Crime in Cybercity
We’re just sort of waking up to [the Internet]. Now that it’s an everyday thing, it’s coming to the attention of the legislators and police forces, and I think they’re not going to like what they see.Õ
Archives: Expert Predictions
Crime in Cybercity
[The Internet] presents challenges to the law because of the fact that it is presented in a substantially different form. That form, therefore, requires some adjustment and, some would say, very substantial stretching.
Crime in Cybercity
The neighborhood is the Internet, and the criminals have moved in. Some of the crimes, like obscenity, are familiar, but others have taken new forms, from information theft to the sabotage of computer systems with data-destroying viruses … New laws, says Liberal Member of Parliament Rey Pagtakhan, who is pushing for tighter control, will demonstrate that “we will not tolerate these types of activity.”
Jacking in from the ‘Where’s the Middle Ground?’ Port
Tell us, once and for all, are we going to have a law that bans private encryption – forcing us to become a nation of crypto-outlaws – or is this Administration going to promise to stand by our current freedom to use any encryption technology we choose?
Jacking in from the ‘Where’s the Middle Ground?’ Port
We welcome the opportunity to work with industry to design a more versatile, less expensive system. Such a key escrow system would be implementable in software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof, would not rely upon a classified algorithm, would be voluntary, and would be exportable.
The Economics of Information Crimes
The line between legal and illegal information selling is thoroughly vague, enforcement is minimal, public awareness is inchoate, obfuscation is rampant, and the economic incentives to collect information and to deceive people about its intended uses are massive. The next question is what can be done about this dire situation.
Issues and Openness
Here’s the bottom line: if you want the future of digital community-building to look like the Internet, you want the future of telecommunications regulation to be organized on common-carrier principles. Do yourself a big favor this month: say the phrase “common carrier” over and over until you start to like the sound of it. Then get yourself going: agitate, educate, and organize. Without you it just won’t happen.
Issues and Openness
Somebody [must] throw some more light on the practices of the would-be monopolists, the companies whose business models are predicated on poorly regulated control of both carrier and content. This is not the free market in operation. Rather, it’s large-scale “issues management” aimed at institutionalizing a set of anti-competitive regulatory structures. Issues management is the high-powered synthesis of lobbying, legal advocacy, public relations, and the quasi-intellectual work of “think tanks” … The cause of democracy would be greatly enhanced world-wide if the practices of issue management were thoroughly exposed and if clear, powerful metaphors for the process became as widespread as Big Brother and the Panopticon.
Issues and Openness
The cause of democracy requires diversity, openness, and widespread access to telecommunications. At a minimum this means the avoidance of monopolies. But more fundamentally, it means common-carrier regulation and the associated technical standards, so that everyone can produce content in all media as well as consuming it. Is the future going to look like the Internet? Now is the time when we, the people, make this choice.
Welcome to TNO
I personally feel that the crusade for freedom and privacy in the digital age needs much better theories of the actual threats to freedom and privacy. Images like “Big Brother Is Watching You” really are not adequate, and better images of both the problems and the potential solutions will be a crucial part of the increasingly global campaign for democracy.