* Disclaimer: The linked items below or the websites at which they are located do not necessarily represent the views of LifeSiteNews.com. They are presented only for your information.
Compiled by Steve Jalsevac
U.S. gov’t overkill on Internet piracy – Washington Post
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said the bills would overdo it — giving copyright holders and government the power to cut off Web sites unreasonably. They could be shut down, and search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo could be stopped from linking to them. “The solutions are draconian,” Schmidt said Tuesday
MPAA Head Chris Dodd on Online Censorship Bill: China’s the Model – Weekly standard
former Senator Chris Dodd, now the head of the MPAA, who last week explained to Variety that the lobby is only asking for the same kind of power to censor the Internet as the government has in the People’s Republic of China:
Let’s blow the whistle on internet porn – Mercator.com
We must also ask if we are doing our part in “reporting” a significant contributor to sexual abuse: so-called adult or legal pornography, and particularly internet pornography. If pornography addiction leads people to search for increasingly extreme and varied images, is it surprising that some eventually descend into child pornography?
Dot-XXX Domains Go Live, Escalating Battle for Smutty URLs – PC World
More than 100,000 porn websites sporting the .XXX domain went live today. The public launch of the .XXX domain is a culmination of years of struggle between the adult entertainment industry, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers and ICM Registry, now the official registry of the new domain
Pornography—or Persons as Objects By Dr. Jeff Mirus
Did you know that more than 80% of all pornographic web pages originate in the United States? As with so many other things, we Americans are the chief exporters of pornography to the world. Shelley’s story is told in a new documentary from Anteroom Pictures called Out of the Darkness.
America’s Cyber Defenses: A Digital Pearl Harbor? – CBN
The critical infrastructure that keeps this country running is surprisingly, and some would even say shockingly, vulnerable. It is vulnerable not so much to physical attacks, but to cyber attacks that can be just as lethal. “This is bordering on criminally negligent when you are responsible for our water, power, gas, and other sensitive utilities,” Chester Wisniewski, a top security adviser at Sophos Canada, recently blogged.
Facebook moves to repair terrible privacy reputation – Matt Hartley, Financial Post
The revamped privacy standards, made public Tuesday, mark the social networking giant’s latest effort to repair its tarnished reputation and improve the safeguards around the personal information of the site’s more than 750 million users. The new privacy settings may also be a response to Google+, a social network that won rave reviews from users for its privacy controls when it was launched by rival Google
Why Facebook Facial Recognition is Creepy: Redux – PC World
In my article, I argued that Facebook’s new feature was creepy—not because of how Facebook was using it, but because of the implications such a technology has for the future of privacy.
researchers from Carnegie Mellon University recently proved that Facebook’s vast photo archive can be used to identify people on the street. Yes, in real life. Yes, we can totally use Facebook’s archive to identify people in real life, from photos on the web.
How many of you—who are not on Facebook—can honestly say that nobody has ever taken a photo of you ever, in your entire life?
“E-mails can never replace the spoken word.” – CNET
Stop the Presses! Your Government is Spying on You – PC Mag
Look who Obama’s hired for cybersecurity team – WorldNetDaily
Ex-Clinton staffer ‘lost’ thousands of White House e-mails, booted by DHS for faking credentials
Beijing to monitor public Internet users – Asia News
There is a growing controversy in Beijing over a new police regulation for bars, restaurants, hotels, libraries to install costly systems to control access to the internet. Many accuse the authorities of wanting to increase the already strict censorship on the Internet. But traders complain about the cost.
Computers Are Weapons of War By Jed Babbin, American Spectator
In the spring of 2007, Russian computer experts hacked into Estonia’s government computer networks, blocked them from functioning, and brought the Estonian government to a standstill. Computer warfare—cyberwar—may be the most dangerous new kind of warfare because most Western nations don’t regard cyber attacks as acts of war. China isn’t alone in investing in cyberwar. India, Russia, the U.S., and Iran are also heavily invested in it.
The only conclusion we can reach is that a computer is as much a weapon as a rifle, a cyber attack as much an act of war as dropping a bomb in the middle of a city. In the West, and in the law of warfare, those concepts have not yet taken root.