Archive for June, 2016
Techxit Brexit – People, investment, regulation, data sovereignty, location, privacy, cybersecurity – how the UK tech sector must adjust to living at the edge of the network
Jun 29th
From: Computer Business Review
CBR details the facts and collects the relevant opinions on how the tech sector is reacting to Brexit.
The outpouring of comment from the UK tech sector is interesting in its own right. Within the views expressed there is some barely disguised anger. There is a good deal of annoyance. There is some calmness. There is uncertainty.
As the UK tech sector was overwhelmingly in favour of Remain, opinions shared privately after the initial shock were mostly of the ‘the crops will fail, the children will starve and a great darkness will befall us all’ variety.
Linux’s RPM/deb split could be replaced by Flatpak vs. snap
Jun 27th
Editor’s Note: The availability of competing technical standards is one reason why OMB Circular A-119 has been updated to provide enhanced treatment of market-driven consortia standards, see here.
From: ars technica
Red Hat developer’s Flatpak installs apps on Fedora, Ubuntu, and other distros.
by Jon Brodkin
Linux developers are going to have more than one choice for building secure, cross-distribution applications.
Ubuntu’s “snap” applications recently went cross-platform, having been ported to other Linux distros including Debian, Arch, Fedora, and Gentoo. The goal is to simplify packaging of applications. Instead of building a deb package for Ubuntu and an RPM for Fedora, a developer could package the application as a snap and have it installed on just about any Linux distribution.
Who Goes There? Mobile Fingerprint Readers in Los Angeles County
Jun 24th
From: Police Chief Magazine
By Lieutenant Leo M. Norton, Records and Identification Bureau, Los Angeles County, California, Sheriff’s Department
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It is no secret that people do not always tell the truth; the reasons for this are as many and varied as the birds in the sky. Law enforcement professionals have lamented for decades that they are issued a badge and gun but not the ability to read minds. It takes time to develop the instinct to tell the honest from the not-so-honest, and even then agencies do not always get it right. Many bad guys have slipped from the grasp of a peace officer because of their charm and silver tongues or because the officer lacked the right piece of information that would have been enough to put the hooks on the crooks. One county in California has embraced fingerprint scanners as a means to secure that missing piece.
The New Censorship: ‘How Did Google Become The Internet’s Censor and Master Manipulator?’
Jun 23rd
From: Slashdot
An anonymous reader writes:
Senate Committee Wants to Know if OMB Ever Uses its Get-Tough Cyber Power
Jun 22nd
From: Nextgov
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Federal law allows the head of OMB to “take any action,” including those related to the budget and appropriations process, to enforce the accountability of agency heads’ for managing information technology. It’s unclear how frequently such action is actually taken.
Smart shipping needs smarter regulation
Jun 21st
From: Splash24/7
The era of ‘smart shipping’ needs much smarter regulation, supported by greater engagement from the industry to lobby for a favourable operating environment, according to a leading voice in Singapore shipping.
Addressing the ShipServ Smart Procurement conference, Lisa Teo, vice president of the Singapore Shipping Association and executive director of corporate development at Pacific International Lines, told delegates smart regulation should be a mutual aspiration.
Telco bosses’ salaries must take heat for cyber attacks, says MPs’ TalkTalk enquiry
Jun 20th
From: The Register
A Parliamentary inquiry into the TalkTalk hack has said that telco CEOs’ salaries should be garnished if their firms’ cyber security practices are lacking.
The report by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, titled Cyber Security: Protection of Personal Data Online was initiated last November as “an inquiry into cyber-security following the recent attack on TalkTalk’s website.”
10 Ways to Prepare for Cyber-Warfare
Jun 15th
From: CIO Insight
By Karen A. Frenkel
If you cannot see an attack, how are you expected to stop it? If you were a detective in the physical world, would you rather investigate a burglary using random photographs of what might have occurred, or by using surveillance video of the actual event?
Cable and telecom companies just lost a huge court battle on net neutrality
Jun 14th
From: The Washington Post | The Switch
A federal appeals court has voted to uphold a series of strict new rules for Internet providers, handing a major victory to regulators in the fight over net neutrality and ensuring that one of the most sweeping changes to hit the industry in recent years will likely remain on the books.
The 2-1 court ruling Tuesday forces Internet providers such as Verizon and Comcast to obey federal regulations that ban the blocking or slowing of Internet traffic to consumers. The regulations from the Federal Communications Commission also forbid carriers from selectively speeding up websites that agree to pay the providers a fee — a tactic critics have said could unfairly tilt the commercial playing field against startups and innovators who may not be able to afford it.
The Devil Inside the Beltway: the FTC vs. LabMD
Jun 9th
From: Data Breach Today