Wall Street Journal

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly finding ways to unmask users of a popular Web browser designed to hide identities and allow individuals to exist online anonymously.

To keep their identities secret, users and administrators of a recently shuttered child-pornography website used a browser called Tor that obscures the source of Web traffic, authorities said in March. Agents from Homeland Security Investigations tracked many of them down anyway, largely because of mistakes that even some of the most sophisticated users eventually make. Tor and other programs designed to hide users' identity online have grown in popularity as people try to protect their privacy in an age of digital surveillance.

When paired with bitcoin or other virtual currencies that don't use the banking system, Tor can help hide the identities of people behind financial transactions. Such programs also have become a tool for those seeking to evade the law, including child-pornography traders, hackers and other criminals, creating challenges for law enforcement. But officials are becoming more confident that Tor's shield of anonymity isn't impenetrable.

"There's not a magic way to trace people [through Tor], so we typically capitalize on human error, looking for whatever clues people leave in their wake," said James Kilpatrick, one of the HSI agents who is part of Operation Round Table, a continuing investigation into a Tor-based child-pornography site that has so far resulted in 25 arrests and the identification of more than 250 victims, all children.

Apple and Samsung Electronics are squaring off in a new round of their long-running patent feud. This time, however, the docket might as well read Apple v. Google.

The trial, which starts in US District Court in San Jose (CA) on March 31, 2014, shows how the battle lines are drawn across the mobile-phone landscape.

Apple and Samsung are the biggest makers of smartphones and reap most of the industry's profits. But when it comes to software, the world is divided between Apple and Google, whose dominant operating systems give them control over the apps where smartphone users spend most of their time.

In this case, Apple is accusing Samsung of violating five of its software patents. Samsung contends that it licensed four of those features as part of Google's Android operating system, and that Google had been working on the technology before Apple filed its patents.

"Google will be a lot more front and center than in previous cases," said Michael Carrier, a patent expert and law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "Google vs. Apple makes it more of a clash of the titans on the same turf."

Google has declined Turkish government requests to remove YouTube videos alleging government corruption, people familiar with the matter said, the latest sign of resistance to a crackdown against social media led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish authorities have asked Google to block the videos from YouTube's Turkish website, the people familiar with the matter said. But amid a national scandal over corruption allegations, Google refused to comply because it believes the requests to be legally invalid, the people added.

Google's refusal to remove videos raises the specter that Turkey could move to block access to YouTube within the country, after blocking the microblogging service Twitter. Both sites have been central conduits for allegations of corruption against Erdogan's government and faced public threats of a blackout by Erdogan. Some people within Google had feared a YouTube blackout could be imminent, after the Twitter takedown, the people familiar with the matter said. "We feel an immediate threat," one of the people said.

A deal between Comcast and Time Warner would create a new company controlling roughly 40% of households subscribing to high-speed broadband access in the US.

Since cable broadband companies don’t compete with each other for customers, consumers will have to look to other services from AT&T, Verizon (and in a few cities, Google) for high-speed broadband alternatives.

Using data from GeoResults, a telecom database and consulting firm, the Wall Street Journal mapped the current residential broadband footprints of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse -- all of which offer comparable broadband speeds across the country. Comcast stacks highest in the results with a total 50 million residential-household broadband footprint.

China Mobile added about one million new iPhone users after it started offering the popular smartphone in mid-January, Chief Executive Li Yue said.

Both China Mobile and Apple have high hopes for their partnership. The dominant Chinese carrier, which launched speedier fourth-generation mobile services in late December, is betting on 4G iPhones to attract new customers as competition intensifies.

For Apple, the stakes are high in China. The country is the world's largest smartphone market by shipments and the deal with China Mobile gives it access to an additional 776 million subscribers and new sale points.

"We added 1.34 million new 4G users in February and most of them are iPhone users. We are happy with the progress as we are still building our 4G network and the coverage is only available in some major cities," China Mobile Chairman Xi Gouhua told The Wall Street Journal. Xi said the new iPhone users could buy the popular smartphones from multiple channels including its outlets and Apple's official stores in China and Hong Kong. He declined to disclose the number of iPhones sold at China Mobile's own distribution network.

Google has given roughly 200 people and organizations, including a British police unit, the ability to “flag” up to 20 YouTube videos at once to be reviewed for violating the site’s guidelines.

The Financial Times reported that the UK Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit has been using its “super flagger” authority to seek reviews -- and removal -- of videos it considers extremist. The news sparked concern that Google lets the UK government censor videos that it doesn’t like, and prompted Google to disclose more details about the program. Any user can ask for a video to be reviewed. Participants in the super flagger program, begun as a pilot in 2012, can seek reviews of 20 videos at once.

A person familiar with the program said the vast majority of the 200 participants in the super flagger program are individuals who spend a lot of time flagging videos that may violate YouTube’s community guidelines. Fewer than 10 participants are government agencies or non-governmental organizations such as anti-hate and child-safety groups, the person added. In either case, Google said it decides which videos are removed from YouTube.

“Any suggestion that a government or any other group can use these flagging tools to remove YouTube content themselves is wrong,” a Google spokesman said.

Long frustrated in efforts to collect payments from some users of its software in China and other emerging markets, Microsoft has enlisted help from an unlikely set of allies: attorneys general in states such as Louisiana and Oklahoma. Attorneys general don't typically get involved in overseas disputes involving companies from outside their state borders. But Microsoft has helped persuade attorneys general that overseas software piracy leads to job losses at manufacturing companies in their states.

That's because foreign manufacturers exporting products to the US can shave business expenses by using stolen software, gaining an unfair cost advantage over American rivals who pay for software, according to Microsoft and its allies, including the National Association of Manufacturers trade group.

The attorney general's office in Oklahoma recently filed suit against a Chinese maker of oil equipment, alleging it was stealing software written by Microsoft and others and gaining a cost advantage over Oklahoma-based competitors. The effort follows similar warning letters or lawsuits -- involving allegations against companies in Asia and Latin America -- filed over the past two years by attorneys general in California, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Washington State.

As Netflix -- and to a lesser extent Amazon -- see their streaming video audiences surge, is Hulu on the decline?

According to a new survey conducted by Morgan Stanley, perhaps. The investment bank has just released its fourth annual survey on the media, cable and satellite businesses which contains several interesting nuggets.

For one, Netflix usage continues to grow, based on Morgan Stanley’s online survey of over 2,500 adults, while its lower profile competitor Amazon Prime Instant Video is also seeing its audience swell quickly. Thirty percent of respondents reported using Netflix, an increase of 5.5 percentage points versus the 2013 survey. In contrast, roughly 18 percent of respondents claimed to be using Amazon’s service, a 10 percentage point-jump compared to 2013.

What particularly stood out against those increases was that usage of the free streaming site Hulu.com slipped 0.6 percentage points. That’s not a precipitous decline, but in this era of increased Web video consumption, to be even flat should be worrisome.

Other datapoints confirmed the trend: Hulu.com has fallen out of comScore’s top ten video ranking, and has seen its audience slip of late, at least according to Quantcast. It may be that the decision by some of Hulu’s broadcast partners, ABC and Fox in particular, to delay when they put their content on the site has made the site less appealing.

A security researcher says he has discovered a potential privacy glitch in text-messaging service WhatsApp that occurs when users switch phone numbers. Xuyang Li, founder of TrustGo Mobile, says that when he downloaded WhatsApp, he inherited the account information of a woman named Jessica, the previous owner of Li's phone number. Li's WhatsApp messages appeared to recipients to be messages from Jessica -- complete with a profile photo of Jessica wearing a red scarf.

WhatsApp was lauded for its simplicity when Facebook agreed to acquire it in February 2014 for $19 billion. New users register only their phone numbers, and don't create usernames or passwords. Li's incident highlights how that simplicity might work against WhatsApp in this case.

Comcast’s proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable has sparked fears across the media industry that the combined giant would have too much influence over everything from cable industry pricing to the broadband-related services consumers can access.

TV network owners worry the merger could give Comcast too much control over TV-viewing data and the broadband market, industry executives say. Small cable operators, meanwhile, fear they could face higher costs as TV networks try to make up the difference from discounts that a larger Comcast would win. Companies with online-video offerings fret that Comcast could charge more aggressively for broadband use.

Regulators will have to weigh such concerns as they consider the $45 billion deal, which brings together the Nos. 1 and 2 cable operators. Comcast and TWC are expected to submit their merger documents to the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission in coming weeks. After that, the FCC will invite comments from the public and competitors. Industry comments could shape any conditions regulators impose on the deal. The government approved Comcast's NBCUniversal acquisition in 2011 with conditions. Already the top executives at satellite-TV providers DirecTV and Dish Network have come out strongly against the deal, citing concerns about the power Comcast will have in the broadband market, where it would have nearly 40% of US subscribers.