Update: Texas PI Law
Benjamin Wright, (an advisor to an electronic-discovery firm Messaging Architects) posted a comment to our coverage of the Texas law that requires companies which “investigate” computers (which could possibly mean PC repairmen, although that wasn’t the original intent of the law) to have investigative licenses – the “Texas PI law” for short.
He pointed out that already there is one unintended consequence – and that is that those caught in red-light traffic cameras are suing the manufacturers because even though the red light footage is “evidence of a crime,” some (most?) traffic-cam organizations are not licensed to act as a private investigator, and therefore it is illegal for them to present that computerized evidence in court.
When the Texas PI law first came out, we were concerned about “unintended consequences,” and those consequences striking computer repairmen, network engineers, sysadmins, and others. This, on the other hand, seems to be the intended consequence; the red-light camera company was doing forensic work to be used in court dealing with computers. (Let’s ignore the merits and drawbacks of red-light cameras for right now.)
It is, however interesting to note that the company named in one fine appeal, American Traffic Solutions, is based in Arizona, which explains, partially, why they may have not gotten a PI license in Texas.
The American Bar Association has weighed in on this issue [PDF], arguing that computer forensics experts should not need PI licenses for forensic work.
Update: Respecting the Network Engineer
Yesterday, we published Chandra Hosek’s column on how Network Engineers often get less respect than they deserve. Thomas Nolle at Network World has published a column suggesting some of the reasons why.
Nolle notes that since the first Tech bubble burst in 2000, computer systems and software have gotten larger than average shares of investment, while networks have gone down since then. From the article:
The question we might ask is why networking couldn’t capitalize on the attention it received. The answer, I think, lies in the stuff that binds networks to applications. The pivotal point in that critical issue came in the early 1990s, when IBM‘s Systems Network Architecture was supplanted by TCP/IP. SNA network equipment was just too expensive, and enterprises went to the lower cost of TCP/IP instead. The critical thing was that SNA was an application architecture as well as a network architecture, and TCP/IP vendors didn’t present application tools… Networking won hearts and minds in the ’90s, then lost them again because it didn’t offer the whole solution. The application connection to the network was never made by the network vendors, and so IBM and other system and software players continued to control that critical linkage — and still do today.
This brings new perspective on the idea that, as Jim Metzler put it, in IT you either develop applications or deliver applications.
Update: Australian Internet Fliters
Computerworld reports that the Australian-based Electronic Freedom Project is organizing protests on the 13th of December to protest Internet content filters mandated by the government. At the same time, the Minister for Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy, Sen. Stephen Conroy, has given his explanation of the ISP filtering plan; but ultimately, “Teh Moges” at Slashdot pretty much sums it up with: “Any efficient filter won’t be effective, and any effective filter won’t be efficient.”
Sen. Conroy earlier tried to place pressure on Mark Newton’s employer to keep the Australian network engineer’s criticism quiet.
Update: Groups push for Net Neutrality legislation in Obama’s administration
During the 2008 presidential campaign, then candidate Barack Obama pledged support for Network Neutrality principles and regulations. Now that he’s President-Elect, the Open Internet Coalition is calling on Obama to follow through, according to Network World.
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