TipAdept Dot Com

After weeks of back-and-forth negotiations between Internet search giant Google and the Chinese government, Google says it will continue to oppose China's efforts to censor information on the Internet. For the past several years, Google has censored results on its Google.cn search engine as requested by the Chinese government. But recently, Google decided to pull the plug.

Google's decision came after a China-based cyberattack that Google said resulted in stolen intellectual property. Two weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt threatened to pull Google's business out of China if the government did not allow uncensored search results and information. But since then, Schmidt and the government have attempted to find some middle ground.

If it pulls out of China, Google stands to lose its 700 employees in China and anger advertisers. Advertisers may decide to move to Google competitors based in China, such as Baidu and Alibaba Group.

China, however, may have more to lose. China stands to lose its footing toward becoming a world technology leader, and it needs help from companies such as Google and Microsoft.

Pressure Is On

Schmidt reiterated his efforts to stop China's censorship at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. He said the company plans to apply some pressure to change censorship while still benefiting from what China has to offer the company.

His comments come a week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked U.S. companies to stand their ground against countries that censor information and to protect those who are threatened by countries that stop the free flow of information. Clinton pointed to several countries, including China, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, that have increased Internet censorship.

"The Internet has already been a source of tremendous progress in China, and it is fabulous," Clinton told an audience at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. "But countries that restrict...

Around the globe, laws are too weak to deter cyberattacks and countries are incapable of preventing attacks. Those pessimistic findings are among the results of a worldwide survey of industry executives funded by McAfee and conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The study, In the crossfire -- Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Cyber War, surveyed 600 executives and talked to dozens of security experts. The executives were questioned about their practices, attitudes and policies on security, the impact of regulation, their relationship with government, specific security measures employed on their networks, and the kinds of attacks they face, McAfee said.

The respondents indicated that government does have a role to play in cybersecurity, which is a change in industry thinking. "I have sensed for a year or more that industry, which used to think that the government didn't need to get involved, doesn't have any confidence that they can solve this problem on their own," said Stewart Baker, a distinguished visiting fellow at CSIS and a partner at law firm Steptoe & Johnson.

General Support for Regulation

Government regulation has "sharpened [corporate] policy and improved security," according to 58 percent of the respondents. But opinions varied widely by national politics. In China and Germany, more than 60 percent supported government regulation, while few in Italy and Australia did.

Globally, public-private partnerships have not taken off, with only a third of respondents saying they are participating. In the United States, where participation is higher, many executives voiced concern about "information sharing being a one-way street," the report found.

The survey results come just two weeks after Howard Schmidt took the reins as U.S. cybersecurity chief. In an interview after his first public appearance, at the State of the Net conference in Washington, Schmidt honed in on the China-based breach of Google....

As more states consider controls on cell-phone use in vehicles and Congress mulls a nationwide texting-while-driving ban, a study released Friday suggests the bans have not reduced the number of accidents. The Highway Loss Data Institute compared insurance claims in four states that have bans with areas where drivers can talk freely and found no significant difference.

"The laws aren't reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced handheld phone use and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk," said Adrian Lund, HLDI president.

The institute is an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an influential nonprofit agency funded by the auto industry that crash-tests new cars to provide safety ratings for insurance companies and consumers.

Do the Laws Work?

Bans against handheld cell-phone use are in effect in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The survey wasn't intended to undermine such laws, but to point out that they may not have teeth.

The studies looked at claims in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C., both before and after the bans went into effect and compared them with claims in neighboring states with no ban. This method was intended to take into account factors not related to the bans, such as seasonal and economic variations and driving patterns.

The data go back to 2001, when New York adopted the nation's first ban.

Driving Analysts Crazy

A previous IIHS study looked at drivers' phone records and found that drivers using the phone were four times more likely to be in a crash. That makes the findings of the latest study something of a paradox.

"If crash risk increases with phone use and fewer drivers use phones where it's illegal to do so, we would expect to see a decrease in crashes," said Lund, who is president of both...