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CrowdStrike is at the forefront of a new business model for cyber security, one that identifies sophisticated foreign attackers trying to steal U.S. intellectual property and uses the attackers' own techniques and vulnerabilities to thwart them. The firm is marketing itself as a private cyber intelligence agency, staking out networks to catch infiltrators, assembling dossiers on hackers and fooling intruders into stealing bogus data. In the process, the firm has waded into a debate about how far companies should go in defending themselves from cyber attack.
A new brand of cyber security: hacking the hackers
The question of who rules the Internet and how is being debated at a 12-day conference in Dubai.
The World Conference on International Telecommunications, which started Dec 3, aims to draft a new treaty to underpin international telecommunications regulations. The current rules were put in place in 1988. The conference is sponsored by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies. The bid to change the rule book has unleashed fears of a grab for centralized control of the Internet by the U.N. The process has also come under criticism for its lack of transparency, with documents unpublished and proposals up for debate kept secret. Despite political saber-rattling, observers don't expect drastic changes to the way the Internet is run will be agreed on at the Dubai conference. ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré has said any changes must be agreed upon by all countries involved.
Nations Meet to Discuss Web Rules US seeks to drop Internet from UN telecoms talks (AP) US seeks to drop Internet from UN telecoms talks (AP)
UK Prime Minister David Cameron will meet newspaper editors to urge them to set up a system of self-regulation, as opponents of proposals from a media-ethics panel begin to shift position. Cameron on Nov. 29 said he wasn’t prepared to “cross the Rubicon” and accept Leveson’s recommendation that any new regulator set up by the press would need to be recognized in law. Today he’ll tell editors gathered in his Downing Street office in London that they need to design a regulator sufficiently independent to dampen calls for full implementation of the Leveson report.
Cameron Meeting Newspaper Editors to Urge Better Self-Regulation
The Washington region’s 911 emergency network has suffered widespread systemic failures over the past two years, a rash of outages that started long before June’s derecho storm.
There have been at least 11 outages since July 2010 in Maryland and Virginia, some of which left panicked 911 callers listening to busy signals as they tried to report emergencies. Failures have occurred across the region, from the Chesapeake Bay to Virginia horse country. Some outages blocked all calls in a particular area; others restricted the number of calls or deprived authorities of location data and call-back numbers. The troubles occurred in a system operated by Verizon, whose lines handle every 911 call made in Washington’s immediate suburbs. Verizon routes 911 calls to 1,800 government-run call centers in 12 states, making it one of the largest such carriers in the nation. The 911 networks are specifically designed to be fail-safe and to continue operating when other critical infrastructure, such as power lines, are knocked out. But as failures quietly mounted, officials in the Washington area and elsewhere began asking whether the incidents were symptoms of deeper flaws permeating the nation’s emergency-response system, perhaps requiring federal action.
Verizon 911 failures began long before derecho
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) is working to drum up opposition in the Senate against a music royalty bill that Internet radio service Pandora hopes will lower the royalty fees it pays to stream songs online.
Sen Corker is circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter that says the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) would "force American property owners and creators to provide a subsidy to digital radio services, primarily Pandora." Sen Corker argues that Internet radio services need to find a business model that helps them make enough money to survive on their own "rather than expect government to reduce their costs." The bill proposes to place Internet radio services on the same royalty-setting standard as cable and satellite radio services, such as SiriusXM, so the royalty fees paid by each radio platform are level with one another. Pandora has argued that it unfairly pays higher royalty fees than other digital radio services, noting that more than half of its revenue this year will go towards royalty payments. Cable and satellite radio stations, on the other hand, will pay less than 15 percent of their revenue in royalty fees, according to Pandora.
Sen Corker rallies opposition to Pandora-backed royalty bill
President Barack Obama held a Twitter Q&A , using social media to lobby hard for public opinion to rally to his argument that the tax rates on the "top 2 percent" of income-earners should expire at the end of the year.
President Obama answered eight questions during the 45-minute Twitter town hall, including one about Chicago sports. He also promised that despite the wide gulf between the White House and Republicans in the debt talks, there is "room to negotiate." The Q&A was part of an ongoing social media campaign by the White House using the hashtag #My2K. President Obama sent a personal tweet on inviting his followers to weigh in.
President Obama takes questions about tax rate extension in Twitter Q&A
[Commentary] For decades, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) supported the Federal Communications Commission’s prohibition on a company owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. But this year, as the FCC reviews its media ownership rules, we urge the agency to relax the 37-year-old regulation.
As the nation’s leading advocate for equal opportunity and civil rights in mass media, the MMTC champions a diverse and robust Fourth Estate. And the absolute ban on cross-ownership no longer serves this purpose. Diversity of media ownership remains MMTC’s top priority. The FCC recently reported that people of color own an abysmally low 5.1 percent of commercial full power television stations and 8 percent of full-power radio stations. Those numbers are simply unacceptable. MMTC and others have placed before the FCC dozens of proposals that would address the real causes of minority exclusion from media ownership: weak access to capital, discrimination in advertising and employment, and inferior technical facilities. But the Commission should not retain outdated regulations that discourage much-needed investments in local journalism.
Let’s Focus on the Real Causes of Minority Exclusion from Media Ownership
Rick Kaplan, the National Association of Broadcasters' new point person on spectrum auctions, said Monday that he did not think the spectrum incentive auctions were needed and that since they were proposed three years ago by the Federal Communications Commission, the marketplace had done a good job of finding a way to deal with that demand.
He also said that a majority of broadcasters would remain in the business after those auctions concluded. Asked if he thought there was actually spectrum scarcity and what the impact on long-term spectrum demands of the FCC's incentive auctions would be, Kaplan said there was no question that the demand for data had gone up dramatically over the past several years, citing the iPhone, for one. He said that demand came as something of a surprise, but that the market was quick to react and that, while the auction was a great market mechanism to find out whether spectrum is going to be more valuable in the hands of broadcasters or wireless carriers, "the nice thing about this auction is that you actually don't need it to solve the problem."
NAB's Kaplan: Auctions Not Needed to Solve Spectrum Demand Problem
The Daily will fire off its last electronic dispatches December 15h, bringing an end to a deeply flawed, but ultimately important experiment in digital journalism.
When the News Corp-owned publication announced staff cuts back in August, AdWeek asked digital industry leaders what the future held for tablet-only publishers, who defended The Daily's foray into the tablet space and noted that the market was (and still is) incredibly young. Since August, The Daily and digital magazine properties like Nomad Editions have shuttered their tablet editions, citing low subscribership and painting a very bleak picture for the tablet-only space that, only a year ago held so much promise for digital media prognosticators.
The Daily's Woes Proves Content, not Platform is King
As we continue to transition to the next-generation Internet routing system, it is important to clarify the United States Government’s (USG) position on the development of Internet technical standards and policies:
- We continue to believe that the proper model for the development of Internet technical standards and policies, including those related to IP numbers, is the multistakeholder model.
- The five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), via their multistakeholder processes, are responsible for developing policies for the use of IP numbers within their respective specific geographic regions.
- The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the RIR for Canada, many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands, and the United States. The USG participates in the development of and is supportive of the policies, processes, and procedures agreed upon by the Internet technical community through ARIN.
- The USG supports and encourages the uptake and adoption of IPv6 throughout the IP value chain, and strives to be an early adopter as evident in Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Directives for U.S. federal agency IPv6 implementation.
- Consistent with the policies developed through the current multistakeholder model, the USG believes that all IP numbers are allocated for use on a needs basis and should be returned to the numbering pool when no longer needed.
United States Government’s Internet Protocol Numbering Principles