Thursday, Nov. 11 —
It’s no secret that Silicon Valley’s center of business gravity has shifted toward the networked world. Venture capital is flowing toward Internet and networking companies, not older-line businesses based on personal computers — and not solely because the Intel-Microsoft “Win-Tel” duopoly has been squeezing out other people’s innovations in the PC arena.
Even so, it was remarkable to see Intel dropping behind another Silicon Valley company in its market capitalization. Cisco Systems’ ascent is the best evidence yet of the shifts taking place in technology.
The two companies took largely different paths to prominence. Intel grew by taking enormous risks — building new plants to sell ever-more-powerful chips and hoping the customers would be there when the chips hit the market. Cisco, to a much greater extent, has acquired technology to complement its organic growth.
Interestingly, Intel sees its future as a supplier to the networked world, too. This race isn’t over.
Echelon
Thursday, Nov. 11 —
Various governments deny its very existence, but Echelon — a global electronic spying network — is increasingly looking like a genuine item. Its apparent purpose is to intercept international communications on behalf of intelligence agencies, in part to tip off national-security people to potential terrorist threats.
Of course, such a system can also be used for everyday spying on everyday businesses and citizens who aren’t even suspected of doing anything wrong. The potential for massive, unwarranted invasions of privacy has prompted politicians in several countries to start asking questions, which have largely been greeted by stonewalling from intelligence services.
The U.S. National Security Agency, for example, told Congress to take a hike when a few members asked for information on Echelon. This is pretty brazen behavior, but Congress rarely has the guts to pursue even the worst civil-liberties abuses when the military or intelligence community cover themselves in the cloak of national security.
Duncan Campbell, a Scottish journalist, has been writing about Echelon longer than anyone else in the press. His report to the European Parliament on international message interception remains one of the best sources of information on this topic.
If you want to know more, Campbell will be one of the speakers at a meeting of the Bay Area Cypherpunks on Saturday in Palo Alto. It runs from 12:30 p.m. until 5 p.m. at the Gates computer-science building at Stanford University.