Politechan

A bit of a scare story coming from the press in Australia.  Seems some in the US government have told IT executives to be extremely careful when visiting China.  A bit of overkill.  You are probably under more of a threat just putting an unprotected system up on the Net.
Senior executives in US IT companies [...]

The constant source of litigation, aka Google’s Book Scanning Project, may be reaching a peace treaty of sorts over in Europe.  Under the terms of a proposed settlement with the EU and Google, Google will allow two non-Americans onto the review board that administers this program, and promises not to scan any books that are [...]

A massive coordinated attack on US government computer systems is underway, according to the Washington Post.  The attacks are aimed against a variety of government websites, such as the Department of Homeland Security and the FTC.  Also under attack are computers in South Korea, many of whom have fallen victim to the attacks and become bots [...]

The New York Times is writing about the latest arms control agreement between the US and Russia–cybersecurity. Though like most other things there is a disagreement on how to proceed.
Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for chemical weapons and has pushed for that approach at a series of meetings this [...]

The secret blogger behind the UK police blog Night Jack has had a legal setback in his quest to remain anonymous.  The UK High Court has refused to preserve the anonymity of  the policeman who has blogged about his work and government ministers.  The BBC is reporting that because the blogging touched on political issues, [...]

From the law on unintended consequences, or from the huffery and puffery that goes before new tax changes we have this nugget about Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer challenging the proposal of Barrack Obama.
 
“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, according to Bloomberg News. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the [...]

Well, we’ll know tomorrow when we see the register of what was introduced today, but the on again off again online gambling bill is finally about to make an appearance after many months of promises.  
 
The new bill would exempt operators that are licensed and regulated from the ban enacted in 2006, Frank said.
The Massachusetts [...]

Pirate Bay supporters are screaming holy murder after it was discovered the judge in the case was a member of the Swedish Copyright Association, the same group that also counts as members the entertainment industry’s attorneys.  Regardless of the political feelings on this case one way or another, there may very well be a retrial [...]

The Washington Post is writing about a delegation of ‘tech leaders’ who have flown to Iraq to meet with various government officials about the Iraqi technology market.  Among the delegation is one of the founders of Twitter who is twittering and posting Flickr photos as he goes.  Also on the trip are:
Jason Lieberman founder and CEO [...]

The EU is preparing a suit against the UK due to British Telecom’s testing of the advertising program PHORM.  Last year a behavioral analysis system was used for ad tracking that the EU feels violated EU guidelines on privacy.  UK guidelines are a bit more lax, and this has set up a bit of a [...]