Saturday, November 23, 2002

Internet Provisions in Security Bill. Tucked into a section of the bill creating the new Department of Homeland Security is a section about about "cyber-security enhancements" which extend the government's wiretapping powers. [New York Times: Technology] 9:03:19 PM

A Kinder, Gentler Web. Microsoft announced a really nasty bug in their Data Access Components (MDAC) yesterday. Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-065 has the details. I'm a sysadmin, I'm going to have to do something about this and I'm going to have to do it tonight. I work for a small company, not only do a lot of our applications use MDAC, I don't have enough budget room to build a testing environment for our application servers. I figure I'll do the patch and test starting at 1:00 AM, should be done by 4:00 AM. Our Ontario warehouse starts at about 6:00 AM my time so I'll be able to bring a pillow and grab a couple hours snooze under the rack or something. I can't help asking myself, why are you doing this? [kuro5hin.org] 5:45:33 AM

On the Microsoft FTP server leak. Oh dear, oh dear [The Register] 5:42:52 AM

Right and Wrong We now have an exact replica of the medieval Stationers' Company, which controlled the English copyrights, only its names today are Disney, Bertelsmann, and AOL Time Warner. The big media companies, holding the copyrights of dead authors, have said, in effect, that Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton were wrong and that we should go back to the aristocratic system of hereditary ownership, granting copyrights in perpetuity. To effect this result, they've liberally greased the palms of Congressmen in the form of campaign contributions. [National Review] 5:37:29 AM

Must-read John Markoff story in today's Times detailing meetings held under the auspices of DARPA last summer that considered -- only to wisely reject -- restructuring the nature of the Net to allow the government to track pretty much everything. One more piece of the growing and increasingly weird "Total Information Awareness" puzzle: "The Pentagon research agency that is exploring how to create a vast database of electronic transactions and analyze them for potential terrorist activity considered but rejected another surveillance idea: tagging Internet data with unique personal markers to make anonymous use of some parts of the Internet impossible." [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] 5:13:50 AM

Hu's on First? A takeoff on the classic Abbott & Costello routine, "Who's on First," is making the rounds. It features George Bush and Condi Rice (national security advisor), and gets less hilarious the further you read, but the good stuff is inspired. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal] 5:11:53 AM

© Copyright 2003 Michael Alderete.