Author Archive | Stewart Baker

Two and a half years after former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell called for a “dot-secure” network, a Silicon Valley startup with $9.6 million in funding has announced plans to launch one. From the description, this isn’t intended to be a wholly secure network, since that’s a promise no one can fulfill.  Instead, it’s […]

The one man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has died, three years after being released by the Scottish Nationalist government for what was advertised as his last few weeks of life. Evidently determined never to apologize, SNP leader Alex Salmond defended that release today, saying that “regardless of people’s views they can have complete confidence […]

Here’s something for those who liked my earlier article for Foreign Policy about the foolishness of letting lawyers determine our cyberwar strategy, though it’s probably even more of a treat for those who hated my article and wished they had equal time. The ABA Journal has posted an extensive, no-holds-barred debate over the views expressed […]

Security guru Dan Kaminsky and I joined earlier this year to fight SOPA because it was bad for cybersecurity.  Today, for the same reason, we joined in a Politico op-ed to rebut attacks on CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act: We may have thrown some of the first stones, but SOPA was ultimately buried by […]

Ever so slowly, TSA is closing loopholes in the security system that it jury-rigged on top of the old, airline-run system inherited in 2001.  The biggest loophole in recent years was the way risky travelers were identified. In essence, the airline was told to print a special code on a risky traveler’s boarding pass.  Then, […]

Watergate ushered in, among other things, the echt Age of Mainstream Media.  In a demonstration of raw media power, the Washington Post brought down a President who had just received a massive re-election mandate. No one questioned the media’s power again until the Drudge Report systematically undermined its legitimacy by covering the media the way […]

According to Richard Clarke,  government lawyers play such a large role in designing American covert cyber operations that by the time the lawyers are done messing with them, they’re anything but covert: One reason to believe the Stuxnet attack was made in the USA, Clarke says, “was that it very much had the feel to […]

I testified a few days ago at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on REAL ID implementation.  I expected to have harsh things to say about the way REAL ID has been treated by the National Governors Association and the Obama administration. And there was certainly plenty to criticize.  But what surprised me after a few […]

Here’s a revised version of an op-ed I published on the potential importance of the SOPA fight.  The original appeared in Hollywood Reporter (caution: paywall; free version is here) What went wrong for SOPA, the entertainment industry’s proposal for stopping international piracy? And what does it mean for Hollywood’s future clout in Washington? I had a […]

Matt Drudge and The Atlantic are hyperventilating, and Mark Hosenball of Reuters is bragging, about what The Atlantic calls an “exclusive” report that DHS “routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report.” There are just two problems with this exclusive […]

I will be testifying next Wednesday against SOPA, reprising my concerns about its impact on implementation of new web security protocols.  I’ve blogged those concerns here and here. The hearings are being held by Darrell Issa (R-CA), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who is troubled by the Judiciary Committee’s determination to […]

Critics of the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) have had an impact.  A manager’s amendment has been offered by Lamar Smith, R-TX, the Judiciary Committee chairman.  I was critical of the first version.  Here’s my take on the new version. This version contains several provisions aimed at the security concerns raised about the first […]

The Wall Street Journal recently published a round-robin dialogue on privacy featuring Jeff Jarvis, danah boyd, Chris Soghoian, and me. Our vibrant discussion was quite heavily compressed for publication, so two of the other participants have now published their contributions in full.  Jeff Jarvis’s is here, and danah boyd’s is here. Publishing the full version […]