Dealing
Security expert Bruce Schneier offers some sobering thoughts on the Sony hack, trying to dial down the claims that this is a case of “cyber-warfare.” He writes:
Remember, the hackers didn’t start talking about The Interview until the press did. Maybe the NSA has some secret information pinning this attack on the North Korean government, but unless the agency comes forward with the evidence, we should remain skeptical. We don’t know who did this, and we may never find out. I personally think it is a disgruntled ex-employee, but I don’t have any more evidence than anyone else does.
North Korea’s Internet appeared to be under a cyber-attack, following on President Obama’s promise of a “proportional response” to the Sony hack, reports Max Fisher for Vox.
Facebook is under pressure to take down more pages supportive of dissident Alexei Navalny, Andrew Roth and David Herszenhorn report for the New York Times. So far the company hasn’t complied, and one page calling for a January 15 rally supporting Navalny, who faces a 10-year prison term on trumped up charges, now has 29,000 people signed up.
Sony’s lawyer David Boies is threatening Twitter with a lawsuit if it continues to allow accounts to share the company’s leaked material, Jason Koebler reports for Motherboard. Section 230, anyone?
Longtime open-government-data advocate Joshua Tauberer explains why the Senate’s quiet announcement that it would soon be making its legislative data available to the public is actually a big deal.
Health data wonk Fred Trotter explains why the recent proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services for open, machine-readable data about which health providers are in which health plans is actually a big deal.
The New York Times Jodi Kantor retraces the path taken by many of the graduates of Stanford’s class of 1994, who benefited from being in the right place at the right time as the Internet was taking off, and shows how the sexism embedded in its supposedly “meritocratic” culture was actually a big deal.
Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed goes inside the online network that has been building the draft movement for Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to run for President, and explains why it could be a big deal–but probably isn’t.
Nor is this: People who saw Facebook ads about a 2014 Senate campaign were somewhat more likely to donate to that campaign in response to an email solicitation, reports Derek Willis for The New York Times.