Wayne Rash

When I was introduced to the original Macintosh early in 1984, I looked at the device on the table in front of me with a sense of wonder. It wasn’t because I was blown away by the technical innovation. Rather, I was wondering why anyone would want to work on a computer with a tiny […]

Minutes after the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released its finding that the unrestricted collection of phone metadata by the National Security Agency was unconstitutional, the White House rejected it. The presidential commission was originally chartered shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remained unfilled for years. Finally a board of […]

The announcement that Verizon would buy Intel’s Media unit was a surprise to no one. The telecom giant had been rumored to be interested in the acquisition for some time after Intel started quietly looking for a new home for the 2-year-old unit that it built, but never used. The sale gets one more distraction […]

When President Barack Obama announced on Jan. 17 apparently sweeping changes to the ways in which the various intelligence agencies collect and store data, it sounded like a major concession to U.S. citizens and businesses concerned about their privacy. While there were a few important changes, it’s hard to see that they will have much […]

When I first looked into the credit card security breach at Target and later at Neiman Marcus, the solution seemed easy. If you want to protect yourself from having the mag stripe information on your card stolen, then use a card with an EMV chip. If your business wants at least some protection, then get […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia focused on narrow, technical grounds to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s rules requiring non-discriminatory, non-blocking access to the Internet. However, the court avoided the broader assertions by Verizon that the FCC does not have the authority to regulate broadband providers, saying that it was clear […]

The longer the revelations continue about the data breach at Target, the worse the news gets. The news was bad enough when the word was that hackers had managed to extract the magnetic stripe data from Target’s point-of-sale (POS) terminals, allowing them to sell credit card information and even make counterfeit credit cards. But since […]

At T-Mobile’s Jan. 8 press conference, CEO John Legere, best described as moderately profane and unabashedly pugnacious, challenged the other carriers for practices that he condemned as unfriendly to consumers. He heaped particular scorn on Sprint, which he described in words that my editors won’t allow and took on Verizon’s family plans. But first Legere […]

T-Mobile CEO John Legere will announce on Jan. 8 the next step in the wireless carrier’s “Un-carrier” marketing campaign. This time, apparently, T-Mobile will announce that it will pay the contract termination fee for customers who decide to join T-Mobile. The amount being talked about amongst the wireless cognoscenti is that T-Mobile will pay $350 […]

As I write this column, I can see the flicker of the drive light on an HP workstation out of the corner of my eye. It’s flickering as the computer downloads and installs something like 450 Windows updates, and as bad as that may seem, in reality, it’s the good news. The bad news is […]

Buried deep within the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, signed by President Barack Obama on Dec. 28, is Section 1602, which contains a provision that prohibits the president from approving construction of a global navigation satellite system ground-monitoring station that belongs to or is controlled by a foreign government. Before you start […]

You’d think that the solution to protecting your credit card information would be fairly easy. After all, EMV chip technology has been around for years, and most credit card issuers say it’s available to customers. Outside the United States, this technology is widely used, to the point that it’s frequently difficult to make a purchase […]