Welcome to BarelyAdequate.info!

Computers are marvelous machines. They have revolutionized the way we work, the way we communicate, the way we shop, the way we live. But that same technology is also disruptive: it threatens to radically change or make obsolete whole methods of commerce; makes it infinitely harder for government officials to hide their excesses and misdeeds from the citizens they allegedly serve; makes it easier for citizens to secure their activities, records and communications from surveillance by government, law enforcement and corporate interests who have grown used to spying on us unasked; and gives those same government and corporate interests powerful new tools to search for and aggregate data about us.

The focus of this page is to provide commentary on news events that concern the intersection of technology, law, politics and the freedoms granted to citizens by the US Constitution; and illuminate attacks upon these freedoms by bureaucrats, law-enforcement officials, Congresscritters, government agencies domestic and foreign, and numerous moneyed interests. Many of the articles commented on here will also deal with what, for lack of a better term, I call "fairness in the digital age." And because I am a techie, I'll also comment on cool technological happenings in my industry, and uncool ones as well!

Some of those in positions of power — particularly in government, law enforcement and certain key industries — feel that if they are to preserve their power over society and/or protect their profits as we move into the digital age, the law needs to be changed to the detriment of our freedoms! Every time I learn about one of these issues, you will read about it here!

I started this site in 1996 as a test bed for trying out new HTML programming techniques. However, over the years it has turned into something much more serious. Please bear with me as I continue to bring issues to light and discuss them here, and feel free to send your constructive criticism and suggestions to the e-mail address below.

Our only chance to preserve our rights in the Digital Age is to rise up as citizens and demand that they be protected! Hopefully this site will provide you some of the knowledge necessary to do that effectively. Please return often, and direct others here to learn what is at stake in the battle to secure our rights in a digital age!

Once again, welcome to BarelyAdequate.info! Enjoy your stay and come back often!

Last Updated: September 27th, 2016

August 31st, 2016



A Michigan family is suing the makers of Pokemon Go, saying game features are being placed on or near private property without the permission of the owners!



Ford Motor Company announced that it will have thousands of fully autonomous vehicles ready by 2021 for its planned car-sharing and ride-hailing fleets.



Not tech, but something I know about after 24+ yeas in the U.S. Air Force: in an LA Times article titled If Trump wins, a coup isn't impossible here in the U.S., James Kirchick points out that

Try to imagine, then, a situation in which Trump commanded our military to do something stupid, illegal or irrational. Something so dangerous that it put the lives of Americans and the security of the country at stake. (Trump’s former rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Marco Rubio, said the United States could not trust “the nuclear codes” to an “erratic individual.”) Faced with opposition from his military brass, Trump would perhaps reconsider and back down. But what if he didn’t?
In that case, our military men and women, who swear to uphold the Constitution and a civilian chain of command, would be forced to choose between obeying the law and serving the wishes of someone who has explicitly expressed his utter lack of respect for it.

Actually, by refusing such an order, they would be obeying the law. After World War II, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (PDF), the laws governing the military, were written to clarify what military members can and cannot do. A key tenant in the UCMJ requires military members at all levels to refuse to carry out illegal orders from their superiors. So if any President tried to order actions that grossly violate the Constitution, his generals are required to tell him "no way."



Networking equipment giant Cisco Systems plans to lay off 14,000 employees by the end of the summer. The announcement was made as part of its fiscal fourth-quarter results.



The Google Fiber project, to deploy fiber-based high speed Internet service nation-wide, has been placed on hold as ISPs plan wide-area high-speed wireless networks.



Intel has partnered with ARM to manufacture ARM's processors in its foundary. ARM CPUs are currently found in Internet of Things (IoT) devices and high-end smartphones, markets Intel has had trouble penetrating with its own CPUs. Smart move: better to get paid to fab the CPUs than not get anything!



A spin-off of Massachusetts Institute of Technology is producing new lithium metal batteries with double the capacity of similarly-sized batteries.



Intel's 7th generation Core chips, code-named Kaby Lake, will have 4K graphics processors integrated into the CPU. Laptops based running on Kaby Lake CPUs are expected to ship this fall.



Reviewers are giving Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 "phablet" lots of praise for its novel iris scanning unlock mechanism and other security features. Too bad the devices had to be recalled due to exploding batteries!



Fiber connections in the data center have primarily been used to interconnect backbone devices like switches and routers, and interconnect with other data closets on campus, but Intel is planning to put laser-based silicon photonics transceivers on chips, that will allow the servers in the data center to talk over fiber connections as well, potentially at speeds of 400 gigabits per second.



InfoWorld has posted a review of the new Android OS version 7, dubbed Nougat. The new OS started pushing to newer Google Nexus devices in August. But as with all previous Android versions, when (or whether!) the new OS will will push to your phone is totally up to your wireless provider.



One of the fears keeping drivers from more-widely adopting all-electric cars is “range anxiety:” the assumption that electric cars can’t go very far before running out of power. But MIT researchers found that the latest crop of electric cars can easily hold up to about 90 percent of all car travel in the U.S.



Chip designers ARM have announced a new ARMv8-A CPU architecture using Scalable Vector Extension (SVE) for use in supercomputers. The first supercomputer to be based on the new architecture will be the Fujitsu "Post-K".



This might be too techie, but . . . DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) is a technology used to immunize hijackers and spoofers who would otherwise be able to use various DNS-related attacks to take down company servers. Given its importance, servers are configured within a company to run DNSSEC on the network. Unfortunately, a study conducted by network security software Neustar found that, of 1,300 DNSSEC-protected domains examined, 80 percent were misconfigured, leaving their company vulnerable to attack. The reason I mention this is that some of the companies found wanting were those that serve as host providers, managing domains, Web site hosting, and e-mail hosting for small companies and individuals!



Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has ordered Google Fiber to cut its staff in half. Rumors say it’s related to the company’s plans to deploy wide-area wireless networks.



Do you hate people of privilege who try to use their power and position to get back at "little people" for insignificant slights, but love it when they get tripped up by smart police? Then read the LA Times article Framed. A long article, but well worth the time, and a good example of how cell phone data can be used to track your movements!



Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify.

This system is already in place, operating behind closed doors in office buildings and conference rooms in cities around the world. Known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, it is written into a vast network of treaties that govern international trade and investment, including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Congress must soon decide whether to ratify. These trade pacts have become a flashpoint in the US presidential campaign. But an 18-month BuzzFeed News investigation, spanning three continents and involving more than 200 interviews and tens of thousands of documents, many of them previously confidential, has exposed an obscure but immensely consequential feature of these trade treaties, the secret operations of these tribunals, and the ways that business has co-opted them to bring sovereign nations to heel.

After election systems in Illinois and Arizona teams were breached, the FBI’s issue a nationwide alert warning that it’s possible state election offices could be hacked is raising concerns that a nationwide attack could be afoot, with the potential for creating havoc on Election Day.



Luxembourg satellite operator SES SA SESFg.LU is the first commercial company to sign up with SpaceX to use a previously launched Falcon 9 rocket for a satellite launch.



According to the New York Times, Palo Alto, California is thinking about enforcing a zoning regulation banning firms whose “primary business is research and development, including software coding,”.



Microsoft has opened the source code for its PowerShell server scripting language.



August 15th, 2016



In an article on his Schneier on Security blog, computer security expert Bruce Schneier claimed that the Russians are behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee's computer network. One has to wonder if they are working on behalf of Donald Trump!



Elon Musk opened his gigantic Gigafactory battery production plant. This plant is critical to lower battery costs so Tesla can drive down production costs for his electric cars, particularly low-end Tesla 3. Tesla will also be buying solar power contracting company SolarCity for $2.6 billion in stock



Wired Magazine, in an article titled America’s Electronic Voting Machines Are Scarily Easy Targets, saying:

The list of those problems is what you’d expect from any computer or, more specifically, any computer that’s a decade or older. Most of these machines are running Windows XP, for which Microsoft hasn’t released a security patch since April 2014. Though there’s no evidence of direct voting machine interference to date, researchers have demonstrated that many of them are susceptible to malware or, equally if not more alarming, a well-timed denial of service attack.

The FAA has given Google’s Project Wing drone delivery program approval to test drones at FAA-approved test sites.



It was bound to happen: businesses are figuring out ways to make money from Pokemon Go.



Cloud backup and storage provider Backblaze — which has servers running 68,000 hard drives — posted hard drive reliability rates for the drives it uses. The Seagate model ST4000DM000 6GB SATA drive lasted longest at 16,688,047 days!



Researchers in South Carolina and China plan present to the Defcon hacker conference techniques they could use to deceive Tesla’s autopilot sensors.



Companies, sports venues and government sites tired of drones flying over them have begun deploying anti-drone technologies to keep them away, take over control, or trash them!



NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been on Mars for four years! Unfortunately, the long treks across the Martian surface have been tearing up its wheels pretty good.



The Atlanta Braves have contracted with Comcast to set up a 100GBPS Wi-Fi network with over 1000 nodes in their new SunTrust Park and adjacent parking structure.



Seagate is showing off a new 60TB Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid state drive (SSD) , which is currently the world's highest capacity SSD.



A group of over 40 documentary filmmakers have endorsed a letter to the justice department, asking them to investigate the “harassment” and “targeting” of citizens who record episodes of police violence.

Note that in Oregon it is legal under a July 2015 law to "openly and in plain view record law enforcement officer while officer is performing official duties and person is in place where person may lawfully be.". Gotta love this state!



In a recent blog post, computer security journalist Brian Krebs discuss how most smartphones can be hacked when plugged into a hacker-modified USB charging station:

A little-known feature of many modern smartphones is their ability to duplicate video on the device's screen so that it also shows up on a much larger display — like a TV. However, new research shows that this feature may quietly expose users to a simple and cheap new form of digital eavesdropping. Dubbed "video jacking" by its masterminds, the attack uses custom electronics hidden inside what appears to be a USB charging station. As soon as you connect a vulnerable phone to the appropriate USB charging cord, the spy machine hijacks the phone's video display and records a video of everything you tap, type or view on it as long as it's plugged in — including PINs, passwords, account numbers, emails, texts, pictures and videos.

A team of researchers at the University of Birmingham (England) has detected a flaw affecting most Volkswagen vehicles built since 1995 that leave them vulnerable to theft.



Google has asked the FCC for authorization to conduct radio experiments in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS in the 3.5GHz band in multiple US locations for two years, to develop "last mile" wireless connections!



Microsoft will continue support for Windows 7 to January 2020, and Windows 8.1 to January 2023 . . . but only on PCs running on Intel Skylake processors.



3D printing is being used for a lot of cool things, but the coolest is creating tissues and organs for medical use.



In a Washington Post article titled By November, Russian hackers could target voting machines, computer security expert Bruce Schneier warns:

Over the years, more and more states have moved to electronic voting machines and have flirted with Internet voting. These systems are insecure and vulnerable to attack.

But while computer security experts like me have sounded the alarm for many years, states have largely ignored the threat, and the machine manufacturers have thrown up enough obfuscating babble that election officials are largely mollified.

We no longer have time for that. We must ignore the machine manufacturers’ spurious claims of security, create tiger teams to test the machines’ and systems’ resistance to attack, drastically increase their cyber-defenses and take them offline if we can’t guarantee their security online.

A Wired.com article points out that most wireless keyboards are unencrypted, which makes them vulnerable to all sorts of attacks.



The Federal Trade Commission's chief technologist Lorrie Cranor warns that requiring frequent password changes is a bad security practice because it encourages the creation of poor passwords.



In an prophetic article titled The Internet of Things Will Turn Large-Scale Hacks into Real World Disasters, computer security expert Bruce Schneier warns:

Today's threats include hackers crashing airplanes by hacking into computer networks, and remotely disabling cars, either when they're turned off and parked or while they're speeding down the highway. We're worried about manipulated counts from electronic voting machines, frozen water pipes through hacked thermostats, and remote murder through hacked medical devices. The possibilities are pretty literally endless. The Internet of Things will allow for attacks we can't even imagine.

According to Space.com, the creators of Star Trek Discovery series are dedicated to the diversity of its cast, to honor Gene Roddenberry's goals for the original series. The new series is scheduled for release in January 2017.



July 31st, 2016



A Tesla Model S owner is the unfortunate first fatality of a car on autopilot. This just points out that, until all cars on the road are on autopilot and talking to each other, you still need to be aware of what is going on outside the car!



Dell has stopped selling it’s Android-based Venue tablets. Even worse, DEll will not be pushing OS upgrades to Venue tablets already in use!



Just in case you weren’t sure about upgrading to Windows 10, Microsoft is planning to push a full-screen upgrade request reminding you of the July 29th deadline.



Big Oil company Exxon is claiming a First Amendment right to claim climate change is not real, and use that claim to block subpoenas for company documents that would prove they knew otherwise! A group of GOP climate change deniers have sided with Exxon. The basic case boils down to this: do you have a First Amendment right to speak, even if you know what you are saying is a lie?!



Hewlett Packard Enterprise was awarded $3 billion in its lawsuit against Oracle over Oracle’s failure to continue developing versions of its database for Intel’s Itanium processor, which it had contractually agreed to do. The case was brought over five years ago, when many of HP’s high-end servers ran Itanium CPUs, created by Intel specifically for the server market. The Itanium is slowly being replaced by Intel’s Xeon CPU line, but is still being offered in some very high end HP servers.



Streaming media no longer requires a set-top box. Roku is offering a Streaming Stick, a device slightly larger than a flash drive that plugs into an unused HDMI port on your HDTV, and comes with a remote control larger than it is, and mobile aps are available to control it from your iOS or Android mobile device!



Some are concerned that Apple’s patent to disable iPhone cameras during concerts could also be used to block filming of protests, police activities, government meetings, etc., as well.



The Silicon Valley News reports that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating alleged age discrimination by Google:

"The magic word 'diversity' doesn't seem to apply to age in Silicon Valley," [UC Davis computer science professor Norman] Matloff said. "Age discrimination is rampant in the industry. We're not talking about age 55 necessarily — it even occurs at age 35."

Pay tends to rise with experience, Matloff noted. "Literally, the bottom line is money," he said. "The older people are just considered too expensive."

An article in The Intercept notes that Secret rules make it pretty easy for the FBI to spy on journalists, noting:

The classified rules, obtained by The Intercept and dating from 2013, govern the FBI’s use of national security letters, which allow the bureau to obtain information about journalists’ calls without going to a judge or informing the news organization being targeted. They have previously been released only in heavily redacted form.

Media advocates said the documents show that the FBI imposes few constraints on itself when it bypasses the requirement to go to court and obtain subpoenas or search warrants before accessing journalists’ information.

Local-built cell phone networks using new, low-cost fiber-connected equipment could give the traditional cell phone companies a run for their money.



Now that deep-pocket investors like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have shown that commercial exploitation of space is possible, venture capitalists have started moving into the industry.



Now that biometrics are increasingly used to control access to devices, the law is unclear about whether you have the right to control access your own biometric data! Pending lawsuits may eventually change that, but Congress may eventually have to act to create protections under law. As the article notes:

Social Security numbers, when compromised, can be changed. Biometrics, however, are biologically unique to the individual; therefore, once compromised, the individual has no recourse, [and] is at heightened risk for identity theft.

Not exactly tech-related, but actor Jerry Doyle, who played Security Chief Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5, died at age 60. I still consider Babylon 5 the best Sci-Fi TV series ever broadcast. This has prompted a binge watch of the B5 series (I own all 5 seasons of the show on DVD).



Wired magazine reports that almost all smartphones have chipsets for FM radio built in, but only about a third of the phones in the US have them enabled. Why? The wireless carriers are afraid FM use will cut into streaming audio use, which the companies get paid for through data usage!



NASA's Mars rover Curiosity put itself into "safe mode" on July 2nd for what might be a software mismatch, but the autonomous rover is talking with its handlers back on Earth. NASA was able to bring Curiosity back out of safe mode several days later, and it began full operations again.



The Pokemon Go craze is getting out of hand. I wasn’t going to comment on it (computer games are not my thing!) but, playing in the Holocaust Museum, on the battlefield against ISIS?! Really? And how about accidents while watching the screen instead of the real world? Geesh!



Since the earliest days of the PC, every model has used a keyboard for input, and a mouse since graphics user interface (GUI) operating systems came on board. But Microsoft is looking at alternative input methods to replace or augment them.



A ZDNet article titled FBI says its malware isn't malware because 'we're the good guys' points out the Feds’ twisted thinking:

The FBI does "not believe" that the hacking tools it uses to break into the computers of suspected criminals should be considered "malware," because it says they're used with good intentions.

In the court filing, first spotted by Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the FBI said that its hacking tools, so-called network investigative techniques (NIT), are not "malicious."

In other words, "if we do it it’s OK, but if you do it it’s bad!"



Samsung is showing off its 850 EVO 4TB solid state drives (SSD), being called the highest capacity consumer SSD currently available. List price is $1,499.



Display screens that can be rolled up or folded should start showing up in products next year, probably first in mobile devices.



According to computer security journalist Brian Krebs, credit card company Visa is warning companies using MICROS point-of-sale devices to look for malicious software or unusual network activity, and to change their passwords.



Over 100 tech industry leaders signed an open letter claiming Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump would be a disaster for innovation, saying:

His vision stands against the open exchange of ideas, free movement of people, and productive engagement with the outside world that is critical to our economy — and that provide the foundation for innovation and growth.

After noting the 50th anniversary of the 1966 Freedom of Information Act, President Obama signed into law the FOIA Improvements Act of 2016, which strengthens the law.



Having been unable to keep up with competitors Google and Facebook, once-dominant web site Yahoo was put up for sale. Verizon quickly agreed to buy Yahoo’s core Internet business for $4.83 billion in cash, to gain access to Yahoo’s advertising technology.



Having lost their legal bid to force Microsoft to give up data stored overseas, the feds are turning to Congress, seeking legislation to make it legal, by also allowing foreign states to directly demand data from US companies! Talk about two wrongs not making a right!



Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) implied that his Senate Armed Services Committee might subpoena Apple and Google executives to answer questions about encryption in their newer smartphones.



Netflix has brokered a deal with CBS to stream the new "Star Trek" TV show when it airs starting in January 2017, but only in 188 countries, not the US or Canada. The new show, to be called Star Trek Discovery, after the name of the featured starship, will only be available online via the broadcast network’s $5.99-a-month CBS All Access. However, all episodes of previous "Star Trek" TV series will be available on Netflix by the end of this year.



Google is launching YouTube Music, YouTube Kids and YouTube Gaming apps, to improve viewer experiences by tailoring content to their respective audiences.



SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 first stage on land at Cape Canaveral, Florida.



Researchers from the Netherland’s Delft University have developed a method to write data onto a surface, one atom at a time. Theoretically, it could provide storage with data densities of 500 terabits per square inch!



The American Civil Liberties Union posted a 27-page memo (PDF) outlining the unconstitutional acts Donald Trump has claimed he would implement if elected as President.



Tesla CEO Elon Musk is publicizing his "Master Plan Part Deux,", an update of his original 10-year-old- Master Plan which includes deploying electric pickup trucks, tractor-trailers and buses; improving self-driving systems; setting up a ride-sharing network of electric cars, and furthering the use of solar power. Since his original Master Plan called for him to start up a popular electric-vehicle company, I’d say he’s been successful so far!



A new generation of Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-connected toys using speech recognition similar to Apple's Siri to listen, understand, and respond to children, are being demonstrated. But privacy experts are concerned that data collected by these toys raise serious privacy questions, and current law doesn’t provide clear answers!



House Republicans attached an amendment to the defense authorization bill to prevent the Department of Defense from spending money to plan for climate change!



If you have PCs running Windows 7 that you aren’t ready to upgrade to Windows 10, and want to keep in place long-term, Windows Secrets posted a nice article on Keeping Windows 7 running for the long haul. Good info.



NetworkWorld posted a nice article on 9 ways to bend Windows 10 to your will, that includes videos that demonstrate how to implement each change.



American intelligence agencies told the White House they have "high confidence" that the Russian government was behind the cyberattack of the Democratic National Committee.



Israeli company Mobileye announced it would stop working with the automaker Tesla to provide the automaker with the computer chips and software that powers the automaker’s Autopilot system. Apparently, Mobileye was freaked out by the recent deadly crash of an Autopilot-controlled Tesla S.



Speaking of which, the National Transportation Safety Board reported that the driver in the fatal Tesla Model S crash was speeding 74 mph in a 65 mph zone with Autopilot engaged when his Model S slammed into the side of a tractor-trailer that turned left across the lanes in front of the car. As I noted before, only an idiot would trust their life to self-driving car technology by not continuing to monitor the car’s progress and the road around them!



A nice tip to pass on that I figured out: If you need to find out what video and audio chips you are using (usually, to get the latest drivers!), right-click the Command Prompt icon and click Run as Administrator, then enter dxdiag. This will call the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, which displays a lot about your system.



Chinese video streaming service company Letv renamed itself as Leeco, and bought out US TV maker Vizio for $2 billion. It is assumed that Leeco wants a platform to sell its video streaming services in the US.



Testing conducted of prototype 5G mobile equipment shows they are able to transmit 10 gigabits of data per second, roughly 100 times faster than current 4G devices. The new technology is not compatible with existing 3G or 4G networks, and will require wireless providers to deploy all-new network equipment in the millimeter wave radio spectrum (above 24 gigahertz), so it won’t be available for two to five more years.



Chinese wireless device makers are poised to start selling their smartphones in the US market at lower prices the current wireless market can’t match! I expect to see a trade war ahead!



The US Copyright office published its Section 1201 Rulemaking: Sixth Triennial Proceeding to Determine Exemptions to the Prohibition on Circumvention, which includes recommendations to allow vehicle owners to access and modify the software in their vehicles, and so-called "jail-breaking" of cell phones.



The legal case Perry v. CNN is asserting that the privacy protections afforded video rental customers in the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 should apply to users of smartphone apps as well. They appear to have a good case.



The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled (PDF) that Texas Senate Bill 14 — which requires voters to obtain government-issued photo IDs — violates the Voting Rights Act, saying in part:

As the State would have it, so long as the State can articulate a legitimate justification for its election law and some voters are able to meet the requirements, there is no [Voting Rights Act] Section 2 violation. This argument effectively nullifies the protections of the Voting Rights Act by giving states a free pass to enact needlessly burdensome laws with impermissible racially discriminatory impacts. The Voting Rights Act was enacted to prevent just such invidious, subtle forms of discrimination.

July 15th, 2016



A Tesla Model S owner is the unfortunate first fatality of a car on autopilot. This just points out that, until all cars on the road are on autopilot and talking to each other, you still need to be aware of what is going on outside the car (duh)!



Dell has stopped selling it’s Android-based Venue tablets. Even worse, they are not going to be pushing OS upgrades to Venue tablets already in use!



Just in case you weren’t sure about upgrading to Windows 10, Microsoft is planning to push a full-screen upgrade request reminding you of the July 29th deadline.



Big Oil company Exxon is claiming a First Amendment right to claim climate change is not real, and use that claim to block subpoenas for company documents that would prove they knew otherwise! A group of GOP climate change deniers have sided with Exxon. The basic case boils down to: do you have a First Amendment right to speak if you know what you are saying is a lie?!



Hewlett Packard Enterprise was awarded $3 billion in its lawsuit against Oracle over Oracle’s decision to cease developing versions of its database for Intel’s Itanium processor, which HP claims Oracle had contractually agreed to do. The case was brought over five years ago, when many of HP’s high-end servers ran Itanium CPUs, created by Intel specifically for the server market. The Itanium is slowly being replaced by Intel’s Xeon CPU line, but is still being offered in some very high end HP servers.



Streaming media no longer requires a set-top box. Roku is offering a Streaming Stick, a device slightly larger than a flash drive that plugs into an unused HDMI port on your HDTV, and comes with a remote control larger than it is, and mobile aps are available to control it from your iOS or Android mobile device!



Some are concerned that Apple’s patent to disable iPhone cameras during concerts could also be used to block the filming of protests, police activities, government meetings, etc., as well.



The Silicon Valley News reports that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating alleged age discrimination by Google:

"The magic word 'diversity' doesn't seem to apply to age in Silicon Valley," [UC Davis computer science professor Norman] Matloff said. "Age discrimination is rampant in the industry. We're not talking about age 55 necessarily — it even occurs at age 35."

Pay tends to rise with experience, Matloff noted. "Literally, the bottom line is money," he said. "The older people are just considered too expensive."

An article in The Intercept notes that Secret rules make it pretty easy for the FBI to spy on journalists, noting:

The classified rules, obtained by The Intercept and dating from 2013, govern the FBI’s use of national security letters, which allow the bureau to obtain information about journalists’ calls without going to a judge or informing the news organization being targeted. They have previously been released only in heavily redacted form.

Media advocates said the documents show that the FBI imposes few constraints on itself when it bypasses the requirement to go to court and obtain subpoenas or search warrants before accessing journalists’ information.

Local-built cell phone networks using new low-cost, fiber-connected equipment could give the traditional cell phone companies a run for their money.



After deep-pocket investors like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have shown that commercial exploitation of space is possible, venture capitalists have started moving into the industry to fund additional space ventures.



Now that biometrics are increasingly used to control access to devices, the law is unclear about whether you have the right to control access your own biometric data! Pending lawsuits may eventually change that, but Congress may eventually have to act to create protections under law. As the article notes:

Social Security numbers, when compromised, can be changed. Biometrics, however, are biologically unique to the individual; therefore, once compromised, the individual has no recourse, [and] is at heightened risk for identity theft.

Not exactly tech-related, but actor Jerry Doyle, who played Security Chief Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5, died at age 60. I still consider Babylon 5 the best Sci-Fi TV series ever broadcast. Mr. Doyle's death may prompt a binge watch of the B5 series (I own all 5 seasons of the show, and all the movies, on DVD).



Wired reports that almost all smartphones have chipsets for FM radio built in, but only about a third of the phones in the US have the chip enabled. Why? The wireless providers are afraid FM use will cut into streaming audio use, which the companies get paid for indirectly through data usage!



NASA's Mars rover Curiosity put itself into "safe mode" on July 2nd due to what is thought might be a software mismatch after a recent upload. However, the autonomous rover is still talking with its handlers back on Earth.



The Pokemon Go craze is getting out of hand. I wasn’t going to comment on it (computer games are not my thing!) but, playing in the Holocaust Museum, on the battlefield against ISIS? Really?! And how about accidents while watching the screen instead of the real world? Geesh!
Note: to request a Pokemon Go gym or Pokestop be removed, go to this page and click the submit a request button!



Since the earliest days of the PC, every model has used a keyboard for input, and a mouse since graphics user interface (GUI) operating systems came on board. But Microsoft is looking at alternative input methods to replace or augment them.



A ZDNet article titled FBI says its malware isn't malware because 'we're the good guys' points out the Feds’ twisted thinking:

The FBI does "not believe" that the hacking tools it uses to break into the computers of suspected criminals should be considered "malware," because it says they're used with good intentions.

In the court filing, first spotted by Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the FBI said that its hacking tools, so-called network investigative techniques (NIT), are not "malicious."

In other words, "if we do it, it’s OK. But if you do it, it’s bad!"



Samsung is showing off its 850 EVO 4TB solid state drives (SSD), being called the highest capacity consumer SSD. List price is $1,499.



Display screens that can be rolled up or folded should start showing up in products next year, probably first in mobile devices.



A new class of PCs dubbed "tabtops" are becoming increasingly popular. Sometimes called two-in-one tablets, these PCs (Microsoft’s Surface Pro is a good example), have both touch screens — to use as a tablet — and a keyboard that detaches or swings out of the way — to use like a laptop PC. They are increasingly popular among college students and enterprise "road warriors" that appreciate the light weight and versatility of these devices, and the ability to run full desktop software: most run full-up Windows 10 and Microsoft Office applications.



A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of Microsoft and reversed a lower-court decision that upheld a warrant issued by federal prosecutors seeking data stored in an email account stored in a Microsoft server located overseas. Prosecutors claimed Microsoft must comply because the data was hosted by a US-based company! The court stated in part:

We conclude that § 2703 of the Stored Communications Act does not authorize courts to issue and enforce against U.S.-based service providers warrants for the seizure of customer e-mail content that is stored exclusively on foreign servers.

If someone tries to sell you a 5G phone, don’t bite! As Wired succinctly reports, unlike previous generations of wireless technology, 5G will force wireless carriers to deploy new, expensive networking hardware. And the 5G standard is not even ready yet, and not expected to be finalized until at least 2020. So sit back and wait a few years, and enjoy 4G which is already pretty awesome in most respects.



June 30th, 2016



Intel released its timeline for its new Optane solid state disk SSD line, which it claims will be 1,000 times faster than NAND flash-based SSDs. The line includes models that can be installed directly on system boards.



Intel also rolled out its new Xeon Phi 7290, a 16GB, 1.50 GHz, 72-core CPU, targeted at the GPU market and intensive-computing tasks like deep learning systems.



One of biggest worries among historians is the idea of a "digital dark age", as darta stored on old storage media — floppy disks, Zip disks, etc. — becomes unreadable, and once-popular Web pages go off line, taking their documents with them. Vint Cerf, one of the engineers who actually invented the Internet, and the team behind the Internet Archive, are working on a Permanent Web that automatically archives everything put online.



With companies like Airbnb and Uber changing the way we live — and faced with strong lobbying against them by the traditional industries they are undercutting! — mayors from ten cities world-wide are joining forces to draft common policies to regulate them. Good luck with that.



President Obama joked that, once he leaves office he’ll "get on LinkedIn and see what comes up". Somehow I think he'll have plenty of job offers without trying to look for them!



TechRepublic reports that a recent survey found that the average age of software developers is under 30, which may validate industry thinking that older programmers are being passed over for employment due to their age.



Intel is considering selling off of its McAffee cyber-security business, originally purchased to allow them to build anti-malware code into its chips.



Apple was issued a patent for technology that would temporarily disable cell phones cameras when they receiving an infrared transmission from a broadcasting device the venue turns on.



Free Windows 10 upgrades end on July 29th, and InfoWorld suggests that you reserve you free upgrade even if you’re not sure if you intend to use it.



Japanese Internet company SoftBank bought out ARM Holdings, which designs chips used in a wide range of devices.



According to an annual federal wiretap report, although real-time intercept requests were up by 17 percent compared to the previous year, none of the requests made were rejected.



The Supreme Court ruled in Utah v. Strieff (PDF) that even though a police stop was illegal, an outstanding arrest warrant for a traffic violation made a search of his person legal.



The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled (PDF) that Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and media access control (MAC) addresses are not "personally identifiable information" (PII) under the Video Privacy Protection Act, which makes sharing the PII of minors illegal. Obviously, the court doesn’t understand how these numbers are used. IP addresses can track you right down to the cable modem or DSL modem in your house. MAC addresses are unique to each device with a network connection, and even include a manufacturer’s code. We use them all the time to find unknown devices on a network! So with both of these numbers, anyone with the technology (i.e. a web site being accessed!) can point to a "device with MAC address X (your kid’s computer iPhone, etc.), located at IP address Y (your house!)." That’s about as personally identifying as technology gets.



The Supreme Court ruled in Birchfield v. North Dakota (PDF), that persons cannot be prosecuted for refusing to submit to a warrantless blood test. However, warrantless breath tests are OK.



June 15th, 2016



Industry researchers Net Applications noted that Windows 10 market share was up 2% to 17.4% in May. However, Windows 7 was also up 0.7 percent to a 48.6% market share, and Windows XP still had a 10.1 percent market share. Microsoft can’t be happy with these numbers. Probably explains why they started pushing the Windows 10 update again!



Wired Magazine reports that AT&T is going to start imposing data usage caps on its Internet users, but unlimited data from AT&T-owned U-Verse TV or DIRECTV is free. See where this is going? Explain to me again why we shouldn’t have to impose net neutrality on ISPs?



Intel has changed its focus from PCs to servers, but makers of ARM-based CPUs are pushing new server chips sporting support for the newest memory, I/O ports and network technologies to compete.



Samsung’s new PM971-NVMe 512GB solid state drive is being dubbed the world's smallest SSD, at only 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm in size, and weighing only about one gram. It’s designed to connect directly to the system board of small devices.



NASA's Jupiter probe Juno captured its first image of Jupiter from 2.7 million miles out.



In an effort to restrict access by VPNs users which they assumed to be foreign users — online media streaming provide Netflix has been blocking many IPv6 users as well. A TechRepublic article does a good job of explaining the issue:

Ignoring the semantics of "tunneling" versus "VPN" for now, consider the situation from a complete perspective: A Netflix subscriber who pays for access using an American credit card, with an American billing address, with an IPv6 address that geolocates to the United States, and an IPv4 address that geolocates to the United States, and is physically present in the United States is blocked from using Netflix due to their inability to reliably determine that the user is where the preponderance of evidence indicates that they are.

This is not a user problem, this is a Netflix problem.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering banning a broadband providers’ practice dubbed "pay for privacy": making their customers pay to opt out of having their ISP tracking their online activities!



A recent accident revealed that Tesla cars communicate with the company in real time over the Internet while operating. Other auto manufacturers are expected to eventually follow suit.



Intel has released its new 24-core Xeon E7-8890 v4 CPU, targeted at the high-performance server market.



Microsoft bought out tech job search site Linkedin. Best guess is they’d like access to the data the site holds on all its users.



Company Pavegen is trying to market floor tiles to generate electricity by capturing the force of footsteps.



Media streaming company Rhapsody has purchased rights to the name Napster, and apparently plans to rename itself to the illustrious (notorious?) name to hopefully draw in more business!



May 31st, 2016



Google was awarded a patent for a new package delivery drone system.



The FBI has directed law enforcement agencies that use Stingray cell site simulators to gather evidence need to obtain the evidence by other means before presenting it at trial. The reason? Court cases are a matter of public record, and publicizing its use would violate the manufacturer’s non-disclosure agreement! Of course it’s much easier to find evidenceonce you know what and where it is by other means!



Mobile device maker HTC’s sales were down 64 percent in the first quarter of 2016. The company is hoping their HTC 10 smartphone will bring the company back.



TechRepublic posted an interesting article on the Potential legal challenges of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, noting, "Prosecutors and defense attorneys often cite prior case history to bolster their position. However, legal precedent is sorely lacking when it comes to cases involving the Internet of Things (IoT)."



SpaceX once again successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a ship at sea, after launching a Japanese communications satellite into orbit. This is the third Falcon 9 first stage they have recovered post-launch.



One of the dirty secrets of the Android smartphone business is that, even though Google regularly creates and distributes security updates for even the earliest versions of the Android OS, the wireless providers decide which ones to distribute to its customers, and like a recent Qualcomm bug fix, even important updates are often left out, which, of course, leaves phones running the OS versions that should have been patched vulnerable to hacking. And given that these vulnerabilities are disclosed by the industry, the hackers know exactly what to spend their time on!

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has apparently taken this issue on (about time someone did!), and filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing AT&T, Sprint Nextel, TMobile and Verizon of deceptive business practices and knowingly selling defective phones to consumers and businesses.



It’s important to remember that, when talking about the Internet of Things, we aren’t just talking about consumer products. They also include a whole range of machines and devices used in almost every industry, and often these devices are often more vulnerable than consumer products, and hacking them could lead to far more damage!



Google has been awarded two robotics patents that describe how robots could operate a warehouse, no people required! Bad for warehouse workers, but good for techies that build, program and repair robots!



No tech involved in this thought, but with all the talk flying around post-Orlando, I thought I’d jump in. First I don’t disagree that most Americans have a right to bear arms (“most” meaning we should exclude those who are homicidal, suicidal, planning violence against others, etc.). However, the ultra-right assertion that we need to arm ourselves to protect the people from our own government is woefully ignorant of modern military reality: unless you have access to equivalent weapons, no number of automatic attack rifles will serve very well when the Apache helicopters and M1A1 Abrams tanks come over the hill. And if you do somehow manage to hold out against those (not likely, but just to further the argument), a few A-10 Warthogs will take care of any tanks you might have rat-holed, and if necessary, a load of 500-pound bombs from a B-52 or two will take out what’s left. Get the idea? The time when "the people" could stop the military quietly went by the boards around World War I. Just sayin’!



Google released a beta candidate of version N of Android’s mobile OS.



Big Media is again trying to impose restrictions on Internet free speech by modifying the "notice and takedown" procedures in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — which critics say Big Media is already abusing, by using automated search routines to find infringing content, and in the process they often requesting take-down of short samples of content permissible under Fair Use. Now they want to take down whole sites, which often contain legitimate content as well.



In a TruthDig article titled The Federal Government Is Helping Police Nationwide Secretly Exploit Intrusive Technologies, Matthew Harwood and Jay Stanley warn that federal effort to promote "21st Century Policing" have morphed into local efforts by law enforcement to invade citizens’ privacy:

Indeed, the [Task Force on 21st Century Policing] report emphasized ways in which the police could engage communities, work collaboratively, and practice transparency in the use of those new technologies. Perhaps it won’t shock you to learn, however, that the on-the-ground reality of twenty-first-century policing looks nothing like what the task force was promoting. Police departments nationwide have been adopting powerful new technologies that are remarkably capable of intruding on people’s privacy, and much of the time these are being deployed in secret, without public notice or discussion, let alone permission.

Microsoft has made available a convenience rollup for Windows 7 SP1 that includes all updates pushed through April 2016. This will significantly simplify rebuilding a Windows 7 PC. About time! But don’t call it a Service Pack!



California startup Tri Alpha Energy thinks it can make fusion power a reality using new technologies other failed attempts a fusion power haven’t tried yet.



The India Space Research Organization (ISRO) had its first test flight of India’s Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), an unmanned test vehicle they hope will gather data necessary to start their own manned space flights.



The FBI has a database called the Next Generation Identification System (NGIS) that includes biometric data — fingerprints, iris scans, facial scans, palm prints, etc. — gleaned from numerous federal systems. The FBI wants to see the system exempted from the Privacy Act, which would keep citizens from finding out if their data is included!



As its name implies, new Wi-Fi feature called multi-user multiple input and multiple output (MU-MIMO) allows multiple users to use two or more data streams at the same time, which increases performance, but it’s limited to downloads only, and only on 802.11ac devices.



Computer Security journalist Brian Krebs reported on fake Dell tech support calls where the caller knew the serial number and service ID for their Dell PC! The assumption is that Dell or one of its support partners have been hacked! So if you own a Dell PC and get an unsolicited support call from Dell (or anyone for that matter!), hang up!



Non-tech, but if you’re a Fantasy fan, a so-far unnamed major studio has purchased the TV rights to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time fantasy novel series. This is good news, since the huge 14-novel series would be impossible to do via film. Even as a TV series, it would take more than just one 22-episode season just to get through some of the longer books and do them justice!



The ACLU asked a Seattle court to join Microsoft’s suit against the Justice Department, objecting to government demands to keep requests for customer data secret, saying the gag orders violate their customers’ Fourth Amendment rights. The civil rights organization joined the case as a Microsoft customer!



After pulling back the automatic push of the Windows 10 upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1, Microsoft started pushing it again as a recommended upgrade, which means PCs set to automatically install updates are being automatically upgraded to Windows 10! Not cool. That’s why most companies I’ve worked at turn off automated downloads, then install updates manually after testing them first.



Oracle lost the lawsuit it brought against Google over the use of Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in its Android OS. The judge found that, although APIs are copyrighted, using them fell under the copyright law’s fair use doctrine. This is good news for the software industry. Programming language APIs are published by publishers to describe the variables and data types needed to program using the language. Therefore it is impossible to program software using a language without complying with the language’s APIs!

April 30th, 2016



The developer edition of the Opera Web browser includes a free virtual Private Networking (VPN) service that includes cloud-based servers. Unlike corporate VPNs, which provide a secure link to a corporate network, this VPN is designed to allow a private connection to the cloud, to protect users' privacy.



InfoWorld posted a good review of Cloud-based storage services Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Joyent Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. I know these services are very popular, particularly with savvy home users who usually find the low-end free offerings big enough gigabyte-wise for their needs. But my biggest concern with storing files online is security. Sure, they all will tell you that their services are secure. But no security is foolproof — despite assurances by the companies offering them — and it will always be easier to break into a cloud-based service — which has to have holes open to the Internet! — than one sitting on a server on a non-routable local network.



With PC sales steadily declining, ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes warned that The PC industry needs to evolve or get ready for extinction, saying:

Rather than bore you with paragraphs of history and analysis, here, in a nutshell, are the problems facing the PC industry:

• PCs are lasting a long time (and as SSDs replace hard drives, their lifespans are only going to get longer)


• New releases of Windows aren't driving sales anymore


• Smartphones and tablets are getting faster and more capable with each passing iteration


• Smartphones and tablets have taken over many of the tasks that PCs used to do


• People are finding they can live without a PC (some 20 percent of millennials don't have a PC at all)

As I’ve noted before, desktop PCs will not go away completely, particularly in the enterprise, and particularly for tasks like graphics design, computer Aided Drafting (CAD), video editing, etc. But for my grandkids' generation, tablets and smartphones are their primary means or accessing the Internet, playing games, etc. But they still need a PC for doing their homework! Granted, the PC my grandson will be taking to University of Oregon with him this fall is a Surface Pro 4 tablet, but it runs Windows 10 and Microsoft Office, and has a detachable keyboard, and a screen bigger than most desktop PCs I used in the last decade!



Tech support folks are wondering whether Microsoft intentionally pushed a Windows Update to Windows 7 PCs that causes a blue screen error 0x0000006B on copies of Windows 7 it considered to be pirated.



HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California have developed a process for printing 3D parts using ceramics. Parts made with this technology have the potential to be stronger and lighter than metal parts.



The Windows Secrets newsletter has posted info on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update due out in July. Preview builds have been pushed to members of theWin10 Insider Preview system. Of course, what features actually make it into the production version could vary wildly.



After its 12,000+ layoff, Intel is cutting its PC-related products, while increasing emphasis on its 3D Xpoint memory, Xeon server CPUs, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and silicon photonics.



A panel of federal judges upheld the FCC's Net Neutrality rules. The Internet industry is expected to take the next step and appeal to the Supreme Court.



The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting article that discusses the question Should You Be Allowed to Prevent Drones From Flying Over Your Property? Current law protects the space over a property up to 500 feet, but the law was set in response to the increasing use of aircraft, which typically fly very high, not drones, which can fly very low and hover in place.



Commercial space launch company SpaceX won an $82.7 million U.S. Air Force contract to launch a GPS satellite.

SpaceX also announced it plans to launch an unmanned Dragon capsule to Mars as early as 2018.



Wired Magazine posted a nice article on the vulnerabilities of Signaling System No. 7 (SS7), the administrative network that all cell phone networks operate on top of:

The problem is that SS7 is based on trust. Any request a telecom receives is considered legitimate. Therefore, anyone with access to a server or gateway on the SS7 network can send a location or redirect request to your telecom for purposes of roaming, and the telecom will likely comply, even if the roaming request comes from St. Petersburg or Mumbai and you and your phone are in New York. This makes it possible for a remote attacker to spy on lawmakers, corporate executives, military personnel, activists and others.

A former Philadelphia Police sergeant suspected of possessing child pornography was jailed for contempt of court because he refuses to assist the court in decrypting his hard drives. The defendant’s attorney claims that forcing him to decrypt is drives violates his Fifth Amendment protection against compelling him to be a witness against himself! Of course, law enforcement says he has nothing to fear if he has nothing to hide! But it’s not that simple. If the cops are searching a room in the real world subsequent to a warrant, anything they find “in plain view” is fair game. However, once the law has access to a drive, its entire contents are fair game, and there’s no telling what they might find.



April 20th, 2016



Windows Secrets newsletter posted an article on Tracking Microsoft updates that can be useful if you want to find out which updates have and haven’t been installed.



Tesla unvieled its Model 3 all-electric sedan, which lists at $35,000. Although it won’t be available until 2017, they already have over 115,000 reservations!



Tech author John Havens, in his recent book titled Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity to Maximize Machines suggests that, since artificial intelligence (AI) is going to happen whether we like it or not, if we want to prevent rogue technology, we need to build ethics into AI.

As a SciFi fan, I’ve always thought that Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics should be implemented in reality. The Three Laws state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws

How they would be implemented has always been the rub!



ZDNet’s Larry Seltzer, in an article titled Stop the Obama administration from surrendering authority over the Internet, thinks transferring the Internet's DNS Root control to ICANN is a bad idea, saying:

To put it bluntly, I don't understand why we would do this. The only changes it could bring are bad ones. Once our authority over the parties administering core Internet infrastructure is gone, ultimate political control over it is gone. I think this is a bad thing. The US has done an admirable job of supervising the development of the Internet and there's no evidence that it has ever exerted untoward influence over the processes. I like the idea that the administrative bodies are clearly accountable to some clearly independent body.

The commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, launched its New Shepard rocket and successfully landed the booster for the third time in five months.

Space.com posted videos of SpaceX’s booster rocket landing on a sea-going platform. Throwing away large, expensive single-use booster rockets is one of the single largest costs related to launching spacecraft.

Reusable boosters are essential for reducing launch costs, which will make commercial more affordable and practicle.



Microsoft is shipping the Development Edition of its Hololens augmented reality headset. Unlike virtual reality headsets that play games and other visual content, augmented reality displays the real world with additional content overlaid on it.



The latest version of online messaging service WhatsApp uses full end-to-end encryption for all messages, phone calls, photos, and videos moved through the service. And, of course, there are versions of WhatsApp that run all phones running Apple iOS, Google Android or Windows Mobile.



InfoWorld posted an article detailing Top 25 free apps for Windows 10. A nice mix of tools, utilities and built-in apps.



Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) introduced H.R. 2666, No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act, which "prohibits the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating the rates charged for broadband Internet access service." If enacted this law would give ISPs free reign to charge whatever they want, charge different users different prices for content or services, and add any new fees they like, and would prevent FCC enforcement. They should call this the Anti-Net Neutrality Act!



Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California posted a draft bill that would require encryption system vendors and service providers to ensure products and services they license can make encrypted communications intelligible. The only functional way to do this is to build in a back door. And we’ve already talked at length about how bad an idea that is!

The tech industry and several congressmen and senators, including our Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), came out against the bill. Sen. Wyden tweeted, "I will do everything in my power to block Burr-Feinstein anti-encryption bill. It makes Americans less safe." You go Ron!



What?! A bill in congress that would actually protect online privacy?! H.R. 699, The Email Privacy Act, would give email and data stored on the cloud new privacy protections from law enforcement searches, including requiring a warrant to access it!



Microsoft filed a suit in federal court against the Justice Department, objecting to government gag orders that force tech companies to turn over data without their customers' knowledge. The software giant argued that such gag orders are unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment.



America Online founder Steve Case, in a TechRepublic Q&A, says that, as the "Internet of Everything" (as he calls it!) becomes reality, government needs to partner with the technology industry to craft regulations that focus less on technology and more on the people using it, saying:

Government needs to understand they can't just focus on keeping bad things from happening. They also have to enable good things to happen. They do have to be more agile and lean into the future and be more flexible and take more risks, and it requires engaging with the innovators, so that they understand the situation before they decide to make any kind of regulatory policy decisions. Part of my frustration is that they're talking past each other. We have to get beyond that and figure out a way to have a constructive dialogue.

Computer Security expert Bruce Schneier, in a Washington Post article titled Your iPhone just got less secure. Blame the FBI,

This is the trade-off we have to consider: do we prioritize security over surveillance, or do we sacrifice security for surveillance?

The problem with computer vulnerabilities is that they're general. There's no such thing as a vulnerability that affects only one device. If it affects one copy of an application, operating system or piece of hardware, then it affects all identical copies. A vulnerability in Windows 10, for example, affects all of us who use Windows 10. And it can be used by anyone who knows it, be they the FBI, a gang of cyber criminals, the intelligence agency of another country — anyone.

And once a vulnerability is found, it can be used for attack . . .

Wired posted a nice article about Microsoft’s Holoportation 3D communication system. Think of the Star Wars Jedi meeting with half of them physically elsewhere but still interacting with each other in real time.



In a Wired Magazine article titled You Pay to Read Research You Fund. That’s Ludicrous, Ryan Merkley points out that anyone wishing to read the results of federally-funded research has to pay for the privilege, saying:

If it wasn’t so well-established, the traditional model of academic publishing would be considered scandalous. Every year, hundreds of billions in research and data are funded, in whole or in part, with public dollars. We do this because we believe that knowledge is for the public good, but the public gets very little access to the fruits of its investment. In the US, the combined value of government, non-profit, and university-funded research in 2013 was over $158 billion—about a third of all the R&D in the US that year. Publishers acquire this research free of charge, and retain the copyrights, even though the public funded the work. Researchers aren’t paid by publishers for their research as it’s sold piece-by-piece or by subscription through academic journals. The reviewers who evaluate the research aren’t paid either. So we pay for it, and then we have to pay again if we want to read it.

Vayyar Imaging is selling the Walabot, an add-on device for Android smartphones that adds a radar sensor capability to your phone!

March 31st, 2016



Microsoft is offering users of Oracle's database management system a free license for Microsoft SQL Server if they migrate their databases. There’s a catch though: they have to purchase a Software Assurance subscription.



In a court filing responding to the FBI’s brief in the iPhone case, Apple basically said the FBI’s technical experts didn’t know what they were talking about, and proceeded to explain why!



Nike announced that it has created a version of the self-lacing shoes made popular in the movie Back to the Future, called the HyperAdapt 1.0.



The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has submitted a plan to the U.S. Government, theoretically developed by the international Internet community, that would transfer control of central root zone of the domain name system and other core databases to ICANN from the United States Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

I have mixed feelings about this move. The Internet is a global network, and up to now its name system has been under the exclusive control of the U.S. Government. As a long-time member of ICANN@Large before it was captured by corporate Internet interests, I understand the desire of other countries around the world to have a say in Internet governance. However, we need to remember that the Internet is a U.S. invention, created through a cooperative effort between the US government, US corporations, and US academia; and before we give up control, we need to ensure that our US interests are fairly represented. We also need to remember that the US has done a good job of keeping the Internet open and free for everyone to use, without any political, religeous or any other manipulation or censorship. If we are to transfer DNS root authority, we should only do so if we can assure that interests foreign and domestic can't change the free, open nature of the Internet.



Another nice quote from Apple CEO Tim Cook to its customers that describes Apple’s role in the message encryption process:

I’m the FedEx guy. I’m taking your package and I’m delivering it. I just do it like this. My job isn’t to open it up, make a copy of it, put it over in my cabinet in case somebody later wants to come say, I’d like to see your messages. That’s not a role that I play. It’s not a role that I think I should play. And it’s certainly not a role I think you want me to play.

Lest you think that Net Neutrality remains an intellectual argument, T-Mobile has been offering a Binge On feature that allows users to stream content from selected content services without effecting their data usage . . . as long as the content provider is paying T-Mobile for the privilege! So what is the chance that a T-Mobile user is going to visit a non-payer’s site to stream content if they know it’s going to use up their data? And how long will small sites that can’t afford T-Mobil’s danegeld stay in business if this becomes a practice industry-wide?



Another example of why we need Net Neutrality: Netflix has admitted it has been throttling its streaming video for AT&T and Verizon mobile users for five years. Netflix claims the action is intended protect mobile users from going over their monthly data usage limit. More likely, it’s an under-the-table deal with the mobile providers, who for years have been relentlessly trying to avoid the costs associated with deploying new technologies to increase their data throughput. But thse so-called "zero rating" practices are leading towards a multi-tiered Internet that provides content based on the content providers’ ability to pay.

San Jose Mercury News columnist Troy Wolverton, in an article titled Battle for net neutrality isn't over , warns that Internet and wireless providers’ "zero rating" practices are a threat to net neutrality, saying:

On their face, the zero-rating plans sound consumer-friendly and broadband providers tout them as such. Who doesn't want to get something for free or be able to access the Internet without having to tap into any of your precious data bits? But they actually have the potential to be pretty pernicious.

That's because zero-rating programs can also profoundly influence consumer behavior. Think about it: Which site are you more likely to visit — the one that's free or the one that costs you money or taps into your data allotment?

Because of those incentives, zero-rating programs put broadband providers in the position of picking winners and losers on the Internet.

The US government has been using civil cases and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) rulings to obtain software source code, looking for security flaws it can use for surveillance!



The latest thinking is that solid state drives (SSDs) are going to eventually replace hard drives, the only question is when. I don’t disagree, but I think it will only happen when the gigabytes-per-dollar and mean time between failure rates for SSDs exceeds that of hard drives, and we’re not even close yet in either department.



The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Samsung v. Apple patent case. This should be fun!



In an interesting change of course in the Apple v. FBI encryption case, the FBI asked the court for a continuance to put the cort action on hold, saying they had found a third party to break into the phone! I’m thinking they had already been following this path, but were trying to use the Apple case as a test case to set a precedent, but backed away after Apple refused to budge, and the technology industry, and civil rights and privacy advocacy groups came out backing Apple!



One of the cofounders of chip maker Intel, Andy Grove died at age 79.



Woodrow Hartzog, in an MIT Technology Reviw article titled The Feds Are Wrong to Warn of “Warrant-Proof” Phones, debunks the FBI's arguments, saying:

For most of mankind’s history, the overwhelming majority of our communications were warrant-proof in the sense that they just disappeared. They were ephemeral conversations. Even wiretapping was limited to intercepting phone transmissions, not retrieving past conversations. For law enforcement purposes, encrypted phones are equally inaccessible: no one can recover information from them. But Comey’s description of warrant-proof technologies is vague enough to apply to many different things. We should use a different term if we care about the preserving the ephemerality of some communications. Otherwise we might end up with a requirement to store everything.

Wired posted some deleted scenes from Star Trek: the Force Awakens. Just sayin’!



TechRepublic posted an article titled Here's how to see just how addicted to mobile you are! So, how adicted are you?!



Caroline Craig, in an InfoWorld article titled Apple vs. FBI is over, but the encryption battle rages on , points out the duplicity of the FBI, claiming Apple was the only one that could break into the terrorist’s iPhone, while all the while working with another company to break into it:

"This case was never about a phone. It was a grab for power, " said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future. "The FBI already had the capability to hack this phone using forensic tools, but they thought this case would be a slam-dunk — a way for them to set a dangerous precedent that they've wanted for years."

The FBI and DOJ publicly claimed at least 19 times that there was no way to open the iPhone without Apple's help — a core tenet of their case using the All Writs Act. But it turns out the DOJ was already in talks in February with Israeli security firm Cellebrite about hacking an iPhone 6 for a drug case. The DOJ never mentioned Cellebrite as an alternative possibility in its filings with the court. In this case, that omission essentially amounts to lying.

Here’s one of the reasons I like to do business with Amazon: after a Google engineer complained about poorly-made USB-C cables being sold through Amazon, the online retail giant banned the vendor selling the defective cables, and updated their policy to require that USB cables sold through their site have to comply with the standard specifications published by the USB Implementers Forum Inc. (USB-IF), the non-profit corporation that developed the Universal Serial Bus specification.



After not getting the public outrage I’m sure they would like to have gotten in their very pubic encryption battle against Apple — instead of the very public outrage from the technology community and privacy advocates! — the FBI would probably like the whole thing to go away. But Apple is now upping the ante by demanding the details about how the San Bernardino iPhone was hacked!



March 15th, 2016



Netflix has been taking heat from users for blocking user access from Virtual Private Networking (VPN) sites. VPN technology was originally invented to allow corporate users to connect to their company networks through the company’s firewall via a "secure tunnel" that is almost impossible to break into. However, many users overseas have been paying for VPN services in the US so they can stream US Netflix content overseas. Netflix’s move is intended to keep Big Media happy, since they don’t want Region 1 content intended for the US market from finding itself overseas into other regions. However, many small companies in the US, who may be running a home-based business over their home networks, and are using these same US-based VPN services, are also being blocked.

In an increasingly-globalized economy, region encoding no longer makes sense. It was initially created at a time when DVD production was the newest, best way to distribute media; but films shown in movie theaters were still being distributed primarily via actual wide-format film on large, heavy metal reels several feet wide! Big Media claimed it was economically impossible to make enough copies to distribute a film worldwide at the same time. So the world was broken up into six regions, to reflect the schedule by which the films were distributed. DVDs were encoded to reflect which region or regions they were intended to play in, and only distributed for sale in that region after the film had first run in the region’s theaters. DVD players were built with technology to read the region code from the DVD and only play it if the player was designed to play DVDs from that region. Region Encoding is viewed by some legal minds as a violation of the First Sale Doctrine), and a market for region-free DVD and Blu-Ray players quickly cropped up and they are still widely available today. The VPN blocking is intended to perpetuate the same limitations for streaming media.



The New York Times reported that WhatsApp, and parent company Facebook, may be sued by the FBI, who can’t decrypt encrypted chat data. Unlike the Apple iPhone case, where the FBI just wants to break into the phone, in WhatsApp’s case, chat data is end-to-end encrypted, and there is nothing the company can do to assist the FBI in reading already encrypted messages. To comply with what the feds want, WhatsApp would have to make an engineer a change to its software security to create a new vulnerability, which they would then be forced to push onto the user's device to allow the FBI to eavesdrop on future communications!



In a case similar but unrelated to the San Bernardino case getting all the press, a federal judge in a New York drug case ruled that the U.S. government cannot force Apple to unlock an iPhone, saying:

The implications of the government’s position are so far-reaching – both in terms of what it would allow today and what it implies about Congressional intent in 1789 – as to produce impermissibly absurd results.

Microsoft President Brad Smith posted a letter online siding with Apple in its battle with the FBI over unlocking a terrorist’s iPhone, saying:

To be clear, we have the deepest respect for the work that law enforcement does to investigate crimes and keep people safe. We believe that our company and our industry have not only a role but a responsibility to help keep the public safe, in accordance with the law. We take this responsibility seriously and I’ve previously highlighted examples of how Microsoft has acted quickly to respond to legal requests from law enforcement authorities – for example, when French police were pursuing fugitives following the terrible terrorist attacks in Paris last year.

But it is also clear that people won’t use technology that they don’t trust. Modern laws that protect people’s most personal data are essential to building trust in technology.

A recent article in the San Jose Mercury News notes that, for newer iPhones with TouchID fingerprint sensor, law enforcement has been compelling owners to swipe the phone with their finger to unlock the phone without first seeking a search warrant.



AT&T recently filed a lawsuit against the city of Louisville, Kentucky after the city passed a measure allowing Google Fiber to use utility poles throughout the city, some of which belong to AT&T.



An amicus brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), siding with Apple, pointed out another novel reason why forcing software backdoors is a bad idea:

If the government's interpretation of the [1789 All Writs Act] law holds, not only could it force Apple to create the cryptographically signed software it seeks here, but it could force Apple to deliver similar signed software using Apple's automatic-update infrastructure. This would be devastating for cybersecurity, because it would cause individuals to legitimately fear and distrust the software update mechanisms built into their products.

Speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft's chief legal officer Brad Smith spoke in support of Apple in the encryption backdoor argument, saying:

We need to keep in mind that when it comes to security, there is no technology as important as encryption. And despite the best of intentions one thing is clear — the path to hell starts at the backdoor.

In a Wired article titled How the Feds Could Get Into iPhones Without Apple’s Help, Josh Valcarcel suggests that the FBI’s case against Apple might be flawed, saying:

. . . the [200-year-old law All Writs] Act requires the government to show that it has no other method of extracting data from the phones. And according to experts who spoke with WIRED, that’s not necessarily the case. They say there are ways the government can extract data on phones without Apple’s help, from using outside contractors to asking its friends at the NSA — ways that it has, in fact, already used in the past.

In a Wired article titled The Future Of Voting Could Be A Dystopian Nightmare, Damon Beres warns that "computers could become so adept at molding your behavior that you won’t really choose who you vote for anymore," explaining:
.

Machine learning exists all around us today. Basically, the term refers to a program’s ability to study data, recognize patterns and then make predictions based on that data. Facebook, for example, uses machine learning to determine what you think is interesting and serve you similar content. You should never forget that anything you post online — be it a link, status or photograph — is really just data for an algorithm to read and learn from.

[Carnegie Mellon University’s Professor Illah] Nourbakhsh fears that this type of machine learning could soon become so advanced that politicians will be able to tap into programs that perfectly understand voters. Those programs, which Nourbakhsh said will likely be available only to the richest groups at first, could help shape how voters behave, based on what those people have done in the past.

Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the Clinton administration Secretary of Labor posted An Open Letter to the Republican Establishment in which he explains why they may regret radicalizing the right-wingers backing Donald Trump, saying:

You are the captains of American industry, the titans of Wall Street, and the billionaires who for decades have been the backbone of the Republican Party. You’ve invested your millions in the GOP in order to get lower taxes, wider tax loopholes, bigger subsidies, more generous bailouts, less regulation, lengthier patents and copyrights and stronger market power allowing you to raise prices, weaken unions and bigger trade deals allowing you outsource abroad to reduce wages, easier bankruptcy for you but harder bankruptcy for homeowners and student debtors, and judges who will let you to engage in insider trading and who won’t prosecute you for white-collar crimes.

All of which have made you enormously wealthy. Congratulations.

But I have some disturbing news for you. You’re paying a big price &mdash and about to pay far more.

Mozilla has released the first proposal of its WebVR Application Programming Interface (API), which will allow Web developers to add 3D content to their pages!



According to an article in Wired, most of the large tech companies have lined up with Apple against the FBI’s attempt to force the tech giant to write code to break iPhone encryption. Lots of good quotes in this article from numerous sources!



Toyota Motor Corporation’s Partner Robotics group is developing a wearable device worn around the shoulders that helps the blind person wearing it learn about the world around them!



Windows Secrets pointed out a disturbing problem that could crop up on Windows 7 and newer systems: the Windows Indexing Service and the Microsoft Customer Improvement program are both set to run when your PC is asleep. However, if the PC has a dead fan or any other problem to limit air flow, these services can actually drive the PC into thermal overload, which, even if caught immediately, could degrade the life of the PC’s components!



In an InfoWorld article titled Why security is really all about trust, Roger A. Grimes notes that for Apple and other tech manufacturers, compromising the security of their products would violate users’ trust, saying:

The issue [of trust] is dogging Uber and other tech companies right now: Uber wants its customers to feel safe enough to hop into a stranger's car, despite horror stories stemming from a few bad apples. Apple, and nearly every other big name in the IT industry, is fighting the feds so that customers feel they can safely store private information. Every software vendor works hard against bugs and hackers to keep the trust of their customers.

Once trust is harmed, it can be impossible to regain. Ask anyone who’s ever been cheated on.

A coalition of civil rights activists sent a letter to the court in the Apple v. FBI case, saying:

As Rev. Jesse Jackson recalled last week, one need only look to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and wiretapping of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to recognize theFBI has not always respected the right to privacy for groups it did not agree with. Even the FBI now agrees COINTELPRO amounted to a violation of the FirstAmendment.

And many of us, as civil rights advocates, have become targets of government surveillance for no reason beyond our advocacy or provision of social services forthe underrepresented.

We urge you to consider the dire implications for free speech and civil liberties if the FBI is permitted to force Apple to create technology to serve its investigatory purposes.

The Supreme Court decided not to hear Apple’s appeal of a case brought against them by the Justice Department and numerous states, who accused the online giant of violating antitrust laws when the company entered the e-book market in 2010. The government accused Apple and five publishers of price-fixing the e-books market in an effort to cut into Amazon's share of the industry.



InfoWorld posted a nice article on new emerging technologies for hard drives and flash media that could drive storage size per dollar up. Interesting stuff.



Israeli startup Deep Optics is developing eye glasses with liquid-crystal lenses that can automatically refocus.



Be careful, High School students! Your Free Speech could get you targeted by the feds as a terrorist! The FBI has posted a controversial document titled Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools (PDF) that instructs high school officials to look out for students who criticize government policies or talk about "western corruption" and report them as potential future terrorists! Teachers are asked to pay special attention to students who are poor, immigrants or have travelled to "suspicious" countries. Although they don’t come right out and say it, the program is obviously intended to target Muslim-American students!



Shareholders approved a merger between hard disk maker Western Digital and flash memory pioneers SanDisk. With solid state drives (SSDs) slowly replacing traditional spinning-disk hard drives, the merger makes perfect sense!




February 28th 2016



And so it begins: A sixth-grader in Palo Alto, California was expelled from his school for having genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, even though he did not have the disease. His parents are suing the school district for genetic discrimination.



TechRepublic posted an interesting article titled The 21 technology tipping points that will transform our world. Interesting stuff, but I don’t know how much I’d like to see a few of them.



Bruce Fein posted a Washington Times article titled Regulatory state endangers civil liberties, that warns:

The annual economic cost of the federal regulatory state exceeds $2 trillion. But its seldom-mentioned toll on civil liberties is equally troublesome.

Heavily regulated industries ordinarily refrain from opposing unconstitutional encroachments because their financial fates pivot on a host of discretionary regulatory decisions.

Space.com posted an article titled Star Trek: History & Effect on Space Technology, that describes how the show has affected actual technology.



Physicists at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte have created a light effect transistor that is controlled by light. It is easier to create and can supposedly be made smaller than the field effect transistors currently being used.



With its traditional silicon-based designs reaching the limits of speed and power savings, Intel is looking at alternative materials to keep making faster, less power-hungry chips.



ZDNet’s Zack Whittaker reports that most of the Windows vulnerabilities experienced last year could have been prevented by removing accounts with administrative rights. This ignores the facts that many custom business applications are written to require administrative rights to work correctly!



ZDNet’s Ed Bott reports that although many consumer-level users are upgrading to Windows 10, Windows 7 still dominates on enterprise PCs, and they aren’t in a hurry to upgrade.



SiliconValley.com’s Troy Wolverton explains new business plans called "zero rating" that the Big ISPs are using to get around the Federal Communications Commission’s "Open Internet" rules:

Zero rating is the practice by broadband providers of offering customers access to particular apps, sites or services for free or without tapping into customers' limited monthly allocations of bandwidth. Examples include Facebook Zero, which offers consumers in developing countries free access to the social network; AT&T's Sponsored Data service, which the company pitches as a kind of 1-800 service for the Internet; and T-Mobile's new Binge On service, which allows users to stream video from certain providers without that data counting against their monthly caps.

A Berkeley professor and a graduate student have invented a robotic cockroach that could be used to squeeze through cracks to find victims in collapsed buildings.



A report from the Harvard University Berkman Center's Berklett Cybersecurity Project, titled Don’t Panic (PDF) questions the Federal Governments assertion that bad guys can "go dark," saying:

. . . we take the warnings of the FBI and others at face value: conducting certain types of surveillance has, to some extent, become more difficult in light of technological changes. Nevertheless, we question whether the “going dark” metaphor accurately describes the state of affairs. Are we really headed to a future in which our ability to effectively surveil criminals and bad actors is impossible? We think not.

Broadband provider ViaSat and aerospace firm Boeing are deploying three satellites for a new global Internet network. The system will be able to provide 100MB service direct to users. Talk about getting rid of the middle-man!



In the fine print of the service agreement for Amazon Web Services’ Lumberyard 3D graphics engine, intended for use in online games, is a zombie apocalypse clause. Really!



Tiwanese PC maker Acer and 74 other hardware makers (so far) in 25 countries have signed up to preload Microsoft apps and services on their Android mobile devices, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype.



All-electric auto maker Tesla confirmed that the new Tesla Model 3 will start at $35,000.



Trekies rejoice! A new Star Trek TV series is in production. The as-yet unnamed series will be based in the new Star Trek universe, falling after the pending Star Trek Beyond movie in time.



According to a Worldwide Survey of Encryption Products (PDF) conducted by Harvard University professors Bruce Schneier, Kathleen Seidel, and Saranya Vijayakumar argues that many encryption products are created in other countries, so mandating encryption back doors will only drive business to other countries who don’t require them, concluding:

Laws regulating product features are national, and only affect people living in the countries in which they’re enacted. It is easy to purchase products, especially software products, that are sold anywhere in the world from everywhere in the world. Encryption products come from all over the world. Any national law mandating encryption backdoors will overwhelmingly affect the innocent users of those products. Smart criminals and terrorists will easily be able to switch to more-secure alternatives.

The Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) spacecraft Dragon was the first private spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station, under a NASA contract to lift supplies to the ISS.



A ZDNet article describes how presidential campaigns use data and social media to microtarget voters.



Computer security expert Bruce Schnier, in an article titled When hacking could enable murder warns about the potential threats the Internet of Things, self-driving cars and other autonomous devices could cause, saying:

We're heading toward a world where driverless cars will automatically communicate with each other and the roads, automatically taking us where we need to go safely and efficiently. The confidentiality threats are real: Someone who can eavesdrop on those communications can learn where the cars are going and maybe who is inside them. But the integrity threats are much worse.

Someone who can feed the cars false information can potentially cause them to crash into each other or nearby walls. Someone could also disable your car so it can't start. Or worse, disable the entire system so that no one's car can start.

A man learned his wife was pregnant by examining her Fitbit data . . . with a little help from friends online!



Researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) were able to detect gravity waves for the first time. This is important because gravity is the "third leg" of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the other two being electricity and magnetism. Virtually all of our current technology exists by manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum, the interaction between electricity and magnetism. However, Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggests that two additional spectra exist: electrogravatic (the interaction between electricity and gravity) and magnetogravatic (the interaction between magnetism and gravity). It is theorized that being able to manipulate these two spectra could lead to SciFi staples such as artificial gravity, tractor beams, and propulsion systems.



Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose company is in the middle of the government effort to bypass encryption security posted an open letter to their customers, explaining why they refused to comply with the FBI’s request to build a custom back door for the iPhone operating system, concluding:

Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.

We are challenging the FBI’s demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.

While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

Scientists at the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have developed a five dimensional (5D) write/read process to store up to 360TB of digital data on one-inch diameter nanostructure glass disks! Think "data crystals!"



The latest major victim of ransomware is Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, who paid hackers $17,000 in bitcoins to get back control of their computers!



Julian Sanchez, in a Time Magazine article titled This Is the Real Reason Apple Is Fighting the FBI does a good job of describing one of the key technical reasons back doors are a bad thing:

The global market for both traditional computing devices and the new breed of networked appliances depends critically on an underlying ecosystem of trust—trust that critical security updates pushed out by developers and signed by their cryptographic keys will do what it says on the tin, functioning and interacting with other code in a predictable and uniform way. The developer keys that mark code as trusted are critical to that ecosystem, which will become ever more difficult to sustain if developers can be systematically forced to deploy those keys at the behest of governments. Users and consumers will reasonably be even more distrustful if the scope of governments’ ability to demand spyware disguised as authentic updates is determined, not by a clear framework, but a hodgepodge of public and secret court decisions.

In a USA Today article titled Apple, the FBI and free speechlawyers David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman suggest the federal court order compelling Apple to write new software for iPhone may violate the First Amendment, saying:

Computer code can be speech: no less than video games (which the Supreme Court found to be protected), code can convey ideas and even social messages. A new encryption algorithm or mathematical technique, for example, does not lose its character as speech merely because it is expressed in a computer language instead of English prose.

That’s not to say that all code is absolutely protected. But there’s a strong case to be made where code embodies deeply held views on issues of public policy and individual rights — such as the right to be free from government surveillance. Forcing a person to write code to crack his own software is little different from demanding that he endorse the principle of doing so.

In an InfoWorld article titled Why we must defend our last shred of privacy journalist and computer security author Roger A. Grimes places the Apple v. FBI privacy issue in a larger historical context, saying:

There’s little our governments don’t already know about us. They know what you read and buy. They know where you drive, where you go on the Internet, who you communicate with.

The problem is that a society without privacy protections is not a free society. Although the government may tout extreme, individual circumstances that justify violation of privacy, once a new Rubicon is crossed, it's never uncrossed. In nearly every instance where governments have been given the legal right to invade our privacy, they exceed the given authority and exercise those privacy invasions to far more people and instances than permitted by a specific case.

How techies are losing the Apple-FBI privacy fight information security journalist Fahmida Y. Rashid

The thing is, even with all the secret documents that Snowden stole from the NSA, the average user isn't any more concerned about government surveillance today than he or she was three years ago. Sure, it's terrible, but when it comes to user privacy it's still a world of weak passwords, mobile devices with no passcode (or TouchID) enabled, and an overall lack of urgency. Skip the arguments about how if the FBI wins this round, law enforcement will keep coming back with more requests against more devices.

. . . If the FBI gets its way on bypassing this iPhone 5c's protections, what would stop other governments from coming to Apple, Dell, and other companies and asking for help modifying the devices we use to further their own purposes?

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology posted a Keys Under Doormats: mandating insecurity by requiring government access to all data and communications

We have found that the damage that could be caused by law enforcement exceptional access requirements would be even greater today than it would have been 20 years ago. In the wake of the growing economic and social cost of the fundamental insecurity of today’s Internet environment, any proposals that alter the security dynamics online should be approached with caution. Exceptional access would force Internet system developers to reverse “forward secrecy” design practices that seek to minimize the impact on user privacy when systems are breached. The complexity of today’s Internet environment, with millions of apps and globally connected services, means that new law enforcement requirements are likely to introduce unanticipated, hard to detect security flaws. Beyond these and other technical vulnerabilities, the prospect of globally deployed exceptional access systems raises difficult problems about how such an environment would be governed and how to ensure that such systems would respect human rights and the rule of law.

In a 30-minute interview on ABC News, Apple CEO Tim Cook warned that, by demanding that his company write custom code to unlock an iPhone the Feds are asking them to write "the software equivalent of cancer," saying:

The only way to get information — at least currently, the only way we know — would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer. We think it's bad news to write. We would never write it. We have never written it — and that is what is at stake here. We believe that is a very dangerous operating system.

Apple filed a motion to vacate the court to unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, saying:

This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe.

Retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, in an article titled Apple’s Involuntary Servitude, claims that the secret warrant the Department of Justice obtained against Apple was "improperly granted," and warns:

. . . the DoJ has obtained a unique search warrant I have ever seen in 40 years of examining them. Here, the DoJ has persuaded a judge to issue a search warrant for A THING THAT DOES NOT EXIST, by forcing Apple to create a key that the FBI is incapable of creating.

There is no authority for the government to compel a nonparty to its case to do its work, against the nonparty’s will, and against profound constitutional values. Essentially, the DoJ wants Apple to hack into its own computer product, thereby telling anyone who can access the key how to do the same.

If the courts conscripted Apple to work for the government and thereby destroy or diminish its own product, the decision would constitute a form of slavery, which is prohibited by our values and by the Thirteenth Amendment.

A Federal Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a lower court judgement against Samsung brought by Apple, claiming that features of the Korean electronics giant’s Android smartphones violated some of its iPhone patents. The federal court ruled that the key features of Apple's lawsuit were too obvious to count!
There has been quite a bit of speculation why Apple chose to sue phone maker Samsung, instead of Google which created the Android OS their phones run on. Best guess? Google could afford more lawyers!



Retiring Cisco CEO John Chambers says 40% of companies will be dead in 10 years if they don’t move their products into the digital world. This article discusses the concept of digital disruption: "the change that occurs when new digital technologies and business models affect the value proposition of existing goods and services." Digital music replacing CDs and records is a good, early example. So is Orbitx and Expedia replacing the "brick and mortar" travel agencies. And newer examples like Uber and Lyft challenging the taxi market; and Airbnb challenging the hotel industry. This trend is expected to continue until anything that can be done cheaper and more efficiently on the Internet will eventually move online. The point of Mr. Chambers’ article is that companies should figure out how to make the transformation themselves, before some other company does!



The Human Rights Risks of Encryption ‘Back Doors’ Carey Shenkman

One fact that has received little attention in the current encryption debate is that many categories of individuals rely on strong encryption for their own security. These include sexual and gender-based rights activists, domestic violence victims, journalists and their sources, and human rights defenders. Strong encryption is necessary to protect fundamental human rights; as one technologist puts it, encryption saves lives.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has won a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Customers and Border Protection Agency (PDF), which failed to fully comply with a FOIA request EPIC submitted seeking information about the Analytical Framework for Intelligence, which CBP uses to assign "risk assessments" to travelers.

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