Wayne Rash

Privacy advocates everywhere are celebrating. The passage of the USA Freedom Act by the Senate and the signing by the President mean that there will be changes to the way the intelligence community collects phone data and the way the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court works— eventually. But now, right after the bill has passed into […]

The good news, if you’re a civil libertarian, is that Section 215 of the Patriot Act officially expired at midnight on May 31. The bad news, if you’re a civil libertarian, is that the National Security Agency isn’t stopping its collection of phone data for long. If you’re familiar with how things work in Washington, […]

In its effort to go Apple one better, Samsung appears to have gone to a great deal of trouble to make its new Galaxy S6 smartphone a lot like the iPhone 6, presumably to appeal to the same audience. To outdo the iPhone, the S6 has a camera with twice as much resolution at 16 […]

In a background briefing on May 27, Federal Communications Commission officials announced a new effort proposed by Chairman Tom Wheeler to virtually eliminate all automatically dialed calls as well as nearly all unsolicited calls to wireless and wireline phones in the United States. The new rules would give phone owners new power to stop unwanted […]

It was the last hours of the last day before a congressional recess when the U.S. Senate considered two different actions regarding the USA Patriot Act, the law that among other things allowed the National Security Agency to collect telephone metadata from nearly everyone, nearly anywhere. One action would have extended the Patriot Act is […]

At first, Rick Boucher’s idea seemed too good to be true. The former Democratic Congressman from Virginia was proposing an idea so radical that I had to check my notes to make sure I hadn’t been daydreaming. The concept was a bipartisan bill that would give both Democrats and Republicans something each party wants and […]

The best approach the airlines should follow in securing their onboard networks is to prevent the hackers among their passengers from doing any damage with the assumption they are going to find a way to break in. That’s the advice provided by Dave Bennett, CTO of IONU Security, a company that provides secure network technology […]

By now you’ve likely heard the denials about how a well-known hacker was able to break into an airliner’s flight control systems from within the passenger cabin, and about the resulting FBI investigation. Chances are very good that those denials are wrong. But it’s also true that the vast majority of those who say it’s […]

The wait for Windows 10 is almost over. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “Windows 10 will be made available later this summer.” Unfortunately, I was unable to convince the spokesperson to be more specific, so that means the big update will happen before Sept. 23, since that’s the first day of autumn. If I were […]

A group of cable companies, ISPs and industry associations has filed a formal motion with the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to stay the implementation of the Federal Communications Commission’s order to place Internet access under Title II of the Communications Act, a move predicted in this column just a few days […]