The Washington Post is reporting today (on page A3 sadly) on HSPD-23. This is apparently classified (so leaked by someone) and reflects the role that the intelligence community will play in watching the overall federal threat. While it’s good to have smart people working on these things (the Intelligence community has some of the brightest people working on analysis), there’s a lot of industry or trade secrets that are held in the private sector that are as important or more important to protect. We’ll see if there is room for partnership with the private sector or if all the work done will be classified.
Archive for January, 2008
NSA to take over Federal network intrusion work
Saturday, January 26th, 2008The race is on (But won’t be over soon)
Friday, January 25th, 2008The 2008 election race continues the preparations to super-tuesday but there may be no clear picture after those races. The Associated press has done analysis and determined that neither the Republican side nor the Democratic side will be able to eliminate the major candidates.
Your IP address is personal
Monday, January 21st, 2008Your Computer Is Broadcasting an IP Address could become something of the past, or at least as private as the rest of your personal information in EU. This could have some fairly significant implications both technically and policy-wise for service providers. Since your IP address is likely unique except in a few rare cases (public wireless, hotels, conventions or maybe your office). If you have a cable modem, you’re likely to keep the same IP address for a long time. Some DSL providers you keep the same IP, others you can easily get a new one by rebooting the device. It should become interesting as time goes on and these personally identifying bits continue to proliferate. With IPv6, it may become easier to identify the user, or that it’s the same user, but we’re not there yet.
Bloomberg getting closer to a run
Saturday, January 19th, 2008If Hillary continues to win on the (D) side and the (R) side has no compelling winner after Feb 5, expect Bloomberg to jump into the race. Within the past week there’s bee numerous stories from him talking to ballot experts that assisted Ross Perot to him criticizing Washington(DC) as a whole on a range of issues from infrastructure to pork barrel projects. Expect this year to be quite an exciting one for politics as it’s the first totally open race on each side without a sitting VP running for office. Don’t expect Bloomberg to enter the race if there is someone compelling in the running like Obama is currently. He’s attracted a lot of attention and certainly has the under-30 crowd won over. This is the same crowd that usually doesn’t get around to vote come election day. Perhaps some of those new media companies like Facebook/MySpace will offer free SMS reminders to vote every hour until you mark a “I Voted” or similar on their profile or respond to the SMS. I’m expecting [predicting] record turnout this year among the under-30 crowd.
More telecom consolidation?
Friday, January 18th, 2008Some folks are looking at the problems that Sprint/Nextel had monetizing their “merger of equals” several years ago. The Wall Street Journal have taken a brief look at this and the huge losses over the lifetime of the merger. I doubt that AT&T or Verizon will acquire Sprint. You may recall that MCI/Worldcom tried to acquire Sprint and was rebuffed by regulators. Possible acquisitions could come from anyone from ISPs to other telcos. This could range from Cogent to Level3 or Qwest. Personally I had always wondered how they would merge two networks that used different technologies for a win. Nextel had higher revenue per subscriber due to their two-way feature, but Sprint hasn’t had any compelling products in recent years as AT&T(Cingular) launched the iPhone, and others attempt to compete.
DHS HSIN likely to disappear
Friday, January 18th, 2008FCC Checking-up on Comcast
Thursday, January 17th, 2008The FCC has started a comment period and investigation into the interference with network traffic that Comcast is doing on their network. The Associated Press did an excellent piece of reporting last fall (2007) on the impacts this would have, and others reported of the impact it has on their corporate Lotus-Notes systems. If you’ve been impacted by this it would be wise to file a complaint or comments. At the same time, there have been leaked memos from Time Warner Cable indicating they will be testing bandwidth caps on users later this year. They claim that 5% of their subscriber base contributes to 50% of their overall network traffic. If you follow commodity bandwidth pricing, the 25/25 FIOS service offerings for around $100/mo are certainly a lossy item unless their internal costs are under $4/Mb.
Writers Strike
Thursday, January 17th, 2008As the writers strike continues, there continue to be minor settlements around, but with some contracts being cancelled for series development for the fall, the launch of the updated Apple TV, it may now be time to cancel your satellite/cable and consider the cost savings. If you’re not a mass consumer of television, you may be able to actually save money by acquiring the shows through the iTunesMediaStore instead of paying just to watch things on your TV at home. It could also give you a chance to save those DVDs from the kids destroying them should you import them (ala the new Family Guy DVD) or via other methods. Personally, I’ve found that The A Daily Show is going downhill fast. While Jon is clearly insightful on issues, the lack of vision by the network is clearly visible. Last nights interview apparently went 18 minutes long, but they only posted the part that actually aired instead of some possible compelling “new media” content. Shows the sad state either of integration or understanding the industry.
More cybersecurity woes ahead?
Thursday, January 17th, 2008I was pointed to an article at the Wall Street Journal where the head of the ODNI wants to intercept all the internet traffic that traverses the United States. This would likely be done with a similar system as ECHELON or whatever the real system is should this be something fictional. It could represent a treasure of information or the biggest privacy challenge for the industry.