Bloomberg

A New York Times story saying Pakistan’s government protected Taliban forces was censored by the publisher’s printing partner in that country, resulting in a blank hole on the front page of its international edition.

The article, a 4,800-word excerpt from a forthcoming book by Times reporter Carlotta Gall to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, appeared in the New York Times magazine in the US and was intended as a front-page article of the International New York Times.

While the story appears on most copies of the international edition, it doesn’t show up in papers distributed in Pakistan, about 9,000 copies, according to the publisher. The Times’s Pakistan printer, part of the Express Tribune newspaper in that country, removed the article without its knowledge, according to Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy.

“We would never self-censor and this decision was made without our knowledge or agreement,” she said in an e-mail. “While we understand that our publishing partners are sometimes faced with local pressures, we regret any censorship of our journalism.” It is unclear if the Times will continue its partnership with Express Tribune.

Philip Falcone’s LightSquared will probably get US regulatory approval to use its wireless spectrum by 2015 and may buy more airwaves, a member of a special committee of the company’s board told a bankruptcy judge.

“I believe they will allow the spectrum to be used terrestrially,” Christopher Rogers, a member of a committee specializing in airwave issues, told US Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman in Manhattan.

He was testifying at the outset of what may be a multiday hearing in which LightSquared is seeking final approval of its plan to exit bankruptcy. Rogers cited two meetings with the Federal Communications Commission in December. T

The agency also has some airwaves right next to LightSquared’s slice of the spectrum, and the company could make a bid should they go up for auction, Rogers said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration currently uses some of that spectrum.

Google won a major victory in its fight against claims it illegally scanned private e-mail messages to and from Gmail accounts, defeating a bid to unify lawsuits in a single group case on behalf of hundreds of millions of Internet users.

US District Judge Lucy Koh refused to let the case proceed as a class action, which would have allowed plaintiffs to pool resources and put greater pressure on Google to settle. If individuals pursue their claims against the owner of world’s largest search engine, they’ll need to use their own financial resources to litigate. Judge Koh found that the proposed classes of people in the Google case aren’t “sufficiently cohesive,” according to the ruling.

Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn, whose vote is needed to change television-station ownership rules, is pushing to ensure smaller companies can win exceptions.

Commissioner Clyburn said she wants “balance” as the agency tightens regulations for controlling more than one station in a market. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who proposed the change, needs the votes of Commissioners Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel to prevail.

Both Republican commissioners have criticized the measure. Commissioner Clyburn cited a section of law that calls for the FCC to lower barriers for entrepreneurs and small businesses and said she wants “the ability to uphold those standards and those goals.” She declined to say if she would vote for Chairman Wheeler’s proposal.

“This is an item that is still very fluid and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with my colleagues because we all in the end I believe want the same thing: to achieve balance,” Commissioner Clyburn said.

Google is seeking to black out portions of a transcript from a public court hearing that includes information on how it mines data from personal e-mails.

Google, fighting a lawsuit claiming its interception of e-mails amounts to illegal wiretapping, asked US District Judge Lucy Koh in a filing to redact “confidential” information from the transcript, without being more specific.

The main revelation at the Feb 27 hearing was the existence of “Content Onebox,” used by Google to intercept e-mails for targeted advertising and to build user profiles, Sean Rommel, a lawyer for plaintiffs, told the judge at the time. The hearing in federal court in San Jose (CA) was to determine whether the lawsuit will proceed as a group suit, or class action.

International Business Machines said it hasn’t disclosed client data to the US government under a National Security Agency surveillance program and would challenge any order to do so.

IBM said the government should deal directly with a client if it wants access to that client’s data, Robert Weber, IBM’s senior vice president for legal and regulatory affairs, wrote. If the US government were to impose a gag order prohibiting IBM from notifying a client of such a request, IBM would challenge the order, including taking legal action, he wrote.

“Technology often challenges us as a society,” Weber wrote. “Data is the next great natural resource, with the potential to improve lives and transform institutions for the better. However, establishing and maintaining the public’s trust in new technologies is essential.”

IBM also said it hasn’t given access to information stored on servers outside the US to the US government under a national security order. The company said it doesn’t build “backdoors” into its products for the NSA or any other government group.

Liberty Global, the cable company controlled by billionaire John Malone, plans to offer mobile phone services to customers throughout Europe, taking on carriers such as the UK’s Vodafone Group.

Liberty Global will put together a so-called mobile virtual network operator system, or MVNO, the name given to companies that use other carriers’ wireless infrastructure for their own mobile services, Senior Vice President Manuel Kohnstamm said.

“We’re working on a deep MVNO, and we don’t only do that in Austria but in the whole of Europe,” Kohnstamm said. “We’re constructing a pan-European MVNO platform.”

Former television executives Jeff Gaspin and Jon Klein are starting an online video service with backing from Discovery Communications and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Called Tapp, the service will feature long and short-form programs on channels tied to specific interests such as sports, politics and faith. Each channel will cost about $9.95 a month, with discounts for annual service, Gaspin, former chairman of NBCUniversal Television, and Klein, ex-US president of cable news network CNN, said in a joint interview.

The National Security Agency was blocked by a judge from carrying out plans to begin destroying phone records collected for surveillance after a privacy group argued they are relevant to lawsuits claiming the practice is unconstitutional.

US District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco ordered the agency to retain the records and scheduled a hearing for March 19 on whether they can be destroyed. The NSA had planned to dispose of the records following a March 7 ruling by the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy and civil liberties group based in San Francisco, asked White for a temporary restraining order, saying the records may be used as evidence in its lawsuits challenging NSA surveillance and are covered under preservation orders in those cases. NSA is prohibited from destroying “any telephone metadata or ‘call detail’ records,” White said. The surveillance court, in its ruling, barred the NSA from keeping the records for more than five years because the privacy rights of the people whose phone data was swept up in the agency’s database trump the need for the information in litigation.

[March 10]

SoftBank President Masayoshi Son said he’ll start a “massive price war” in the US if regulators let his Sprint purchase T-Mobile US.

The billionaire, who bought control of the third-largest wireless carrier in 2013, said combining with fourth-ranked T-Mobile would give him scale to compete against AT&T and Verizon Communications. Those operators collect most of the US mobile industry’s cash flow and don’t face “real competition,” Son said in an interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose.

[March 11]