus. Poll after poll shows that about roughly 53 percent of Americans think the government should prioritize investigating terrorism over privacy.
Seventy-five groups and 46,000 ordinary citizens have asked McDonalds and Starbucks to begin blocking pornography from the free WiFi service each chain allows its customers to access.
The Turkish government has announced plans to expand Internet access to the nation’s poorest families. The announcement follows a blanket ban on more than 68,000 websites and years of attempts at Internet censorship under the ruling AK Party, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Google is floating a trial balloon that needs to be shot down: an algorithm that would rank web pages based on their “trustworthiness” by automatically detecting and tabulating “false facts” on each web page.
“We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media,” Ayman al-Zawahiri, then al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, purportedly wrote in a 2005 letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who led al-Qaeda in Iraq at the time.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai (R) said that new FCC regulations will make “state, property, and other taxes go up” on providers and the “immediate effects in some of the taxation are going to be severe” on Friday’s “Bloomberg West.” “Decisions
The chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Communications Committee has welcomed the vote by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow the government to take control over the Internet.
FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly (R), who was nominated to serve on the FCC by President Obama said that new FCC regulations “far [exceed] any type of situation that would be present under the net neutrality debate. We have given the power
Dallas Mavericks owner and investor Mark Cuban predicted that proposed FCC Internet regulations will end up impacting TV and “your TV as you know it is over” on Thursday’s “Squawk Alley” on CNBC. Cuban began by predicting “the courts will
Net neutrality activists are suddenly waking up and realizing that their dream would, in reality, be a nightmare.
Spain authorities arrested four jihadist recruiters throughout the nation in an early morning raid on Tuesday. The suspects are believed to have been working to indoctrinate Muslims and brainwash them into joining the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. They particularly preyed on young women, according to Spanish law enforcement.
An independent government regulator? The Obama administration isn’t clear on that concept, and the FCC is just the latest example of the administration’s overreach.
When asked what he felt was the worst aspect of the secret FCC plan Pai said, “Most perniciously, when you think about it, the FCC for the first time is going to start second guessing even what kind of service plan you have. And it explicitly mentions for example ‘T-Mobile Music Freedom,’ which allows you to steam music to your mobile device without counting against your data cap. The FCC explicitly tees that up as a practice it might end up outlawing.”
Last week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced, via an op-ed in Wired, magazine, that the FCC would reclassify the American Internet infrastructure as a utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1934.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has taken his strong opposition to Barack Obama’s push for new net neutrality rules to another media level.
The sinister world of George Orwell’s 1984, which was based on the Russian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, is fast becoming a living reality, as electronic devices on the market glean personal information from unsuspecting users. In particular, voice-activated services such as “smart TVs” permit the electronic devices with embedded ears to hear everything said by the user.
China is cracking down on free speech again. This time, an internet watchdog and organ of the country’s Communist Party has banned web users from using pseudonyms to post messages under the names of famous people. A new set of rules will also require Internet users to register accounts using their real names.
The move for the government to control the Internet took an insidious new turn, as FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler implied he would push harsher regulations that would categorize Internet service providers as public utilities.
Like most female tech executives, Marissa Mayer is a feminist’s worst nightmare. For one thing, she is ruthlessly focused on merit, claiming to be “gender blind,” which annoys women-in-tech campaigners no end. They say women should be given special consideration
David Cameron has pledged to bring back the ‘snoopers’ charter’ if the Conservatives win the election in May. The Communications Data Bill would force telecoms companies to collect information on their customer’s use of the internet, under the auspices of
Here in California, we regularly use the ballot initiative process to govern ourselves. Often, when a well-funded special interest is trying to ram through a change to the state’s laws, the opposition screams that the measure is a “solution without a problem.” The FCC’s potential actions in regards to Title II and the Internet fall in the same category. No one is crying out to be freed from the shackles of anything, anywhere, anytime broadband service.
