How the U.S. can address Internet governance concerns

It may shock some people to learn that the Internet (or to be more precise, Internet technology) belongs to the government of the United States.  This arises from the fact that much of the underlying technology that runs the Net was funded by the US government.  This is why the only central point of control on an otherwise “ungovernable” Internet is managed by a US government contractor.  That point of control is the domain name system (aka, the “DNS“) and the contractor is a California non-profit company called ICANN.

A recent column by Declan McCullagh describes the on-going battle over the DNS with foreign governments putting forward the notion that such a central Internet resource should be under the control of an international group, not a single country. (more…)

Seoul Survivor

In case you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t been posting on my blog for some time now.  I thought I’d be able to blog continuously last week but as it turned out, this was based on 2 erroneous assumptions arising from the fact that I was to read a paper at a conference on “Privacy in the Digital Age” in Seoul.

First wrong assumption:  that Internet bandwidth flows freely in Korea where according to the latest statistics more than 80% of households have broadband Internet connections — the highest in the world.  This factoid led me to believe that I would have no problem getting a fast connection from anywhere — the hotel, the venue, on the street, in the middle of a park. 

No such luck. (more…)

On the First Hacking Conviction

There’s been praise all around for the first hacking conviction under the E-Commerce Act.  I agree that this is a significant event and that it sends the right signal to would-be hackers.  But one aspect of JJ Maria Giner’s prosecution has always bothered me. 

In earlier reports, it seemed as if the basis for his prosecution was his own admission that he hacked into the NEDA website.  He defendend himself by saying that he was a white hat hacker who merely wanted to inform NEDA of the security hole in their site.  Instead of sending them an email they would have ignored, he thought it better to demonstrate the site’s weakness by breaking into the system and then informing them of this fact.  In other words, he had no evil intention behind his actions. 

The troubling part is the Department Justice’s response that intent is not an essential part in committing the crime of hacking.  In other words, it did not matter that he was motivated by the best of intentions, the fact of the matter is that he did commit the intrusion which constitutes the crime of hacking. Case closed.

I wish it were that simple. (more…)

A Shout Out to Internet Cafe Owners

I’m on the hunt for a good test case. 

As you probably know, various Internet cafe owners are under threat of being shut down for their use of pirated software.  There are rumours that the authorities are conducting raids on non-compliant Internet cafes.  So far, I have yet to see any definitive proof that such a thing has happened and I’m beginning to think it’s an urban legend.

Still, if anyone out there has been shut down or threatened or affected by this, I have some advice. (more…)