April 2011

At the National Conference for Media Reform, Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn pledged to be "super vigilant" of the wireless industry while discussing the importance of mobile broadband to low-income and minority communities. “In considering all of the factors relating to America’s minority and lower-income citizens, and realizing how hard people work to claw past their monthly bills only to immediately start fretting about next month, we must be vigilant -- super-vigilant -- about the direction the wireless industry is heading,” she said.

The Senate will conduct data mining of the Internet to identify potential threats against lawmakers, as well as offer Secret Service-led security training sessions for congressional staff.

The plans come in the wake of January’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Senate Sergeant at Arms Terry Gainer said his office will issue a contract by July to perform data mining of the Internet and social networking sites in an effort to identify and assess threats before they become an issue. The data mining will be driven by keywords, including lawmakers’ names, and also by threatening terms such as "kill," "slash" and "shoot." Asked at what point comments would require further attention, Gainer said it would be depend on the situation. “It is not illegal to say, ‘I wish he was dead.’ It’s not illegal to say, per se, ‘I wish someone would put a bullet through his head,’” he said. But “we do have ongoing threats against members, so I might say, ‘OK, if there’s a couple of threats against this member and the member’s going to go a particular area and have a large public forum on a controversial subject, maybe I'll data mine that and see who’s saying what.'” Flagged comments would then be assessed by forensic psychologists or experienced staff to determine if intervention is required.

US authorities claimed one of their biggest victories against cyber crime as they shut down a ring they said used malicious software to take control of more than 2 million PCs around the world, and may have led to theft of more than $100 million.

A computer virus, dubbed Coreflood, infected more than 2 million PCs, enslaving them into a "botnet" that grabbed banking credentials and other sensitive data its masters used to steal funds via fraudulent banking and wire transactions, the Department of Justice said. The government shuttered that botnet, which had operated for a decade, by seizing hard drives used to run it after a federal court in Connecticut gave the go-ahead. "This was big money stolen on a large scale by foreign criminals. The FBI wanted to stop it and they did an incredibly good job at it," said Alan Paller, director of research at the SAN Institute, a nonprofit group that helps fight cyber crime. The vast majority of the infected machines were in the United States, but the criminal gang was likely overseas.

AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA raises questions about whether the deal would lead to consumer price increases, the Federal Communications Commission’s top economist said.

Chief FCC economist Jonathan Baker said that the agency should determine whether the deal would leave wireless customers without viable alternatives. These concerns should be weighed against the possibility of technological breakthroughs and whether cost savings would be passed on to consumers. “It’s just a signal that the FCC is going to be examining these issues very carefully,” said Robert Lande, a University of Baltimore law professor who attended Baker’s speech and confirmed its content. He said Baker’s concerns are the basis of “a tough standard for approving a merger.”