July 2010

Advanced Cyber-Attacks on the Rise in 2010

A new report confirms what has been a gut feeling in 2010 for cyber-security professionals: An increasing number of sophisticated cyber-attacks are occurring.

These persistent threats are evolving and changing, perhaps too fast for traditional threat detection and remediation efforts to keep pace. Hackers are employing new attack methods to circumvent or "hide" from the security protocol and technology used by many organizations, according to the Security Labs Report released by M86 Security Labs, which divulged details of the security threats detected from January through June 2010. M86 releases security reports every six months. One emerging cyber-attack method, according to the report, is the "combined attack," which is more difficult to detect. Combined attacks split the code between the JavaScript language and the Adobe ActionScript language found in Adobe Flash. When the code is split, it's harder to detect.

London tries next revolution in connectivity: talking, not Tweeting

Twenty-first century humanity has mapped oceans and mountains, visited the moon, and surveyed the planets. But for all the progress, people still don't know one another very well. That's the premise of Theodore Zeldin's "feast of conversations" -- events where individuals pair with persons they don't know for three hours of guided talk designed to get past "Where are you from?" Ten years ago, Zeldin decided that were he living in the 16th century, he'd want to explore America. If he were in the 20th century, it would be the solar system. Today, the frontier is man.

Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection
House Commerce Committee
Thursday, July 22, 2010
2 pm

Hearing on H.R. ____, the BEST PRACTICES Act and H.R. ____, a discussion draft to require notice to and consent of an individual prior to the collection and disclosure of certain personal information relating to that individual

The legislative text is posted online at:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100719/BestPracticesAct.pdf

and

http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100719/BoucherStearnsprivacy...

Witnesses

David Vladeck, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission
Ed Mierzwinski, Consumer Program Director, U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Leslie Harris, President and Chief Executive Officer, Center for Democracy and Technology
David Hoffman, Global Privacy Officer, Intel Corporation
Ira Rubinstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Jason Goldman, Counsel, Technology and E-Commerce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Read more about Privacy Hearing

FCC not Helping Minorities Claims Minority Media & Telecom Council

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not making adequate achievements in including minorities and women, according to David Honig, president and executive director of the Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC).

He says market barriers and lack of opportunity are decreasing minority involvement in the broadband, telecom, and media industries. America's most important industries, which certainly include broadband, should reflect the social landscape of the country itself. The key indicators of minority broadband involvement - diversity of ownership, diversity in industry, and closing the digital divide - all show a net loss in the last few years. Honig said the MMTC had been involved and active in increasing minority participation in broadband, but said "We prevented a disaster from turning into a catastrophe." He said entrepreneurs have one of the hardest occupations, and that the MMTC should focus on finding and calling out market barriers that make it even more difficult for minorities to enter the broadband industry. For the first year in quite some time, the FCC has made no decisions concerning equal employment opportunities. Honig said the FCC has bright and well-meaning personnel, but they are too passive. In 2007, the FCC passed a ruling that made advertisement discrimination illegal. However, he said the FCC has yet to appoint someone to oversee this rule, and said "In almost three years the FCC has not had compliance to the first civil rights ruling since the '70s, and the first one passed without opposition."

Minority Entrepreneurs Advised To Focus On New Media

Speaking at the Minority Media & Telecom Council's eighth annual Access to Capital and Telecommunications Policy Conference, Federal Communications Commission members Robert McDowell, Meredith Attwell Baker, and Mignon Clyburn said minority communications entrepreneurs should be focusing on opportunities in new media.

Opportunities in traditional media, they suggested, are on the wane. Commissioner McDowell said the description of broadcasting as a car with four flat tires was a "good analogy" -- it had been characterized thusly by a questioner from the audience. He said there might be opportunities to buy stations, given lower valuations, but added that that was because revenues were in decline. Commissioner Baker said applications will be a $30 billion business by 2013. "I think there may be value in some of the distressed broadcast assets," she said, "but to mind the new media is really where to focus."

The Minority Media & Telecom Council will announce a new organization to promote minority businesses in the digital age on July 20. According to MMTC Executive Director David Honig, the attendees will be asked Tuesday night to vote on a name and officially launch what he called a "new movement" of minority digital entrepreneurs."

All three FCC Commissioners agreed that Congress needs to pass legislation reinstating the tax certificate policy, which would give media owners a tax break for selling media properties to socially and economically disadvantaged businesses. All three commissioners also said access to capital was the top barrier to boosting minority participation, but Commissioner Clyburn said number two on the list was media consolidation.

FCC 'has not forgotten' minority ownership report

Federal Communications Commission members Mignon Clyburn Robert McDowell assured Minority Media and Telecom Council and others on July 19 that an overdue report on minority media ownership remains on the way.

The "section 257" report, mandated every three years by communications law, was due in 2009 to address barriers to media entry for small businesses. But the report has yet to make its way out of the agency. Minority groups have raised concerns this year about the lateness of the report. Commissioner Robert McDowell said the report is "in circulation" and "being edited."

Muleta Believes that Lowering Reoccurring Costs will Spur Adoption

Speaking at the Minority Media & Telecom Council's eighth annual Access to Capital and Telecommunications Policy Conference, John Muleta, Founder and CEO of M2Z, said the high cost of devices and connectivity are causing the digital divide.

He offered an idea of giving low income consumers free access for a short period of time to allow them to discover how the Internet will improve their lives. Once consumers understand the value of the Internet they will then be willing to pay for service.

Apple responds to lawmakers' questions about location data collection

Apple answered congressional questions about the ways it collects users' precise location information from its mobile devices and computers, highlighting users' ability to opt out of data collection, but acknowledging that it collects and stores "batched" user location data that is not directly associated with a particular identity or device.

Apple's answers came in a document released July 19 by Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX), who sent the electronics maker a list of questions last month after the Los Angeles Times published a report pointing to the company's practice of collecting, storing and sharing the "precise," "real-time geographic location" of users' mobile devices.

Apple noted that user location information cannot be collected unless a user has the device's location-services turned on, and has allowed individual applications such as Google Maps or Yelp to use location data. For many users, these settings are set the first time they use a device and application, but not seen frequently afterward. Once a user has accepted those terms, the company can collect and store the data. It does so, it says, by collecting "batched" sets of location data from user devices once every 12 hours. Devices with GPS chips -- like all recent-model iPhones -- know their position based on satellite signals, and others can triangulate their location using data about nearby cellular towers and Wi-Fi access points.

Reps Markey and Barton thanked Apple for sharing basic information about their use of location data, but noted that industry practices in this area have been less than transparent.

Nokia Siemens buys Motorola network operations for $1.2 billion

Nokia Siemens Networks will buy Motorola's telecom network equipment business for $1.2 billion, in an effort to add new customers in markets such as Japan and North America where it has been seeking growth.

The idea is that a bigger Nokia Siemens Networks -- a venture of Nokia and Siemens -- would compete better than either company could have alone against rivals Sweden's Ericsson, China's Huawei and France's Alcatel-Lucent. Motorola and NSN have had a hard time battling bigger players to win business with large telephone companies in the cut-throat mobile gear market, which is expected by analysts to decline this year.

Under the deal, Motorola, which brought in $3.7 billion revenue from network equipment last year, will still keep its network technology patents, which Nokia Siemens can use through a cross-licensing agreement. Motorola will also keep its i-Den network gear business that supports an older Sprint Nextel network and brought in roughly $400 million of its 2009 network revenue.

After the deal, which is expected to close later this year, Motorola plans to split into two entities, one of which will include its mobile phone and set-top box business. The other business, which was previously to include network equipment, will now focus entirely on selling wireless technology to companies and clients such as public safety organizations.

Rupert's Paywall is Meant to Keep People In, Not Out

[Commentary] The whole structure of a paywall appears to be aimed at keeping casual web visitors away from the newspaper's content. But, in reality, blocking casual readers -- who are seen as less valuable to advertisers because they don't spend as long on the site and aren't regular visitors -- is just one by-product of having a paywall. And even generating income from those readers by convincing them to sign up for a monthly subscription is only a by-product.

For many newspapers, the main driving force for instituting a paywall is to keep print readers from migrating away from buying the physical product (which still generates the majority of advertising revenue at most newspapers) to reading for free online, where their eyeballs are worth less than they would be in print. Think of it as eyeball arbitrage. The problem with this strategy is that it is fundamentally a retrenchment approach — in other words, a fall-back rather than a move-forward strategy. While it may be true that keeping out casual web users and forcing regular readers to pay may improve online advertising revenue somewhat (since advertisers will perceive paying readers as more valuable than non-paying users), and putting up a wall may prevent some continuing slippage in print readers (although not as much as the paper probably hopes it will), it does little to grow the online side of the equation. Contrast that with the approach taken by The Guardian, which is making its content freely distributable through an open API. If anything, in fact, the paywall approach prevents further growth for an online entity because it puts a wall between the content and those who might help to spread it — in effect, marketing it to others — by linking to it, posting it on Twitter and other social networks, etc. It is fundamentally a resignation from the open web.

Benton

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