0-Day Exploit Sales and Pushing for Legislation

For the last little while, Christopher Soghoian has attempted to highlight the dangers of the zero-day exploit market. The basics are that some vulnerability researchers are selling exploits to make money, without vetting who the end user will be, and in some cases knowingly selling them to militaries (he phrases it as governments, but the implication is that they aren't using them for defence). Soghoian, as I read it, is trying to highlight this trade, and get some sort of legislation passed to regulate it. (A darker reading would make it seem that he has a more, aggressive agenda, but let's leave that aside for a moment.)

The worrying thing here is neatly summed up by Haroon:

The scariest thing about you, is how certain you are that you are right. Regulation is a scary instrument

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Thursday, September 27. 2012
Posted by Dominic White in Politics
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Orwell vs Huxley, Amusing Ourselves to Death

In his ZaCon talk, Haroon Meer worked in a fascinating comparison, by Michael Anissimov, between the fears that drove George Orwell when writing 1984, and those that drove Aldous Huxley when writing Brave New World.

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Monday, October 11. 2010
Posted by Dominic White in Politics
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Speaking "Business" in South Africa

I'm sure this is a global trend, but certainly within SA, there is a nasty creeping use of all sorts of unnecessary and redundant (see what I did there) phrases. I've decided to keep track of some of them here, so that I can be publicly called-out if I'm ever caught using these. I also hope, that it will help you to stop talking "business" and start speaking sense.

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Friday, October 16. 2009
Posted by Dominic White in Politics
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Ubuntu and the Commons

Jason van Niekerk has put an excellent article together for the iCommons site. He details the theoretical and moral force that underpins the necessity for the types of collaboration being pioneered by movements such as free software and creative commons. It includes a podcast too.

Definately worth a read for those of you that think Ubuntu is a linux distribution.

Wednesday, February 28. 2007
Posted by Dominic White in Politics
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Why Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and TRIPS+ are harmful to libraries

This is a copy of an e-mail I was forwarded by iCommons (the international arm of Creative Commons) by Teresa Hackett of Electronic Information for Libraries. It very neatly lays out the problems with the TRIPS+ FTA Australia caved in to and America is trying to push on the rest of the world (South Africa only narrowly avoided it in our negotiations earlier this year). Even though it applies to libraries, it is well worth a read if you don't know what TRIPS+ is or why it is the devil.

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Thursday, November 16. 2006
Posted by Dominic White in Politics
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