PEDES3ANTECH

Photo Credits: Digitalreins It is probably the biggest and most important revelation since wiki-leaks and it has already been forgotten. The story of how the US government has been spying on everyone- including its own citizens has been reduced to a Tom Clancy like saga of one person. What started of as a serious discussion on the limits of government power has been reduced to a ridiculous attack on one man's credibility. What slowly developed as an unveiling of how much information private companies have on individuals has turned into an orchestrated effort from the media (both liberal and conservative) to divert our attention.  What happened to this story? and what does it tell us about how serious we are about our digital privacy? The snowden effect As soon as Edward Snowden decided to come out from hiding, the story and the debate he started was doomed. Don't get me wrong, I still consider him as a modern day hero. Although the government and most of the pa...

Last week was another full week of tech news still dominated by new revelations about the NSA PRISM program and what will happen to the person who leaked the intel. Last week, the US government formally charged Edward Snowden with Espionage and has requested Hong Kong for his extradition. The president of the USA, Barack Obama also gave an interview defending the PRISM program and re-assuring people that their privacy is not in danger.  There were a few significant announcements made related to the gaming industry last week- the biggest of all was Microsofts announcement cancelling the two most contentious policies it planned to implement with the Xbox One. These policies were namely i. the requirement to connect to the internet once every 24 hrs, and ii. their policy on sharing and re-selling games. The Xbox One reversal was met with mixed reactions- some people calling it a victory for the gamers while others call it the death of innovation in the gaming industry. Nvidia's ...

Amazon.ca Widgets T he issue on privacy has recently come into the spotlight with the revelation that the NSA has been listening to calls and collecting internet data. This revelation has also implicated all the major tech companies (ie. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) as providing the NSA "direct" access to their servers for data collection. Although the companies implicated have been unanimous in their denial that they provide "direct" access to their servers. One by one they have issued statements denying the allegations and have even released information to the public about all government related data-requests sent to them.  So, it turns out, these companies do not provide "direct" access to their servers, but will comply with government requests for information- in "certain" situations. If you ask me, it is all a play of words and a convoluted interpretation of the word "direct". But this is not what this post is ab...

Read, Subscribe and Contribute to Pedes3antech weekly on Flipboard T his week was still dominated by one major story- PRISM. The US government under the Obama administration has been under a lot of heat since the leaks came out of the media. This week however, the PRISM story was made even more interesting when Edward Snowden came out and faced the world. Now the people and the government can put a face to the NSA leak. This development however has put the whole debate around PRISM on the wrong direction. The government and the public dialogue has started to shift towards questions about Snowden's decision to leak. Questions about the ethics of his decision and how he has endangered (mysteriously) thousands of lives is drowning the more serious questions about Civil liberties, Individual Privacy, Limits on government powers, Government Accountability and Corporate Social responsibility. The US Senate , in one of its more sensible decisions lately, has put pre...

Apple has been known for its simple, intuitive and beautiful hardware design and today that philosophy has been applied to its software component. This expectation was driven mainly by the fact that Jony Ive (Apple chief of industrial design) took the lead in re-designing the much anticipated iOS7 and the world was given a first hand look of the updates today during the WWDC 2013 keynote address. The weeks leading up to the event was full of supposed leaks about how the new iOS 7 was going to be "flat" and "simple". People gave these rumors a lot a credit because that has always been the over-arching principle behind Apple's hardware designs since the beginning. So the idea of it being applied to its software component was a no-brainer especially with Ive at the helm. The immediate reaction from the tech-world was "mixed" to put it mildly. Some people felt like the new iOS does not offer anything new to the table and that a lot of the design im...

Two step authentication is not a stuff of science fiction Two step authentication/ verification is a security method where access to an account is granted only after two or more authentication factors/ information are provided. Our common understanding of securing access to an account is by setting up a Username and Password. Most people consider the username and password as two-factors for authentication and feel it is enough to provide proper security. This kind of understanding is wrong. Both your Username and Password are considered the same kind of authentication factor (Knowledge- something you know). The other two commonly used authentication factors are: i. Possession (something you have): an example of this is a hard token/ secure ID.  ii. Inherence (something the user is): an example of this is a biometric scan like finger-print or retina-scan. Two step authentication/ verification utilizes a combination of two or more of the three authentication factors mentioned ab...