Nick Bilton over at the NYT Bits Blog has the story of Internet security consultant Ronald Bowes’s recent Facebook caper.  Ron noticed that Facebook has a directory of its users, just like the old Bell Telephone White Pages.  I agree with Ron’s assessment that this is a very little-noticed feature: normally one searches on Facebook […]

Control over tethered appliances basically comes in two forms: pre-approval of apps and kill switches. As this blog has documented, Apple has had a very heavy hand in screening apps, but — as far as we know — they haven’t ever used the iPhone kill switch. I was a little surprised to find that out, […]

iPad security breach. Even closed systems can be vulnerable to exploitation.  A group of high-profile iPad owners, including President Obama’s Chief of Staff among 114,000 others, had their email addresses exposed by a web security group.  Although it was AT&T’s network that was compromised, Apple is shouldering much of the blame, since it denies iPad […]

A few weeks ago Internet security firm McAfee released an update to its Windows PC customers designed to protect them against a newly detected virus threat.  Instead, for some, the update destroyed a legitimate, and crucial, system file.  Uncountable numbers of PCs – likely hundreds of thousands, even millions – were rendered unusable.  The University […]

Google launches Government Requests tool. Google is now making public information on the requests it receives from government agents to remove content from its search results or reveal private user data. The Government Requests tool currently displays the number and type of requests by country for the last six months of 2009. In a bit […]

I’ll be offline until about May 10.  In the meantime, um, keep it generative!  …JZ

Government transparency through technology. U.S. federal government agencies published their open government plans online this week.  The plans detail long-term strategies for addressing one of the three identified principles of open government—transparency, civic participation, and government collaboration with public and private sectors.  They can be accessed by appending “/open” to the department website address.  The […]

On April 3, an Adobe technical project manager demonstrated that Adobe’s new Air software could be used to develop across platforms—he created a Reversi game app that runs on Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows 7, Ubuntu, and OS X (see potential caveats in comments here). Cool! As JZ said, via email, “if this is really possible, […]

A coalition of prominent netizens and watchdogs released its wishlist this week for Digital Due Process.  Google, Microsoft, AT&T, the ACLU, and EFF, among others, are advocating for an update of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  The statute, which includes the current regulations government agencies follow to access an individual’s electronic data and communications, […]

Internet Telephony Comes to the iPhone. Apple has approved an app intended to provide a virtual second line for business that allows consumers to make calls using Wi-Fi when available instead of AT&T’s cellular network.  The Line2 app may allow iPhone users to downgrade their AT&T cell plans, though contracts and lack of universal Wi-Fi […]