On Mondays I offer comments on some   of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week.  Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest other stories.

Today’s comments were generated after I read a UPI.com International story.  Give it a read below.

UPI.com – Mexicans’ worse cellphone fears come true

“Private data of millions of Mexicans who had registered their cellphones with the government showed up for sale in a Mexico City flea market, officials said.

The registration program, meant to combat rampant telephone extortion rackets and drug-related kidnapping attempts, backfired when data from official state registries ended up for sale for a few thousand dollars at the Tepito flea market…”

There is not a lot new in this story, I admit, but it is none the less, a major governmental example of good intentions gone bad.  If your country has an established crime culture that uses cell phone to track targets for kidnapping and thrives on disposable cells to form the command and control for a drug trade, it seems very logical to pass a law requiring cell phone number registration.  The only problem is that believing that you could protect the security and piracy of that registry against a better armed, financed, and motivated foe — those same crime syndicates is folly.  Unfortunately, we see this same narcissistic and overconfident approach taken to Information Age digital challenges all over the world.  Three-strikes laws, digital rights management, and challenging requirements to get  smart IDs are all misguided solutions that really only serve to make law abiding people work harder and risk more loss of control in order to supposedly combat criminals who can and will circumvent the new measures.  In this case, it is now actually worse because in one fell swoop the government created a partial database that can actually help those criminals by ruling out known numbers of no interest from the limited pool of total numbers available. 

The problems are real.  The solutions are inadequate.  The challenge remains.  The cautionary tale is valid.

What do you think about this topic?  Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for May 17, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: Voice Nation

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Well I think that we can all agree that using webcams on school provided computers to spy on students without parental consent is a really bad idea.  I also think that attempting to cover it up and denying it when caught with your hand in the cookie jar is a far worse one.  Nevertheless, this story will shape the landscape of information technology and mobile computing for years to come, so all Information Technology Professionals need to be conversant on both the facts and the implications.

hothardware.com – Laptop Monitoring: It’s Not Just In Pennsylvania

“One of the major news stories of the past week has focused on the Lower Merion school district in Philadelphia and the furor created when the school admitted it could remotely activate student webcams and observe them remotely. One clip from an episode of Frontline that aired in June 2009, however, proves that Lower Merion’s Harriton High School is not the only place where students’ rights are potentially being violated.”

There was so much written about this topic that there is no single news story to cover all bases.  I recommend that you review Google News’ aggregation site for this topic.  You can find all angles, opinions, and levels of engagement there.

At its essence, this is a great cautionary tale for IT Pros… just because you can do something does not mean that you should.  Also, it is a story of the best of intentions being carried out in the worst possible ways.  Also, the great ends that were realized by this program have now been completely erased by the means that were used to obtain them.  Really a sad tale… imagine how well this all could have gone if they had simply sent home a permission slip.  My kids’ school sends them home for everything from zoo trips to in-class videos.  How did these school administrators miss the boat by so much?

Well, as they say, knowing is half the battle.  Be warned….

What do you think about this topic?  Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for February 28, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: xomba.com

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I find that most Information Technology (IT) organizations are either privacy protection obsessed or challenged.  I wonder where yours is on the scale.  I also find that most Information Technology Professionals vary widely on their opinions on this topic, too.

Hence today’s poll topic:

I will be sure to share the results.  Feel free to add a comment below to add other thoughts that should have shown up on the list.

Do you like polls as a daily topic? Do you have a recommended one for another week? Please let me know.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for February 25, 2010 ©Scott Coughlin.

Image credit: easyhealth.org.uk

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Wow, this was a tough week to be an Information Technology Professional and not get frustrated with the news coverage of the case of the Google Hackers.  Our industry and profession are hard enough to explain to laymen without every major news organization in the world pulling out their experts and telling them to dumb down their commentary until they are essentially nonsensical.  Seriously, I have not read a single news story on Google’s self-proclaimed hacking that made sense, added value to the Google press release, or did justice to the complexity of the problem.  Take a look at the following two stories from CNN.com and tell me that they don’t over simplify the issue to boredom.

CNN.com – U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google By Bruce Schneier

“Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn’t that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated — we knew that already — it’s that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers.

 

In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.”

CNN.com – Clinton: Internet ‘information curtain’ is dropping

“In a speech on Internet freedom and security, Clinton also urged China to investigate a wave of cyber attacks against Google and other companies.

 

The Internet and other technologies are critical to foreign policy, and those who engage in cyber attacks should face international condemnation, she said.

 

"In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all," she said at The Newseum in Washington.”

Don’t get me wrong… I appreciate the severity of this issue.  I consider it a responsibility of a government to protect the property of its citizens and companies from attack from foreign governments and entities.  What I dislike is that stories like this make it seem overly easy, simplistic, one sided, and transparent.  Cyberspace is simply too new of a domain for rules, laws, and expectations to be set.  Honestly, my heart goes out to the victims of the Haiti Earthquake, but as far as I can tell that was the story that booted this frustrating discussion to the back page and probably into oblivion as far as mainstream media is concerned,

We do need international treaties and laws that govern The Information Domain.  Cyber Space will not self regulate.  What we cannot do, however, is try to apply old thinking, geographic-based constraints, and over simplification to the challenges that are ahead of us.

What do you think about this topic?  Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for January 17, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: The U.S. Department of Justice

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Frankly, this scared me.  As I read it, I kept on thinking about Machiavelli’s The Prince and its paraphrased theme that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Here is a story from the Telegraph reporting on the founder of Facebook and his thoughts on how privacy is no longer required.  Give it a read:

The Telegraph – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says privacy is no longer a ‘social norm’

Talking in San Francisco over the weekend at the Crunchie Awards, which recognise technological achievements, the 25 year-old web entrepreneur said: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

 

He went on to say that privacy was no longer a ‘social norm’ and had just evolved over time.

Hmmm… this is scary stuff.  What is worse is that it is being said by the person most responsible for protecting the expectation of privacy online.  If they fold so goes the rest of the online world by convention.  I suppose that this was inevitable, but it is still disappointing and profit driven.  As an Information Professional, I know that with the resources available to Zuckerberg, he could easily provide data set based security and privacy controls on every discrete piece of information on Facebook.  He could also provide a user interface that made it easy for people to customize from no to full protection and even has the lawyers to design an end user agreement to protect him.  Why in the world would he go down this path?

I am frightened….

What do you think about this topic?  Do you agree or disagree with me? Do you have a recommended news story for next week? Please share your ideas below.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for January 12, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: Those who came in late…

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