Digital Criminal

According to reports from various industry sources, the Chinese government has begun the process of picking a national computer chip instruction set architecture (ISA). This ISA would have to be used for any projects backed with government money — which, in a communist country such as China, is a fairly long list of public and private enterprises and institutions, including China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the world. ... developing a brand new ISA — a daunting task, considering you have to create an entire software (compiler, developer, apps) and hardware (CPU, chipset, motherboard) ecosystem from scratch. But, there are benefits to building your own CPU architecture. ...silicon-level monitoring and censorship ...a ubiquitous, always-open backdoor that can be used by Chinese intelligence agencies... DNS and IP address blacklist [built] into the hardware itself ...implement a hardware-level 10pm curfew for video games... code that automatically turns negative mentions of Hu Jintao (the Chinese president) into positives, and inserts a few honorifics at the same time ...a latent botnet of hundreds of millions of computers that can be activated upon the commencement of World War III. Or, or, or… [The word "benefits," as employed here, is not value-oriented.]

The manner and progression in which the internet was cut reminds me of how both Iran and Egypt cut their internet during the height of their uprisings. This was a Chinese kill-switch test .... and yes .... it was successful.

Arizona will make it possible to prosecute you for posting something offensive on the net.

A. It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use a telephone any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person. It is also unlawful to otherwise disturb by repeated anonymous telephone calls electronic or digital communications the peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person at the place where the telephone call or calls communications were received.

The Democrat Congress couldn't pass the energy sector-killing Cap & Trade? No problem, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just began to implement it as if it did. The Democrat Congress couldn't pass the union-payoff, anti-free choice Employee Free Choice Act? No problem, President Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) just began to implement it as if it did. Then there is President Obama's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — and its December 21 illegal Internet power grab executed so as to then impose the absurd Network Neutrality. The Democrat Congress couldn't pass Net Neutrality — and in fact 302 of its members were opposed to the FCC unilaterally force-feeding it to us. Please note: The FCC has zero authority over anything unless and until Congress writes a law that says "Hey FCC, do this." And as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski readily admits, Congress has never done so with the Internet. ... The Media Marxists — the folks who are working to have the government control all news, media and communications — know this. They have moved past the "Fairness" Doctrine to other, bigger, newer forms of censorship. Mark Lloyd — a Hugo Chavez-loving Media Marxist whom the FCC hired as their inaugural "Chief Diversity Officer" — wrote a piece called "Forget the Fairness Doctrine" in which he details other ways to achieve the same silencing of the Right on the radio. But the Left is thinking long term — and that means Net Neutrality. The Godfather of the Media Marxist movement — Robert McChesney — describes Net Neutrality thusly: "(T)he ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control."

Senate Bill 978, a bipartisan measure introduced last month by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), is backed by supporters who say it closes glaring loopholes in current copyright infringement law created by the realities of the digital age. ... But critics say a section of the bill provides for steep penalties -- up to five years in prison -- for "publicly performing" copyrighted material and embedding the video to sites like YouTube. "It seems like (the bill) is attacking the core of the Internet itself, which is to promote communication amongst people all over the world" ....

Monday's policy outlines the moves the United States must make in partnership with allies to promote compatible, secure, reliable and unfettered information exchange. "This is a strategy that goes beyond any singular partner or agency," John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, said during a formal unveiling of the framework at the White House. Academics have long warned that poor interagency collaboration and misaligned domestic and foreign cyberspace policies are hurting U.S. efforts to, among other things, cut off financial support for terrorist groups. Nabbing the groups backing, for example, suicide bombers requires balancing national security and individual online privacy. Government officials typically must trace credit card transactions, online payments, emails and other communications to understand the target's day-to-day activities.

Hundreds of thousands -- and possibly millions -- of websites have been hit with a cyberattack that some are calling "one of the biggest mass-injection attacks we've ever seen."

...[Survey] discovered that two-thirds are losing sleep to devices like computers, televisions and cell phones... poll shows that the most sleep deprived age group are those ages 13 to 18, who stay up late at night texting before falling asleep....

Apple on Friday confirmed that it has issued an update to fix a security glitch on the iPhone that could have allowed hackers to disable or take over the smartphones.

Beijing postpones a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam software for filtering Internet content. But it may be just a temporary reprieve. Read this blog post by Stephen Shankland on Politics and Law.

The New York Times reported on Monday that it had collaborated with online encyclopedia Wikipedia to keep news of its kidnapped reporter in Afghanistan from going public for more than seven months.... Times reporter David Rohde... and his translator, Tahir Ludin, were able to make a clean escape from their captors at a facility in Pakistan this month. Prior to their escape, Bill Keller, editor of the Times, asked Wikipedia to keep news of his kidnapping from going public.... Times believed that publicity over his kidnapping would worsen negotiations to ensure Mr. Rohde’s safe return....