March 16, 2012 (Happy Birthday, National Broadband Plan!)

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 2012

Mobile Devices Roundtable: Safeguarding Health Information http://benton.org/calendar/2012-03-16/

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   Levin: National Broadband Plan to Generate 1,000% Return On Investment
   Happy Birthday, National Broadband Plan! - analysis
   How One Second Could Cost Amazon $1.6 Billion In Sales

WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
   The new iPad is a beautiful reminder of how stupid data plans are - analysis
   Why Do Verizon and AT&T Keep Ending Up With All The Spectrum? - analysis
   Verizon acquires Cellular One of Northeast Pennsylvania, gains a bit more spectrum [links to web]
   T-Mobile embraces new ‘rural’ carrier role in 4G debate - analysis
   Supporting our First Responders' Communications Needs [links to web]
   Republican urges LightSquared's approval as sides make final push [links to web]
   Report: poor battery life in 4G smartphones makes for unhappy customers [links to web]
   AT&T vs. the consumer: the throttling controversy grows [links to web]
   China to Become the Largest Market for Smartphones in 2012 with Brazil and India Forecast to Join the Top 5 Country-Level Market - press release [links to web]
   Sprint to End Contract With LightSquared [links to web]

PRIVACY
   Facebook, Apple, and Twitter sued for privacy-invading mobile apps
   Sen Blumenthal: Obama Privacy Policy Could be Improved
   It's Not All About You: What Privacy Advocates Don't Get About Data Tracking on the Web - analysis
   For Apple, Pressure Builds Over App Store Fraud
   Google in New Privacy Probes
   Jedi knights of online privacy strike back at data-mining empires
   Protecting Privacy of Health Information and Building Trust as Mobile and Online Health Evolve [links to web]

MEDIA & ELECTIONS
Repaving the Trail - analysis
Romney Ramps Up Illinois Spending [links to web]

CONTENT
   The Viral Kony 2012 Video - research
   What The CW’s About-Face On Streaming Says About Piracy, Authentication
   Nielsen: No evidence of on-demand music streams hurting download sales [links to web]
   American and European Tablet Owners More Comfortable Paying for Content - research [links to web]
   Digital ad spending to overtake print [links to web]
   Spring Break Gets Tamer as World Watches Online [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
   Antitrust Experts: US Government Should Avoid Enforcement in Tech Industry
   Lawmakers Fear Some Patent Fights Could Hurt Competition [links to web]

JOURNALISM
   Breaking News Can't Come at Expense of Breaking Public Trust
   Station Suspends News as Part of Merger Deal [links to web]
   Chicago Tribune cuts 15 journalists [links to web]

TV
Ten ways Apple and Google can make TV better - analysis [links to web]
The quietest device in the room [links to web]

LABOR
Apple labor protestors to target new iPad sale [links to web]

HEALTH
EHRs Become More Popular With Small Medical Practices [links to web]
Protecting Privacy of Health Information and Building Trust as Mobile and Online Health Evolve [links to web]

EDUCATION
FCC’s Genachowski, Ed’s Duncan Praise New LEAD Commission

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center
   Companies Pledge Not to Help Pakistan Filter the Web [links to web]
   Court Still Mute On Televising Healthcare Argument

POLICYMAKERS
Rutherford B. Hayes vs. Barack Obama
NAMIC Names Nicol Turner-Lee New CEO [links to web]

COMPANY NEWS
   Apple Shares Hit $600; $1 Trillion Market Cap Seems Less Outrageous [links to web]
   Google: Making our ads better for everyone - press release [links to web]
   Why Cisco Paid $5 Billion for NDS [links to web]
   Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL Advertising Partnership Fully Operational and Open for Business - press release [links to web]

STORIES FROM ABROAD
Tax Breaks Expected for UK Shows [links to web]
In Korea, handset makers, carriers fined for deceptive pricing

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INTERNET/BROADBAND

LEVIN ON 2ND ANNIVERSARY OF NBP
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
Friday, March 16, marks the second anniversary of a document that has made a huge impact on U.S. telecom policy -- the National Broadband Plan.
Telecompetitor caught up this week with Blair Levin, who headed up the 70-person team that put the nearly 400-page document together in a period of about nine months. Levin, who now heads up the Gig.U initiative to bring ultra-high-speed broadband to university communities, shared his thoughts on the team’s successes -- and what he would do differently if the plan were written today. One aspect of the National Broadband Plan of which Levin is particularly proud is the proposal to conduct a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum for mobile broadband use -- an idea first proposed in the plan. And now that Congress has given the FCC the authority to conduct an incentive auction, that idea is on its way to becoming reality. “We spent $20 million on the plan and Congress [says] the incentive auction is worth $22 billion,” said Levin. “That’s a thousand-to-one return on investment and it’s better than Goldman will do on the Facebook IPO.”
When the National Broadband Plan was released, Levin noted that it was destined to be a work in progress—and on our call this week, he said, “When the facts change, we have to change our way of thinking.” Two years after the plan’s release, Levin noted two areas where facts have changed. First, he said, the Light Squared saga has demonstrated that reclaiming spectrum for mobile broadband will be more difficult than anticipated. Another thing Levin said he would do differently today would be to take a stronger position on usage caps. “We didn’t believe government policy should oppose caps,” Levin said. If caps become standard process, however, Levin said there are certain uses that shouldn’t be subject to caps. “You don’t want a poor kid to not be able to do his homework assignment to watch last night’s presidential webcast,” said Levin.
benton.org/node/117454 | telecompetitor | Benton’s National Broadband Plan tracker
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] We’re taking a step back today from our usual focus on the past seven days to look at the progress made on implementation of the National Broadband Plan (NBP) over the last two years. March 16 marks the 2nd anniversary of the release of the NBP, a multi-year strategy for increasing broadband deployment, adoption and meaningful use throughout the country. Since the release, the Benton Foundation has been tracking the implementation of the plan and its over 200 recommendations.
http://benton.org/node/117476
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WHAT A SECOND DELAY COSTS
[SOURCE: Fast Company, AUTHOR: Kit Eaton]
Research on US Internet habits suggests that if this sentence takes longer than a second to load, many citizens will have clicked elsewhere already. The data comes from an infographic compiled by OnlineGraduatePrograms.com, with the specific goal of finding out about tolerance of slow webpage speeds for the average U.S. web user. Then they extended the data to cover other habits that take time, like waiting in line or being served in a restaurant. It turns out that Americans are an astonishingly impatient lot. One in four people abandons surfing to a website if its page takes longer than four seconds to load. That's just four "Mississippis," guys. Four in 10 Americans give up accessing a mobile shopping site that won't load in just three seconds. The greater majority of Americans also won't wait in line for more than 15 minutes. Fifty percent wouldn't go back again to an establishment that kept them waiting for something. So you'd better serve them swiftly the first time if you want their repeat commerce, no matter what Groupon deal you can cook up. Surprising as all this may be, the implications of this impatience are even more shocking. Amazon's calculated that a page load slowdown of just one second could cost it $1.6 billion in sales each year. Google has calculated that by slowing its search results by just 1/4 of a second they could lose 8 million searches per day--meaning they'd serve up many millions fewer online adverts.
benton.org/node/117451 | Fast Company
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

STUPID DATA PLANS
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Sean Hollister]
[Commentary] Apple's new iPad is magnificent. The screen is superb, the processor is fast, and despite its newfound LTE cellular connectivity, the battery life lasts. And yet, I’d never, ever recommend you buy an LTE tablet, or any other integrated cellular device that doesn't make calls. Why? The powers that be have colluded to place arbitrary restrictions on your data which don't make any sense. To Verizon or AT&T, it's the same exact data, and to you it's a perfectly crisp, smooth video call out in the field or a game on the go, with no need to bump elbows at a local Starbucks or stay at home. But because our cellular carriers have realized that they can charge us extra for each individual device we connect to their network, cap mobile downloads, and influence software providers not to place strain on the network, you end up paying more for less and enduring arbitrary restrictions when you buy devices with integrated cellular. The answer, for now, is to buy a portable hotspot or a tethering plan instead, but the tradeoffs don’t make sense. Why don't carriers make it worth our while to buy devices with embedded cellular radios?
benton.org/node/117482 | Verge, The
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WHY DO AT&T AND VERIZON GET ALL THE SPECTRUM?
[SOURCE: Tales of the Sausage Factory, AUTHOR: Harold Feld]
[Commentary] The largest wireless providers (AT&T and Verizon) can extract more value out of a wireless license than their significantly smaller rivals (especially when we include the foreclosure value of keeping the license out of the hands of competitors). As a result, we should expect over time that the biggest wireless companies will eventually have an unbeatable edge in wireless capacity unless the Federal Communications Commission takes some measures to balance out the spectrum holdings. Not surprisingly, the same problem surfaces when companies buy spectrum licenses from each other. After all, a license transfer is essentially a private auction (only with less transparency and higher transaction cost – factors that work in favor of the largest companies). We should therefore expect to see the same tension around spectrum efficiency and concern for competition policy play out in license transfers. Two recent transactions put these concerns in stark relief.
benton.org/node/117440 | Tales of the Sausage Factory
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T-MOBILE AND INTEROPERABILITY
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Kevin Fitchard]
[Commentary] T-Mobile USA is asking the Federal Communications Commission to require that all LTE devices in the 700 MHz band be interoperable – meaning that if you roam across AT&T’s to Verizon’s to U.S. Cellular’s 4G networks your smartphone or hotspot should still work. The FCC is considering just such a rule to unify the 700 MHz band, and if implemented it would benefit a bunch of small operators. But one carrier who benefits little from the rule change is T-Mobile. T-Mobile doesn’t own 700 MHz licenses, so it would appear to have no horse in this race. The thing is, T-Mobile’s future LTE devices are all going to run on the Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) band, which means it will have no interoperability problems with Verizon and AT&T: the primary advocates for allowing the 700 MHz band to fragment. Both Ma Bell and Big Red are using 700 MHz for their LTE networks today, but they plan to expand into AWS soon. What’s T-Mobile’s motive here? We can only guess, but my bet is it’s taking its new membership in the Rural Cellular Association to heart by sticking up for the little guys — a club it now considers itself a part of despite its 33 million subscribers. What it comes down to is market leverage: the 700 MHz fragmentation issue isn’t just about roaming, it’s about device availability.
benton.org/node/117444 | GigaOm
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PRIVACY

PRIVACY SUIT
[SOURCE: ComputerWorld, AUTHOR: By Jaikumar Vijayan]
Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Yelp, and 14 other companies have been hit with a lawsuit accusing them of distributing privacy-invading mobile applications. The lawsuit was filed by a group of 13 individuals in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. The suit charges 18 companies with surreptitiously gathering data from the address books of tens of millions of smartphone users. "The defendants -- several of the world's largest and most influential technology and social networking companies -- have unfortunately made, distributed and sold mobile software applications that, once installed on a wireless mobile device, surreptitiously harvest, upload and illegally steal the owner's address book data without the owner's knowledge or consent," the lawsuit alleged. The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction against such data collection and the destruction of all personal data collected by mobile application vendors so far. Most of the plaintiffs are from Austin and describe themselves in the complaint as users of Apple's iPhone users Android-powered handsets.
benton.org/node/117431 | ComputerWorld | MediaPost | paidContent.org
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BLUMENTHAL BELIEVES PRIVACY PROPOSAL CAN BE IMPROVED
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Juliana Gruenwald]
While praising the Obama Administration's privacy proposal as an important first step, one influential Senate Democrat on privacy issues said that he believes it needs to be improved by making the plan mandatory. "I think he meant it as a first draft," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told the Consumer Federation of America at a forum on consumer issues. "In my view it can be improved." While the administration urged Congress to codify its proposed privacy bill of rights into law, the White House focused more immediate attention on its call for industry to implement the principles through voluntary codes of conduct. Blumenthal voiced concern with the White House's focus on this voluntary approach. "I think as long as they're voluntary, they won't be worth much," Sen Blumenthal said. Sen Blumenthal also said he favors an opt-in approach over the administration's call for giving consumers the choice to opt out of having information collected about them while they surf the Internet or use apps on their smart phone. "His bill of rights adopted an opt-out approach and you all know what that means. Consumers are sent a piece of paper ...[and] told they have to write or email to opt out," he said. "In my view it ought to be required that consumers opt in."
benton.org/node/117470 | National Journal
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WHAT PRIVACY ADVOCATES DON’T GET
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Alexander Furnas]
[Commentary] Privacy critics worry about what Facebook, Google or Amazon knows about them, whether they will share that information or leak it, and maybe whether the government can get that information without a court order. While these concerns are legitimate, I think they are missing the broader point. Rather than caring about what they know about me, we should care about what they know about us. Detailed knowledge of individuals and their behavior coupled with the aggregate data on human behavior now available at unprecedented scale grants incredible power. Knowing about all of us - how we behave, how our behavior has changed over time, under what conditions our behavior is subject to change, and what factors are likely to impact our decision-making under various conditions - provides a roadmap for designing persuasive technologies. For the most part, the ethical implications of widespread deployment of persuasive technologies remains unexamined.
benton.org/node/117467 | Atlantic, The
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PRESSURE ON APPLE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Evelyn Rusli, Brian Chen]
Hundreds of online complaints say that Apple’s iTunes Store, and in particular its App Store, which the company portrays as the safest of shopping environments, is not so secure. The complaints come from consumers who say that their accounts have been hijacked or that some apps are falsely advertised. And they come from creators of apps, who say they are having to deal with fraudulent purchases that drain their time and resources. Software makers also complain that competition in the App Store has become so brutal that many companies resort to artificially inflating their popularity rankings to grab attention. It’s a change for Apple, which was once criticized for its micromanaging of the App Store. Now the problem is not too much control, but too little. In the shadowy world of hacking, it’s often unclear how criminals get iTunes passwords or credit card information. But the App Store, and Apple’s broader iTunes Store, have become playgrounds for illicit transactions.
benton.org/node/117491 | New York Times
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GOOGLE IN NEW PRIVACY PROBES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Julia Angwin]
Apparently, regulators in the US and European Union are investigating Google for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple’s Safari Web browser. The investigations -- which span U.S. federal and state agencies, as well as a pan-European effort led by France -- could embroil Google in years of legal battles and result in hefty fines for privacy violations. Google was using special computer code to install tiny tracking files, or "cookies," on some people's computers, iPhones and iPads, even if the devices were set to block this kind of tracking. The Federal Trade Commission is examining whether Google's actions violated last year's legal settlement with the government in which Google pledged not to "misrepresent" its privacy practices to consumers, according to people familiar with the investigation. The fine for violating the agreement is $16,000 per violation, per day. Because millions of people were affected, any fine could add up quickly, depending on how it is calculated. A group of state attorneys general, including New York's Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut's George Jepsen, are also investigating Google's circumvention of Safari's privacy settings, according to people familiar with the investigation. State attorneys general can have the ability to levy fines of up to $5,000 per violation. In Europe, the French Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés, or CNIL, has added the Safari circumvention technique to its existing pan-European investigation into Google's privacy-policy changes, according to a person close to the investigation. The CNIL is the agency that levied a €100,000 ($130,960) fine on Google last year for collecting passwords and other personal information when Google vehicles were gathering information for its Street View map service.
benton.org/node/117490 | Wall Street Journal
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STRIKING BACK AT DATA-MINING
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Gloria Goodale]
This has been dubbed “the year of Big Data,” meaning a time when online firms such as Facebook and Google are capitalizing on an unprecedented and vast amount of personal, user-generated information. But the rush to corral, and monetize, that data is also fast ushering in a new digital management industry built around growing worries over the loss of personal privacy. “Every day consumers are beginning to pay more attention to this issue,” says Rob D’Ovidio, an associate professor of criminal justice and an expert on Internet security at Drexel University in Philadelphia. As more services to tackle the topic appear, “they will not only give consumers new tools but they will play an educational role in pushing understanding of the larger privacy issues.” Private companies such as Los Angeles-based CloudCapture, which launched March 14, and Abine, which debuted its “Do Not Track Plus” application in February, see a ripe opportunity to turn the same complex technology that was developed to mine personal data into a tool consumers can use to fight its abuse.
benton.org/node/117484 | Christian Science Monitor, The
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MEDIA & ELECTIONS

MAKING CAMPAIGN COVERAGE BETTER
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Justin Peters]
A lot of people complain about the blandness and inadequacy of much campaign reporting—its focus on momentum and appearances; its superficiality; its consistent elevation of rhetorical missteps into Big Deals. The trail is centered around photo ops and pseudo-events, their speed and frequency designed to let the candidates dictate the political narrative’s framing. The ensuing coverage is too predictive and too predictable. And it’s not entirely the reporters’ fault. They are given their assignments by an editor, and the velocity of the reporting process leaves them little opportunity for creative interpretation. Can the process be fixed?
Know more about your surroundings: If reporters knew more about stops on the route and the particular issues affecting their residents, their reporting might be more specific and more fruitful. That might mean flagging tensions between a candidate’s agenda and a location’s history. It mean asking deeper and more intelligent questions. Or it might just mean adding nuance and context to the reporter’s account of what was said.
Build better research tools: Give reporters reliable, cogent information that they can use on deadline; resources tailored to the specific needs of the working campaign reporter.
Reclaim your schedule: Campaign reporters have little opportunity to explore the changing scenery, often because they are tethered to the campaign bus that transports them from event to event.
Improve your opening gambits: Reporters ought not to lead with questions that will prompt their interlocutors to talk about the campaign in terms of winning and losing. Instead, start with something specific, something issue-centric, maybe something that doesn’t mention the candidate at all. By avoiding the obvious questions, you’ve got a better chance of eliciting unexpected answers; material that might lead to more substantial stories.
Know more about the other candidates: Most reporters are assigned to cover specific candidates, and while they build up a wealth of knowledge about their specific candidate, they often don’t know very much about the other candidates on the trail. But they should. Candidates are always talking about themselves in relation to their competitors, and describing their plans and policies in relation to their competitors’ plans and policies.
Focus your Tweeting: If you’re going to use Twitter on the job, then use it as an actual tool to improve and focus your reporting. Poll your followers about questions they’d like you to ask. Encourage them to fill in data and information about locations with which you are unfamiliar. Use it as a way to enhance your work, rather than just a dumping ground for links and zingers.
benton.org/node/117439 | Columbia Journalism Review
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CONTENT

KONY VIDEO
[SOURCE: Pew Internet & American Life Project, AUTHOR: Lee Rainie, Paul Hitlin, Mark Jurkowitz, Michael Dimock, Shawn Neidorf]
The 30-minute video released last week by the San Diego-based group Invisible Children calling for action against Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony provided striking evidence that young adults and their elders at times have different news agendas and learn about news in different ways. Those ages 18-29 were much more likely than older adults to have heard a lot about the “Kony 2012” video and to have learned about it through social media than traditional news sources. Indeed, a special analysis of posts in Twitter showed that it was by far the top story on the platform. Moreover, younger adults were also more than twice as likely as older adults to have watched the video itself on YouTube or Vimeo. As of March 13, the video had been viewed more than 76 million times on YouTube and 16 million times on Vimeo, making it one of the most viewed videos of all time on those sites. Special polling and social media content analysis by the Pew Research Center tracks how the “Kony 2012” video and information about it reached so many Americans in a relatively short period of time, and the critical role social media played, especially for adults under age 30.
benton.org/node/117449 | Pew Internet & American Life Project
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CW’S ABOUT-FACE ON STREAMING
[SOURCE: paidContent.org, AUTHOR: Daniel Frankel]
While its relevance in the realm of traditional linear television is more questionable than ever, the CW’s youthful, digitally literate, core audience renders the network an important signpost on where the distribution of TV on emerging platforms is headed. And if the CW’s decision this week to collapse the digital debut of its shows on its CWTV.com platform from 75 hours to just eight hours is any indication, it all seems headed back to square one. The network explained the move as an attempt to ward off digital piracy -- it said 20 percent of streams for its shows were facilitated by unauthorized sources. The network said 50 percent of that illegal viewing comes within the first three days after broadcast. In short, CW, which was the first network to establish delays on streamed episodes, seems to have found that the price of piracy is too high.
benton.org/node/117443 | paidContent.org
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OWNERSHIP

ANTITRUST AND TECH
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
US government agencies should be wary of bringing antitrust complaints against tech companies such as Google or Apple, because of the ever-changing nature of the industry, some antitrust experts said. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission should "think long and hard" before bringing antitrust cases in the tech sector, said Ronald Cass, president of legal consultancy Cass and Associates and a former vice chairman of the U.S. International Trade Commission. Government antitrust lawyers often assume that dominant companies will stay in power when the tech market changes quickly, he said during a discussion on technology antitrust issues at the Federalist Society, a conservative legal think tank. When the DOJ brought an antitrust case against IBM in 1969, it believed mainframe computers were the only viable computing platform for the foreseeable future, and when the DOJ brought an antitrust case against AT&T in 1974, it saw landline telephones as the only viable method of voice communications, Cass said. In less than 20 years, both of those assumptions were proven wrong.
benton.org/node/117442 | IDG News Service
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JOURNALISM

BREAKING NEWS AND THE PUBLIC TRUST
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Receiving the First Amendment Leadership Award from the Radio-Television Digital News Foundation, NBC News President Steve Capus said that the pressure to break news is never worth breaking the public trust, and used the News Corp. cell phone hacking scandal of last fall as an example of what not to do to retain that trust. He also talked about proposing an "alternative" to the rearview mirror mindset that talks about how good the old days were, and instead look at the heroes currently in uniform in Afghanistan and the journalists "out there reporting and fully dedicating themselves to getting the story right." He said it was a time to lead the news business into a new golden age, one that "shines the light on the dark recesses of government" including how decisions are made, how money is spent and who benefits. He said that it was especially important in an election year to pay attention to campaign promises and report fairly and accurately so voters know who and what they are voting for.
benton.org/node/117487 | Broadcasting&Cable
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EDUCATION

LEADING BY ADVANCING DIGITAL
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan gave a shout-out to the creation of a new commission, the Leading by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission. Its goal is to come up with a blueprint for advancing the transition of education to digital. The LEAD commission's goals are to:
1) "develop a fact base of current efforts, key trends, cost implications and obstacles to adoption of existing technologies;
2) "examine how technology has been a catalyst for improvement in other sectors and what that implies for how technology and digital content could positively impact teaching and learning over time" and
3) "recommend the types of policies and funding vehicles that may be needed to ensure that school systems can successfully incorporate technology."
The commission will combine input from teachers, parents, school officials, tech leaders and others and will be co-chaired by Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger; James Coulter of TPG Capital; Former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer.
benton.org/node/117463 | Broadcasting&Cable | The Hill
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

UTAH DATA CENTER
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: James Bamford]
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy. But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale (Utah) center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted.
benton.org/node/117483 | Wired
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TVs IN THE COURTS
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
C-SPAN has still not heard back from the Supreme Court on its request to televise the marathon oral argument March 26 in the challenge to healthcare law. March 15 was the four-month anniversary of C-SPAN's Nov. 15 request that the court permit it to televise the proceedings live and make the feed available to anyone who wanted it. The court currently releases audio transcripts of oral argument at the end of each week, an improvement of the Roberts court over the previous end-of-term release. It also makes transcripts available online. But, as it has with other high-profile arguments, C-SPAN says live TV coverage would be in the public interest. The court has yet to allow cameras despite repeated requests and a push in Congress for legislation that would require the Justices to vote on coverage on a case-by-case basis.
benton.org/node/117472 | Broadcasting&Cable
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POLICYMAKERS

HAYES VS OBAMA
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Alexandra Petri]
[Commentary] President Barack Obama, speaking in Largo (MD), took it on himself to mock former-President Rutherford B. Hayes — all for a statement about telephones that Hayes historians say he never made. Politico quoted the president as saying: “One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: ‘It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one? That's why he's not on Mt. Rushmore. He's looking backwards, he's not looking forward. He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something. The point is there will always be cynics and naysayers.” Up with this I will not put. Give the man his credit for technology. He was, reportedly, quite excited by it. And he had so few joys in life. His wife, “Lemonade Lucy” refused to serve alcohol at White House functions. So instead, he amused himself by listening to the telephone and having Thomas Edison come to the White House and demonstrate the phonograph. He even used a typewriter.
benton.org/node/117474 | Washington Post
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

DECEPTIVE HANDSET PRICING
[SOURCE: Korea Herald, AUTHOR: Lee Ji-yoon]
Korea’s Fair Trade Commission is imposing fines totaling 45.33 billion won ($39 million) on local handset makers and telecom carriers for inflating cell phone prices via a deceptive pricing policy. According to the Fair Trade Commission, almost all the major players in the telecom market have colluded to inflate the prices of cell phones for years while advertising that they were offering cheaper deals through subsidy plans. SK Telecom was fined with the largest amount of 20.25 billion won, followed by Samsung with 14.28 billion won, KT with 5.14 billion won, LG Uplus with 2.98 billion won, LG with 2.18 billion won and Pantech with 500 million won. Between 2008 and 2010, the nation’s three telecom carriers had set the selling prices of 44 handset models at an average 225,000 won higher than their factory prices. Giving a subsidy worth far less than the price difference, they advertised that they were offering discount deals for high-end cell phones.
benton.org/node/117478 | Korea Herald | Korea Times
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