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IDL Goes Live
June 5, 2012 by admin
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The Internet has a cluster of superheroes ready to defend it, the Internet Defence League (IDL).
The IDL was set up by protest group Fight for the Future following the recent outbreak of web site blackouts that were launched to protest against legislation like SOPA and PIPA. It offers web sites a way to show that they are always ready to defend the internet against attack.
“The Internet Defense League takes the tactic that killed SOPA and PIPA and turns it into a permanent force for defending the internet, and making it better,” it says on its homepage. “Think of it like the internet’s Emergency Broadcast System, or its bat signal!”
Like those earlier protests, the idea is to get the more informed people, people that are actually operating internet properties, into the debate.
“Internet freedom and individual power are changing the course of history. But entrenched institutions and monopolies want this to stop,” explains the group. “Elected leaders often don’t understand the internet, so they’re easily confused or corrupted.”
Anyone that runs a web site is invited to join, and the idea is to get millions of people involved. Once they have joined the IDL they will be given software code to add to their web sites to show that they are members.
The U.S. Is Falling Behind
February 16, 2012 by admin
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The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace — a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of the Internet community, a computer security expert said Wednesday.
Other countries — and many companies — are using social-networking tools to their advantage, while the U.S. government has taken tiny steps forward, said Rand Waltzman, a program manager focused on cybersecurity at the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Chinese government pays citizens to patrol social-networking sites and dispute negative talk about all levels of government or any aspect of Chinese life, and companies such as Dell and Best Buy are training workers to respond to complaints on Facebook and other social-networking services, Waltzman said at the Suits and Spooks security conference in Arlington, Virginia.
U.S. regulations prevent the government from undertaking similar campaigns, he said. “Any time you want to go to the bathroom, you need presidential approval,” he said.
The U.S. will not be able to protect its residents if it cannot engage in its own covert social-media operations, Waltzman said.
Waltzman told about a U.S. special forces unit in Iraq in 2009 that attacked an insurgent paramilitary group, killed 16 of the members of the group and seized a “huge” weapons cache. As soon as the U.S. unit left the scene, the Iraqi group returned, put the bodies on prayer mats, and uploaded a photograph from a cheap mobile phone, he said. The group put out a press release in English and Arabic.
GoDaddy To Drop SOPA Support
Giant domain name registrar GoDaddy.com has yanked its support from the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act after owners of several websites stated they would take their business elsewhere.
Negative feedback about SOPA from a number of customers forced GoDaddy to take a second look at the legislation, said Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO. Go Daddy has concerns about the free speech and Internet security implications of the legislation, but until now, has worked with lawmakers to address those issues, he said.
“It’s clear to us the bill’s not ready in its current form,” Adelman said Friday. “Looking at this over the last 20 hours, we’re not seeing consensus in the Internet community, we’re hearing the feedback from our customers.”
On Thursday, Reddit user selfprodigy said he was pulling 51 domain names from GoDaddy because of the registrar’s support of SOPA. The same day, Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger family of humor websites said said his company would move its 1,000-plus domains off Go Daddy unless it dropped its support for the bill, known as SOPA.
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