FREE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY BLOG FOR PROFESSIONALS

It's no secret that China is tightening its control of every aspect of the online world -- Techdirt has been reporting on the saga for years. But what may not be so clear is how China is doing this. It is not, as many might think, the direct result of diktats from on high, but flows naturally from a massive program of carefully-crafted laws and new government initiatives created with the specific intent of making the online world subservient to the Chinese authorities. Central to this approach is a law passed three years ago, generally known in the West as " China's cybersecurity law ". A review of the law in 2017, by the New America think tank, brought some useful clarity to complicated political landscape . It names a number of powerful players involved, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the country's military and intelligence establishment, and BAT -- Baidu, ...

The City of Baltimore was hit with a ransomware attack in May of this year . Criminals using remodeled and rebranded NSA exploits (EternalBlue) knocked out a "majority" of the city's servers and crippled many of its applications. More details didn't surface until September when the city's government began reshuffling the budget to cover the expenses of recovering from the attack. The person in charge of the city's systems was Frank Johnson, who went on leave (presumably permanently) after a post-attack audit found the IT director hadn't done much IT directing . Johnson, who also serves as the city's chief digital officer, received significant criticism from local authorities for the response to the May 7 attack. City council members alleged a lack of transparency and communication in the wake of the incident , as well as an inability to maintain a functional organization "during an emergency event." He also also never drafted a continui...