Tag Archive for Politics

| December 11, 2009
Comments Off on Insurers Astroturf Facebook

Insurers Astroturf Facebook

Insurers Astroturf FacebookThe Business Insider reports that health insurance industry trade groups opposed to President Obama’s health care reform bill are paying Facebook users. The trade group is Facebook users virtual currency to send letters to Congress protesting the bill. When Facebook users play a social game, like “FarmVille” or “Mafia Wars,” the gamers get virtual currency in three ways:

  1. Winning it playing the games
  2. Paying for it with real money
  3. By accepting offers from third parties who agree to give the gamer virtual currency so long as that gamer agrees to try a product or service. This is done through an “offers” provider — a middleman that brings the companies, Facebook, and the Facebook game maker’s users together.

Blue Cross Blue Shield opposition to healthcare reform

It’s this third method that an anti-reform group called “Get Health Reform Right” which is funded and directed by mega-insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield according to SourceWatch is using to pay gamers virtual currency for their opposition to health-care reform. This practice of paying people to act like political supporters is called “astroturfing,” because of the fake grass-roots campaigning. The Insurance Companies’ Political Action Committee astroturfing is targeting women in their 30s and 40s and teenagers of both sexes who tend to be Facebook gamers according to Business Insider.

Instead of asking the gamers to try a product, “Get Health Reform Right” requires gamers to take a survey, which, upon completion, automatically sends the following email to their Congressional Representative, including:

“I am concerned a new government plan could cause me to lose the employer coverage I have today. More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have.”

Under the “Who We Are” tab on GetHealthReformRight.org (appears down on 12-10-09) the following organizations are listed:

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This practice is not illegal. Most EULA’s are so broad, ambiguous, and slanted toward the vendor that most anything is possible. The ethics of this practice are pretty shady in my opinion. Based on the list of companies that back GetHealthReformRight.org. I find it extremely hard to believe that these insurance companies have nothing but their own best interests in mind.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Social Networking | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
| September 7, 2009
Comments Off on Feds Still Want to Federalize Internet

Feds Still Want to Federalize Internet

Feds Still Want to Federalize InternetSenator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has released a revised version of his bill that would federalize the Internet (I covered this topic earlier here). The current draft would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” on “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat.

Feds Still Want to Federalize NetSection 3 (2) (B) Defines “Cyber” as any matter relating to, or involving the use of, computers or computer networks. Section 201 (2) (B), permits the president to “direct the national response to the cyber threat” if necessary for “the national defense and security.”

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” Larry Clinton told CNET “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill,” said Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman JAY ROCKEFELLER (D-WV)A Senate source familiar with the bill told CNET that the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet is comparable to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

Section 201 (5) the bill requires the White House to engage in “periodic mapping” of private networks deemed to be critical, and those companies “shall share” requested information with the federal government. The privacy implications of sweeping changes implemented before the legal review is finished worry Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco told CNET. “As soon as you’re saying that the federal government is going to be exercising this kind of power over private networks, it’s going to be a really big issue,” he says.

“The language has changed but it doesn’t contain any real additional limits,” EFF’s Tien says. “It simply switches the more direct and obvious language they had originally to the more ambiguous (version)…The designation of what is a critical infrastructure system or network as far as I can tell has no specific process. There’s no provision for any administrative process or review. That’s where the problems seem to start. And then you have the amorphous powers that go along with it.”

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If your network is determined to be “critical” by the Feds, there is likely a new set of regulations coming from the same people who are giving themselves failing grades for their own cyber-security.

These new rules could impact staffing decisions, disclosure policies and open the door to a government can take over your IT systems. This bill requires watching by anybody that uses or manages computers, a private network, or the Internet. It is likely they will sweep it in as pork on another unrelated bill, to limit public discussion.

Contact your representatives in DC.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
| August 11, 2009
Comments Off on No Job Growth for 10 Years

No Job Growth for 10 Years

The New York Times is reporting that for the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no job growth in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring.

The NYT charts show the job performance from July 1999, through July of this year. For the decade, there was a net gain of 121,000 private-sector jobs, according to the survey of employers conducted each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In an economy with 109 million such jobs, that indicated an annual growth rate for the 10 years of 0.01 percent.

According to the NYT, until the current downturn, the long-term annual growth rate for private-sector jobs had not dipped below 1 percent since the early 1960s. Most often, the rate was well above that.

NYT chart

Fortunately for me, the NYT says the field of management and technical consulting leaped at an annual rate of 5 percent. But while designing computers and related equipment was a growth field, building them was a very different story, as the manufacturing shifted largely to Asia. The number of jobs making computer and electronic equipment in the United States fell at an annual rate of 4.4 percent, substantially more than the overall decline in manufacturing jobs, of 3.7 percent.

That was a better showing than that of the automakers, which shed jobs at a rate of 6.7 percent a year. By contrast, auto dealers cut jobs at a much slower rate of 1.3 percent a year, although that rate may accelerate later this year as General Motors and Chrysler dealerships are closed.

The total picture is of an economy that has changed in substantial ways over the decade. After the recession ends, job growth is likely to resume. But there is no indication that the secular trend toward a more service-oriented economy will reverse. and few expect that manufacturing will reverse its long decline as a major employer in the United States.

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Enough said –

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , ,
| April 8, 2009
Comments Off on Feds Aim to Nationalize Private Networks

Feds Aim to Nationalize Private Networks

Feds Aim to Nationalize Private NetworksIn the tradition of federalization of the auto industry. And in keeping with promises made in the 2008 campaign. The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are proposing to increase cybersecurity by federalizing networks. The legislation, co-sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D.”The Internet Should Never Have Existed” Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), was drafted with White House input.

Office of the National Cybersecurity AdviserThe Rockefeller-Snowe measure would create the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, the White House cybersecurity “czar.” The czar would report directly to the president and would coordinate defense efforts across government agencies. The proposed bills go beyond securing government networks and puts the White House in charge of the security of private networks with the authority to shut them down. Under the guise of “critical infrastructure”, the Feds are going to nationalize banking, utilities, air/rail/auto traffic control, and telecommunications networks.

The new rules are proposed in two senate bills, S.773 the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, and S.778. S.778 is a bill to establish, within the Executive Office of the President, the Office of National Cybersecurity Advisor. S.773 is “A bill to ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cybersecurity defenses against disruption, and for other purposes.”

NIST logoIt would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish “measurable and auditable cybersecurity standards” that would apply to private companies as well as the government. It also would require licensing and certification of cybersecurity professionals.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged there will be privacy concerns about centralizing cybersecurity, and he told the Washington Post that the program should be designed in a way that gives Americans confidence that it is “not being used to gather private information.”

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How does the Obama Cyber Czar plan to ensure the continued free flow of commerce when they take the Telco networks off-line. In case they haven’t noticed, the telcos provide most of the long-haul interconnect for the Internet. If the Obama Cyber Czar decides to take the banks offline, there are going to be bigger problems. Can you say bank run? I will pull my cash out at the local branch.

Finally, this is a bad policy, because the Security Czar is a political appointment and network security is too important to be left to politics unless of course, it is in the corporate boardroom.

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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