USAToday

The Rainbow Push Coalition has teamed with Google to increase the ranks of minorities in Silicon Valley. The Internet giant held a series of events at the group's annual conference in Chicago.

Rainbow Push said it would hold a joint event with Google in August.

Volunteers from Google and other technology companies are attending the conference to host training sessions, panels and a national town hall with youth. Rainbow Push planned to show a video on inspiring blacks to get into the technology field. Google's chief legal officer David Drummond was also honored.

"We have a lot of work to do when it comes to diversity in our workforce," Drummond said. "We're committed to working with civic, community and education groups and leaders like Rev Jackson to turn these gaps into new bridges of opportunity."

In ruling against Aereo, the US Supreme Court may have just bought broadcasters more time.

With Aereo announcing in a tweet that it would pause operations, questions linger as to what similar -- but legal -- alternatives will come to consumers who want to divorce their cable companies and still get reliable local TV. One can always monkey around with rabbit-ear antennas.

But broadcasters will be better served if they take the initiative to further develop their streaming options for those without cable, says Richard Doherty, technical director for the Envisioneering Group, a tech consulting firm.

"Broadcasters have their mandate, and they're under attack (by upstarts)." The nation's broadcasters have been given free spectrum to deliver free over-the-air broadcasts and have a responsibility to "make it easier for people to get their stuff," Doherty says. If they don't, "I dare say, people inside the Beltway may decide it for them."

The TV networks have a case of the Innovator's Dilemma here. Push forward with live streaming on their own, and they stand to trigger the ire of cable and satellite distributors that pay dearly to distribute their content. Ignore the savvy cord-cutters who vent on Twitter their frustration at the lack of streaming options, and the networks will increasingly come to look like slumbering giants interested only in retaining revenue streams.

Facebook, the world's most popular social network, for the first time released statistics on the makeup of its workforce that do not reflect the demographics of its users around the globe.

The lopsided numbers are just the latest from a major Silicon Valley company to paint a stark picture of an industry sector dominated by white men and are sure to escalate an already heated debate over the lack of diversity in the tech industry.

Nearly 70% of Facebook employees are men and 57% are white. Asians make up 34% of employees. But Hispanics represent just 4% and African Americans are just 2% of Facebook's workforce. When it comes to technical employees, the numbers are even grimmer. Eighty-five percent are male, 53% white and 41% Asian. Hispanics make up just 3% and African Americans just 1% of the workforce.

At the top of the company, the statistics are no better. Seventy-seven percent of senior level employees are men, 74% are white and 19% are Asian. Hispanics account for 4% and African Americans for 1% of employees in high level positions.

"We build products to connect the world, and this means we need a team that understands and reflects many different communities, backgrounds and cultures," Maxine Williams, Facebook's global head of diversity, wrote.

[Commentary] Fans of streaming prime-time network TV live will have to wait a bit longer. In a 6-3 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that Aereo, a start-up backed by media mogul Barry Diller, violated the copyrighted work of major TV networks by streaming their content to paid subscribers. Who are the winners? Primarily, the major TV network owners -- Disney, CBS, Comcast and 21st Century Fox -- that have argued in court that Aereo is stealing their content. They also have plans to stream TV over the Internet and don't want to see start-up technology companies get in the way. Pay-TV providers are also breathing a sigh of relief. Aereo would have given consumers one more reason to "cut the cord" by getting rid of cable. Who loses the most? Obviously, those associated with Aereo, including employees and primary investor Diller. But consumers are also complaining loudly on Twitter and other social media channels, as they saw Aereo as a David charging up the hill against the Goliaths of the pay-TV business.

[Commentary] Google and Microsoft's decision to join Apple on the "kill switch" front throws considerable heft behind the movement to deter smartphone thefts. But it's just a start.

For the technology to truly take hold and repel criminals, the anti-theft software should be part of the default operating system so the user doesn't have to choose to activate it. By 2015, new versions of operating systems used by 97% of smartphones in the USA will have a kill switch, which lets an owner remotely deactivate a stolen smartphone. But many of them will require the user to activate, or "opt-in," the technology.

Apple's kill switch puts the onus on individuals, as does technology from Google and Microsoft. That's not good enough. Standardization is the most sensible course because smartphone thefts show no signs of slowing down. About 3.1 million smartphone-related thefts were reported in 2013 in the US, double the number in 2012, according to Consumer Reports.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse won't comment on speculation his company is preparing to merge with T-Mobile, but he will say that having a third large US mobile company that could rival the size of AT&T and Verizon would be a good thing.

Speculation has been swirling that Sprint, the third largest US wireless carrier, would acquire T-Mobile in a blockbuster deal valued anywhere from $31 billion to $50 billion.

If Sprint were to make such a move, one of the biggest roadblocks would the reluctance of US, regulators to let the US mobile market shrink from four major players to three. "I can't talk specifically about any particular potential merger, but I do think that the US wireless industry would be healthier and consumers would be better off with three strong competitors vs. basically a duopoly, which is what you have today," Hesse told USA TODAY. Hesse said a third competitor would drive prices down and might also motivate AT&T and Verizon to innovate more.

He added that a third major competitor might be able to build networks in rural and suburban US communities that are currently only serviced by AT&T and Verizon. "If you combined, let's say, Sprint and T-Mobile together, there would be enough customers to build a third network," he said.

The Supreme Court agreed to consider a classic free speech conundrum for the 21st century: When do threatening comments made on social media sites such as Facebook cross the line into criminal activity?

Two lower federal courts ruled that Anthony Elonis crossed that line in 2010 when he mused on his Facebook page about killing his wife and others, including an FBI agent who was investigating his actions.

"Did you know that it's illegal for me to say I want to kill my wife?" he wrote in one of many posts. "It's illegal. It's indirect criminal contempt. It's one of the only sentences that I'm not allowed to say."

Elonis' attorneys say the "reasonable person" standard should not be used because members of a broad social media audience who don't know the author might misinterpret his words or guess incorrectly at his intentions.

"The issue is growing in importance as communication online by e-mail and social media has become commonplace," Elonis' petition for Supreme Court review says. "Modern media allow personal reflections intended for a small audience (or no audience) to be viewed widely by people who are unfamiliar with the context in which the statements were made and thus who may interpret the statements much differently than the speakers intended."

The Justice Department, which wants the appeals court's ruling to stand, notes that the federal law is aimed at preventing not only real violence but the fear and disruption induced by perceived threats. The current Supreme Court has been a strong defender of free speech rights, going so far as to permit distasteful protests at military funerals and online videos depicting animal torture.

You're a conservative, people will tell the Sen Mike Lee (R-UT). How can you be critical of the rampant surveillance by the National Security Agency? But there's no contradiction there in Sen Lee's view.

It's more like a natural outgrowth of his beliefs. "Some of the programs threaten to undermine privacy," Sen Lee says, adding that the federal government is simply too intrusive.

Sen Lee was the kickoff speaker at a panel discussion roughly a year after the first revelations of widespread government snooping in classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

While the Snowden disclosures have led triggered public concern about the impact of government surveillance on privacy, totally unapologetic was one of the panelists, Mike Hayden, a former head of the NSA and the CIA. Hayden, who said the panel's title should have included security as well as privacy, asserted several times that there have been no abuses in the collection of telephone records of ordinary American citizens not suspected of terrorism as well as the scooping up of e-mail in another program.

The colloquy, titled Privacy in America: The NSA, the Constitution and the USA Freedom Act, was sponsored by Microsoft, the ACLU and The Washington Times.

We love our Internet in the US, to the tune of more than $113 billion in 2014. And we will spend more in the coming years. Consumers will spend more than $174 billion on Internet access in 2018, estimates PricewaterhouseCoopers in the consulting firm's Entertainment & Media Outlook 2014-2018.

Even as spending on digitally-delivered movies, music and video games rises, the amount spent on Internet access far surpasses any other spending category in the consulting firm's report. That makes sense because "those pipes are what deliver all that digital content," says PwC partner Sean De Winter.

And we don't leave home without it. In 2013, mobile Internet spending accounted for $53 billion of the total $102 billion Net access pie, PwC says. Home broadband accounted for 49 billion, PwC says. Reliance on mobile access is expected to remain vital. By 2018, 86% of the US population will have mobile service compared to 85.6% with home broadband.

News of Internet security breaches at eBay, Target and other large companies appears to be having an effect on online habits.

A USA TODAY survey finds that almost a quarter of Americans have at least temporarily stopped buying online because of security concerns. A full 24% of those surveyed said they had stopped buying anything online in recent weeks because they were concerned about the safety of information they might put online. Most surprisingly, 56% said they had cut back on the number of Internet site they used and were only going to large, well-known companies they were confident were safe.

"It's pretty amazing to me that people were willing to pull the plug on their habits," said Cameron Camp, a security expert with ESET, a San Diego-based security and antivirus company.

Users are also keeping a closer eye on their accounts, with 55% saying they had started checking banking, investment and credit card sites more often for signs that someone had hacked into their accounts. Camp counseled that any survey asking about things people feel they should be doing has to be taken with a grain of salt.

"Some of the answers people give are aspirational rather than factual," he said.

The poll found that people with less education and lower-incomes were more likely to stop buying anything online. Those with more education and higher incomes were more likely to have changed passwords and cut back on the sites they use. Sixty-four percent of those surveyed said they had changed a password in response to security breaches.