the tindog coffeehouse

According to Mashable, the first non-Latin domain names have been issued by ICANN. The three issued domains are all in Arabic.

Screenshot from Mashable:

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There’s been a lot of talk this week about Facebook’s new Open Graph platform and its “connections” feature and what all that means to users’ privacy, and I even considered writing up a blog post about it. But I just couldn’t. I tried, though. Twice. But I realized that honestly I just don’t care.

Is Facebook really “positioning itself to become deeply embedded in almost every single website”? Will your privacy truly be “crushed with impunity”? Has Facebook “removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information”?

Or is everyone overreacting?

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Back in April, Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe introduced two bills, 773 and 778, which would’ve essentially given the President the unilateral ability to shut down any services on the Internet — even those from the private sector — in the case of a “cybersecurity emergency”. But the bills didn’t stop there. They would’ve also given the Commerce Department “access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.”

As Wired points out, S-773 has been revised significantly since then, removing much of the controversial language and replacing it with more sensible (albeit general) guidelines for dealing with with cyber attacks on the U.S.:

(2) [I]n the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network—
(A) [the President] may declare a cybersecurity emergency; and
(B) may, if the President finds it necessary for the national defense and security, and in coordination with relevant industry sectors, direct the national response to the cyber threat and the timely restoration of the affected critical infrastructure information system or network;
(3) shall, in coordination with various critical infrastructure industry sectors, develop detailed cyber emergency response and restoration plans for each critical infrastructure industry sector;

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Two Senate bills, 773 and 778, introduced by Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe would, if passed, give the federal government virtually unrestricted control over the Internet, including private-sector Internet services, applications, and services.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.” The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president.

The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also grants the Secretary of Commerce “access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.” This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws. …

Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that granting such power to the Commerce secretary could actually cause networks to be less safe. When one person can access all information on a network, “it makes it more vulnerable to intruders,” Granick says. “You’ve basically established a path for the bad guys to skip down.”

The bill’s scope, she says, is “contrary to what the Constitution promises us.”

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Buried within the bowels of the massive $838,000,000,000 “stimulus” bill being pushed through Congress right now is a mandate for the establishment of computerized medical records, records which would include a person’s entire medical history from birth to death and which could be accessed by, well, no one knows for sure.

Billions will be handed to companies creating these databases. Billions will be handed to universities to incorporate patient databases “into the initial and ongoing training of health professionals.” There’s a mention of future “smart card functionality.” …

The databases will, “at a minimum,” include information on every American’s race and ethnicity. They will be used for “biosurveillance and public health” and “medical and clinical research,” both of which raise privacy questions. They will become part of a “nationwide system for the electronic use and exchange of health information.”

Plus, the federal government will use its vast purchasing power–think Medicare and Medicaid–to compel adoption of e-records that meet government “standards and implementation specifications.” …

The bill punishes physicians who are not “meaningful users” of a government-certified e-record database, and specifies certain procedures and information exchanges that will “satisfy” the requirement.

Starting in 2015, government reimbursements to physicians who are not participating in the federal e-record effort will begin to decline.

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Facebook is rolling out its Facebook Connect program, partnering with sites such as Digg, Hulu, and StumbleUpon to give Facebook users an easier way to log into those sites. Now, instead of having a Facebook logon, Digg logon, Hulu logon, etc., you can simply use your Facebook information to log in.

The service is similar to the OpenID standard, but with one big caveat: anything you do on the partner sites can and will be tracked by Facebook and can even be published to your news feed.

And that’s a good thing? According to some tech blogs, yes.

From Wired:

Such a system is sure to be welcomed by the web’s most social users, many of whom are sick of having to create a unique profile on every site where they want to participate. With Facebook Connect, you carry one set of keys that unlocks dozens of doors, and the stuff you do out there on the web gets fed back into the place you call home.

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