January 2012

Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.

A "privacy compliance review" issued by DHS last November says that since at least June 2010, its national operations center has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" which involves regular monitoring of "publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards." The purpose of the monitoring, says the government document, is to "collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture." The document adds, using more plain language, that such monitoring is designed to help DHS and its numerous agencies, which include the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Emergency Management Agency, to manage government responses to such events as the 2010 earthquake and aftermath in Haiti and security and border control related to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

What do people look at when they visit the websites of presidential candidates, and do they actually remember anything they see? In December, EyeTrackShop asked people to look at the sites of the then-eight major candidates for 10 seconds each while it followed their gaze via Web camera. Afterwards, respondents were asked which candidates they remembered just seeing. (They could pick from the correct eight plus five other candidates.) Respondents were also asked to pick the candidate they’d vote for, based on the attractiveness of the site.

Among the key findings:

• Barack Obama’s and Michele Bachmann’s campaign sites were the ones most people remembered seeing
• Excluding those campaign sites, fewer than 5 out of 10 respondents even remembered the candidate they saw 1 minute ago.

This report sheds light on the prevalence and the dangers of hate speech on American radio. Revealing complaints filed by consumers with the Federal Communications Commission, which NHMC uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request, the report documents years of public allegations of hate speech against KFI AM 640, a Clear Channel Radio station.

American Hate Radio explores how hate groups and hate crimes have spiked while hate radio's popularity and reach have grown. The report notes that radio is the primary way that people consume media, reaching 93% percent of Americans each week. In the 1990s, the news-talk format developed, and it is now the predominant radio format with almost 1,800 dedicated stations nationwide. However, as the report reveals, the quality of news-talk radio programs varies a great deal. All the while, the number of hate groups in the U.S. has more than doubled since 2000. The five states with the most hate groups are California (68), Texas (59), Florida (49), New Jersey (47) and Mississippi (40).

Ofcom has scaled back proposals that had ensured four potential bidders for the most valuable bandwidth able to carry next generation mobile services under the revised terms of a contentious auction that could raise billions of pounds for the government.

The regulator has also introduced measures expected to extend mobile coverage to at least 98 per cent of the UK population, including the so-called mobile ‘not spot’ areas, and revised plans to promote competition across all four mobile operators. In addition, the regulator has set aside bandwidth to be shared by a group of companies to deliver innovative new mobile services for consumers such as local networks for student campuses, hospitals or commercial offices. The most contentious change to the auction for UK operators will be the revised rules over the amount of the crucial 800mhz spectrum that can be bought by each. Ofcom will maintain a reserved amount of bandwidth for a smaller fourth operator such as Three or a new entrant away from O2, Vodafone and Everything Everywhere.