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Obama To Nearly Double Available Wireless Spectrum

Slartibartfast

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UPDATE: Obama To Nearly Double Available Wireless Spectrum - WSJ.com

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--President Barack Obama on Monday signed a memorandum to nearly double the amount of federal and commercial spectrum available for smartphones and wireless Internet devices.
The move is aimed at spurring investment, economic growth and job creation as demand for broadband surges with the boom in wireless internet devices such as iPhones, Blackberrys and laptops.
Obama said in a statement that "few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America's economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet."
The memorandum directs federal agencies to find ways to free up 500 megahertz of airwaves for consumer mobile broadband services over the next 10 years. While the directive applies to all federal agencies and may take years to fully realize, there are some areas that may have spectrum ripe for being freed. One such agency is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to an administration official.

My hope is that they dedicate more spectrum to personal use, such as household Wifi.
 
He forgot to mention increased identity and monetary theft.

But those are downers about wifi type technologies so I see why he didn't want to draw attention to it.
 
UPDATE: Obama To Nearly Double Available Wireless Spectrum - WSJ.com

My hope is that they dedicate more spectrum to personal use, such as household Wifi.

Sounds good, though I'm left wondering what the arguments against such a move would be. It seems like a no-brainer as is.

He forgot to mention increased identity and monetary theft.

But those are downers about wifi type technologies so I see why he didn't want to draw attention to it.

How will increasing the amount of wireless spectrum available cause an increase in identity theft?

It's like saying that by adding an extra lane to a highway, you're facilitating bank robbery by giving criminals a quicker getaway.
 
Sounds good, though I'm left wondering what the arguments against such a move would be. It seems like a no-brainer as is.



How will increasing the amount of wireless spectrum available cause an increase in identity theft?

It's like saying that by adding an extra lane to a highway, you're facilitating bank robbery by giving criminals a quicker getaway.

He said:
"few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America's economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet."

To which I added that the technology also increases monetary and ID theft.
 
He said:
"few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America's economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet."

To which I added that the technology also increases monetary and ID theft.

Hardly. I run a wireless network with a WPA2 verification, and I am completely secure when it comes to wireless internet. As long as you know how to secure your wireless network, and as long as you know to turn on your firewalls and to encrypt all of your vital information when you are on a public network, you should be just fine.
 
He said:
"few technological developments hold as much potential to enhance America's economic competitiveness, create jobs, and improve the quality of our lives as wireless high-speed access to the Internet."

To which I added that the technology also increases monetary and ID theft.

But we already have plentiful wireless broadband. How does adding more create additional danger - if someone is going to get their info stolen under the new system, they could get it stolen under the current system as well.
 
But we already have plentiful wireless broadband. How does adding more create additional danger - if someone is going to get their info stolen under the new system, they could get it stolen under the current system as well.

I didn't say it added aditional danger.
he gave it a bunch of positives - and I gave it some negatives :shrug:

I'm just giving him a hard time.

ScottD - nothing is safe.
 
ScottD - nothing is safe.

But it is just as safe as a wired system if you know how to secure yourself.

I mean a wired system actually has a lock of exploits. Did you know that there are keyloggers out there that you can plug into an electrical outlet and it can tell you what keys someone in that building is pressing on their keyboard? It's the ultimate keylogger, and it is not at all wireless.
 
But it is just as safe as a wired system if you know how to secure yourself.

I mean a wired system actually has a lock of exploits. Did you know that there are keyloggers out there that you can plug into an electrical outlet and it can tell you what keys someone in that building is pressing on their keyboard? It's the ultimate keylogger, and it is not at all wireless.

No it's not.
Nothing's safe. . . wired/wireless - nothing is safe.
If it's computer technology it can be hacked if someone wants to do it.
 
Talk about fishing for reasons to disagree with that damned liberal president!
 
Sounds good, though I'm left wondering what the arguments against such a move would be. It seems like a no-brainer as is.

I'm not sure what roll the federal government should play in the telecom industry. With federal investment comes federal oversight and control.
 
I'm not sure what roll the federal government should play in the telecom industry. With federal investment comes federal oversight and control.

It's not federal investment, the government is actually auctioning off broadband that it owned to private companies.
 
It's not federal investment, the government is actually auctioning off broadband that it owned to private companies.

Maybe those more technologically savvy can help me on this, if the government is selling off broadband, what exactly stops these companies from charging people for it once they've gained control of it?
 
Maybe those more technologically savvy can help me on this, if the government is selling off broadband, what exactly stops these companies from charging people for it once they've gained control of it?

You can always say "No thanks".
 
No it's not.
Nothing's safe. . . wired/wireless - nothing is safe.
If it's computer technology it can be hacked if someone wants to do it.

You've seen too many movies. A few good firewalls, a virus scanner, and an encrypted network can keep you plenty safe. Unless someone with decades of hacking experience specifically targeted you and spent days trying to gain access to your system, you are safe. These stories you hear of people getting hacked are because THEY did something stupid, like turn off their firewall, keep their network unencrypyted, or downloaded a suspicious file without a virus scanner. If you know what you are doing, you are under virtually zero risk from being hacked.
 
Maybe those more technologically savvy can help me on this, if the government is selling off broadband, what exactly stops these companies from charging people for it once they've gained control of it?

Nothing really. That is part of the reason people a cell phone bill.
 
You've seen too many movies. A few good firewalls, a virus scanner, and an encrypted network can keep you plenty safe.

Unless someone with decades of hacking experience specifically targeted you and spent days trying to gain access to your system, you are safe.

These stories you hear of people getting hacked are because THEY did something stupid, like turn off their firewall, keep their network unencrypyted, or downloaded a suspicious file without a virus scanner. If you know what you are doing, you are under virtually zero risk from being hacked.

I agree with this...

You can get a good free one from comodo.com... I could never prove it, but I would swear that there are people at McAfee, and others, that also write viruses and release them occasionally to boost sales, so in terms of virusscanners, it's best to go with one that detects based on the types of actions viruses will take, to not go with the most common (most likely to be targeted specifically in code), kept up to date, and regular schedule scans.

Firewall - Windows firewall does not count. Some ISP's have the router as part of the modem, that would cut it, but best to have a software firewall as well.

You're far less likely to be attacked if you use mac.... linux, I'm told is mostly unhackable without direct access to the computer (or the previous mentioned do something stupid). Windows just gets targeted more, probably because they are completely evil and corrupt, and Bill Gates is a weasly looking nerd, God forbid they actually release a program that is NOT broken out of the box, and every few years comes out with a NEW broken program once the old one was just starting to get useable.

If you are attacked by a real good hacker, you would probably not even notice that it happened.

What I'm more concerned about are things like :
Due to there being few limits on the US President's emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page Bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

TechAmerica, probably the largest US technology lobby group, said it was concerned about "unintended consequences that would result from the legislation's regulatory approach" and "the potential for absolute power". And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman Bill's emergency powers "include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems."

The idea of an internet "kill switch" that the President could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that ZDNet Australia's sister site CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to "declare a cybersecurity emergency", and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to "order the disconnection" of certain networks or websites.

Internet 'kill switch' proposed for US - Security - News

http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/inde...Store_id=4ee63497-ca5b-4a4b-9bba-04b7f4cb0123

Defense.gov News Article: CENTCOM Team Engages 'Bloggers' - The defense department is just paying people to 'blog', nothing to see here.

Oooooh Identitiy management as part of the security strategy, it will no longer be 'bmanmcfly' it will be John Doe, so it will be much easier for you guys to track me down and punch me in the face for all the times pissing you all off.... but it's ok, it's 'for the children'

FT.com / Technology - US outlines online security strategy

They say that they are doing this for cybersecurity... I think these guys underestimate the ingenuity of the hacker community, because to start cracking down on the internet is going to piss off any number of THOUSANDS of underground hackers. I knew a guy who once overtook (with the admitted help of a likeminded individual located in russia) a sattelite TV high tech algorithm upgrade within 3 months... we're talking 150million+ that only guaranteed security for 3 months (He got caught for that one eventually). There's also stories of the hackers that gave up the corporate world because the hacking world was more profitable. So, really... the government should really think twice and know what they are doing before pissing that many nerds off simultaneously... I mean, I was kindof a nerd back then, and I still try to keep up a bit, but we're talking die hards, people that will reprogram certain microchips to do ... whatever...

I'm just saying... if the internet shuts off I'll be stuck, but I can guarantee that no matter the situation, people are going to get around the thing, and then it will get out... then again, if it's the ISP's shut down, then it may not matter, except maybe VPN's, but I dunno enough personally anymore.
 
500MHz is pretty much obsolete.




which is odd as the band is a pretty robust band that tends to deal with things like adverse weather better than some of the other current bands. We often operated around this area. ;)
 
Maybe those more technologically savvy can help me on this, if the government is selling off broadband, what exactly stops these companies from charging people for it once they've gained control of it?


What do you mean?


If they auction a section to AT&T, they would sell you phones that used these frequencies.
 
Maybe those more technologically savvy can help me on this, if the government is selling off broadband, what exactly stops these companies from charging people for it once they've gained control of it?

My understanding is that in the current system, the phone and internet companies have X amount of spectrum which they can use to offer services to the public. That's starting to get crowded, so Obama is auctioning off another chunk which will raise the government billions and give the companies more space.
 
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