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Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.
Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC's As It Happens.
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The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation is spearheading a project to build new voting machines to replace proprietary systems currently in place. The group is in the second year of a an eight-year plan to produce a publicly-owned, open source election system. OSDV has turned loose its first batch of software code for technical review.
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Part 2 of our interview with John Arquilla, Naval Postgraduate School
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The U.S. posture on cyber warfare is largely defensive, with military geeks focused on preventing and mitigating Internet-based attacks on critical infrastructure. John Arquilla, professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, believes Pentagon code-slingers should alter their focus somewhat and team with International white hat hackers to disable the war-making capabilities of nations preparing to go to fight.
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The Federal Trade Commission this week announced new guidelines that would penalize bloggers for failing to disclose when they receive money for endorsing products. The fine could go as high as $11,000.
Some consumer groups pushed for the change, saying Internet users need to be aware of payments before trusting information on products like diets and financial services. Others are concerned the government is sticking its nose where it doesn't belong.
Guest: Caroline McCarthy, CNET News
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Rival companies Google and Microsoft fight on many fronts -- Internet search and advertising, for example, and operating systems. A newer battlefield is Southern California, where the companies are competing for a $7.25 million contract to provide email and office software for the City of Los Angeles.
The contract fight is significant because it could help determine whether upstart Google is ready for the big time when it comes to its cloud-based apps, according to David Sarno, business reporter for the Los Angeles Times.
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In Wired magazine, Nicholas Thompson writes about system known as Dead Hand. It was designed by Soviet scientists in the mid 1980s to automatically retaliate against a nuclear strike from the U.S.
Thompson's new book on the cold war is The Hawk and the Dove.
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The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is proposing new rules that would require Internet service providers to treat all Web content the same. Under the rules, which apply to both wired and wireless networks, operators would not be able to discriminate on how they handle Internet content or applications on their networks.
Guest: Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm
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The worry over coordinated cyber attacks against U.S. computer systems from foreign enemies or terrorists has been larger than any damage that's occurred so far, perhaps, but the bad guys are getting better and threats are growing, according to Massoud Amin, who heads a new master's program in security technologies at the University of Minnesota.
A new report from the United States Department of Agriculture says broadband Internet leads to more and higher-paying jobs in rural areas.
Guest: Matthew Lasar, Ars Technica
A recognized genius in mathematics, cryptography, and computer science, Alan Turing cracked German naval code in World War II, and is thought to be the father of modern computer science. Despite his achievements he was treated poorly in his home country of Great Britain, which prosecuted him for homosexual acts, which were illegal at the time. That treatment likely led to his suicide in 1954 at the age of 41.
John Graham-Cumming, a British computer programmer, believes Turing is owed an apology.
A study by the OpenNet Initiative, an Internet freedom group comprised of researchers from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and the University of Toronto, finds rising government censorship of online information in most of the 18 countries of the Middle East and North Africa.
Guest: Rob Faris, Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society
President Obama has made it a top priority to assemble a White House-based team to fight Internet-based crime and defend the country against cyber attack, but first he has to find a person willing and able to lead the effort. Yesterday the interim cyber czar, Melissa Hathway, resigned, saying she's frustrated over the administration's delay in filling the post. Siobhan Gorman, intelligence correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, says some of the president's advisers had apparently turned against Hathaway.
Today, part two of our conversation with Ronald Arkin, author of Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
Today: Part 2 of our interview with H. Keith Melton, author of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda
Scientists working for U.S. intelligence have come up with some nifty ways to steal and communicate secrets over the years - from ball point pens that conceal tiny cameras to a freeze-dried rat with a hollow abdomen to hide information.
These days, of course, the spy game of covert communications is played out digitally, on computers, mobile phones, and the Internet.
Guest: H. Keith Melton, co-author of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al Qaeda
The Obama administration has launched Data.gov, a much-anticipated site where citizens can download raw data from federal agencies. The idea is to encourage programmers and others to make new applications and mashups based on information from such agencies as the National Weather Service, the Census Bureau, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Center for Health Statistics.
Last week the Obama administration promised to strengthen antitrust enforcement as a means to deal with powerful companies. That would make the U.S. more aligned with the European Union, which last week fined chip maker Intel $1.45 billion for abusing its market power.
Technology companies such as AT&T, IBM and Microsoft have been the biggest antitrust targets for the government over the past several decades. In many ways, the most dominant tech firm now is Google, which is already under some scrutiny by the Justice Department. Last year the company abandoned a search partnership with Yahoo after the government threatened an antitrust lawsuit. And this year the government has opened two separate inquiries -- one for Google's book scanning project, the other related to Google sharing board members with Apple.
Will the government make Google a major antitrust target going forward? Possible but not likely, according to University of Iowa law school professor Herbert Hovenkamp.
Library groups are urging "rigorous oversight" of Google's agreement with authors and publishers that would allow it to put millions of books online.
Google reached an agreement last year with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers to pursue the project. The lawsuit settlement It is awaiting a judge's approval.
The American Library Association and Association of Research Libraries say they're concerned Google will not safeguard readers' privacy, and are worried Google would be the only online source for many books and academic journals.
Guest: Ryan Singel, Wired.com
The United States has no clear policy on the use of digital weaponry to attack communications systems, financial networks and power grids, or to defend its own systems, according to a National Research Council panel of scientists and policy makers.
At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) wondered aloud whether a technology called deep packet inspection needs to be outlawed. Deep packet inspection allows Internet service providers to examine in great detail an individual's activity on the Internet - from email to Web surfing habits.
Guest: Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
Public Printer is not the kind of job one would normally launch a high-profile public campaign to land. But Carl Malamud believes that head poobah of the U.S. Government Printing Office is such a cool and important gig that he's asking for the job from a dedicated Web site, Yes We Scan.
The federal government's new Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra says a major part of his job is to ensure the public has access to information, and to use the Internet and technology to change the way the public interacts with the government.
Guest: Kim Hart, Washington Post
While President Obama has been widely praised for his use of the Internet to communicate with the public, not all are happy. For example privacy groups have raised a stink over President Obama's use of Google's YouTube as the primary distributor of weekly video addresses on the WhiteHouse.gov Website.
Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation objected to YouTube's use of small files known as "cookies" that track users' movements across the Web. The White House is now using a different video provider.
