Wayne Rash

The Federal Communications Commission on May 8 denied a request from a group of cable companies, ISPs and industry groups, including US Telecom and CTIA, to delay implementation of the order placing those groups under Title II of the Communications Act. Title II is the portion of the law that governs the operations of landline […]

Civil libertarians have been celebrating the decision by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals that found that the National Security Agency was wrong in its assertion that Section 215 of the Patriot Act authorized its mass collection of telephone metadata. People who hold that view might want to take a step back and give […]

The Federal Aviation Administration announced support for two research initiatives that could enable wider use of commercial drones, plus a new mobile app to help drone users plan flights and avoid problems with restricted air space. The FAA Administrator Michael Huerta announced the new programs at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference being […]

WASHINGTON—If there was a common thread to Vint Cerf’s wide-ranging remarks at the National Press Club on May 4, it was that pretty much everyone involved in the Internet needs to get better at security. But Cerf, who is frequently called the “Father of the Internet” and who invented the TCP/IP network protocol, said the […]

The Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would make substantial modifications to the Patriot Act, including revisions to intelligence agencies’ bulk collections of data that have angered many people at home and abroad. The bill, now called the USA Freedom Act, would allow challenges to national security […]

TIBURON, Calif.—Imagine a shopping trip without some basic product standards. You go to a store such as Walmart to buy a table lamp to brighten a dark corner in your home. But before you can plug the lamp into the wall, you must first purchase the proper power plug, then strip the ends of the […]

TIBURON, Calif.—It’s not very often that you see something new in security. Most of the new products that show up in my press release stack are variations of things that have come before. Sometimes there are important enhancements, sometimes there are cool new names, but a lot of it involves incremental change and little else. […]

The collapse of the proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner should have been a surprise to no one. This merger, if it had happened, would have put more than half the U.S. broadband industry into the hands of a single company. The deal’s demise is not surprising, considering that the Federal Communications Commission and […]

The passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of the Protecting Cyber Networks Act on Aprils 22 is being widely hailed as a critical first step in protecting networks in the United States against cyber-criminals. This bill is intended to make it easier for companies to share information about cyber-attacks with other companies and with […]

I know you’ve been there. You go to a Website and as soon as it opens, a video starts to play for a few seconds and all you can do is watch it until it’s over, or if you’re lucky, a link appears that allows you to skip the video and move on to what […]