June 2012

Senators Question Monitoring of Calls, E-mails

It isn’t “reasonably possible” to say how many Americans have had their emails and phone calls reviewed as part of a four-year-old counter-terrorism law, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The law lets U.S. agencies monitor the communications of foreigners outside the US. But two senators are questioning whether a loophole allows the storage and search of messages from Americans that are picked up inadvertently while foreigners are being monitored. The intelligence community has repeatedly said it takes steps to minimize the data collected on Americans. Among the senators’ concerns: that the administration hasn’t been able to estimate how many people in the U.S. have had their information reviewed under the program. “We have sought repeatedly to gain an understanding of how many Americans have had their phone calls or emails collected and reviewed under this statute, but we have not been able to obtain even a rough estimate of this number,” Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) wrote in a minority response to a Senate Intelligence Committee report. The senators said in the report that the Director of National Intelligence had told them it was not feasible to come up with such a number.

Days of Wild User Growth Appear Over at Facebook

Facebook went public last month on its prospects for growth. But in some key areas, the social network's growth rates are already maturing. In particular, Facebook's user growth rate in the US is slowing sharply.

In April, US unique visitors to the website increased to 158 million, up just 5% from a year earlier, according to research firm comScore. That was Facebook's lowest US user growth rate since comScore began tracking the data in 2008 and was down from 24% growth in April 2011 and 89% in April 2010, comScore said. At the same time, the growth rate in the amount of time people spend on the social network—otherwise known as engagement—is also decelerating. In April, Facebook users spent more than six hours a month on the site, up 16% from a year earlier. But that compares with a 23% increase in 2011 and 57% in 2010, comScore found. In some ways, the slowdown is to be expected. Facebook has already grabbed 71% of all 221 million U.S. Internet users, according to comScore. At the same time, people already are on Facebook longer than any other site. The more than six hours a month that people spend on the social network exceeds the over four hours a month they spend on all Google sites including YouTube, and the 3½ hours they spend on Yahoo sites, comScore said.

Nearly a Quarter of Smartphone Users Are Also Tablet Users

The iPad debuted in April of 2010, creating a viable market for tablets in the U.S. and elsewhere. Now, just two years later, that market has reached critical mass. This according to new research from comScore, which finds that nearly a quarter of all U.S. smartphone owners possess a tablet as well.

In fact, tablet adoption among smartphone users is exploding. During the three-month period ending this April, some 23.6 percent of U.S. smartphone owners also reported using a tablet. That’s more than double the number that claimed to do so during the same period last year. Not a surprising metric, by any means. But nice to see it quantified. And what of tablet usage among feature-phone owners? It remains relatively low — though it, too, is charting extraordinary growth.

Sprint says no longer Clearwire majority owner

Sprint Nextel said it no longer has a majority stake in Clearwire Corp and as a result was able to increase its voting rights in the venture without risk of a default trigger on its own debt. Because of recent equity that Clearwire issued, Sprint said its economic interest has declined to below 50 percent, giving it leeway to make its voting interest in line with its economic interest in Clearwire.

Stations Pin Viewability Hope on FCC Commissioner Clyburn

Broadcasters are hoping that Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn will set an independent course and save the FCC's viewability rule that requires hybrid, analog-digital cable systems to transmit TV broadcast signals on the analog tier so that subscribers with old analog sets can continue to receive them without having to buy a set-top box.

To do so, Commissioner Clyburn will have to go against FCC Chairman and fellow Democrat Julius Genachowski, who has circulated a proposal phasing out the rule in six months. If she does, broadcasters and their Washington representatives believe that the two Republican commissioners — Robert McDowell and Ajit Pai — may go along with her, supplying the other two votes needed for an extension. With the rule set to expire June 12, a vote could come on June 11.

US argues it shouldn't have to give Megaupload user his legit files

Out of all the Megaupload customers who used the file sharing service for perfectly legitimate reasons, one has become a poster boy for those who lost access to data when the federal government shut Megaupload down. Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio videographer who runs a business taping high school sporting events, went to court seeking return of his files. The Electronic Frontier Foundation backed him, and even the Motion Picture Association of America said it would be OK with seeing files returned to users if they weren't illegally downloaded copyrighted material.

But in the case's most recent development, US attorneys and the US Department of Justice argued in a brief that Goodwin has no right to demand his files back from the government. The government never actually seized his property, the US argued in a brief filed in US District Court in Eastern Virginia. "The government did not seize any of the Megaupload-leased servers. Instead, pursuant to the warrants, the government copied certain data from the servers," the US brief states. "While the search warrants were being executed, servers belonging to Carpathia and leased by Megaupload were taken offline so that they could be properly forensically imaged." The US government does not possess any of Goodwin's property, and it would be impractical to retrieve all user data from Megaupload servers, the brief argues.

Verizon's Reed To Head Public-Policy Outreach For Silicon Valley, Hollywood

Verizon Communications appointed Eric Fitzgerald Reed as head of public-policy initiatives with the high-tech and entertainment industries, effective immediately.

Reed joined Verizon's federal regulatory group in 2000. In 2006, he became vice president of market issues and policy in the company's public affairs, policy and communications organization. In that position, Verizon said, Reed has developed and advanced Verizon's policy on a variety of broadband and technology issues and represented the telco in various technology, business and manufacturing associations.

Internet ad revenue is growing, but growth rate is slowing, according to IAB report

The Interactive Advertising Bureau released a report on the “record” Internet advertising revenues for the first quarter for 2012 but, despite the double-digit year-over-year increase, it appears that growth is actually slowing down. According to the industry association, digital ad revenue in the first quarter climbed 15 percent, from $7.3 billion in the first quarter of 2011 to $8.4 billion in the same quarter this year. But between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, revenues increased 23 percent, the IAB reported last year, indicating that the rate of growth is decreasing. (In 2010, Internet ad revenue grew 7.5 percent to $5.9 billion, the IAB said.)

Is the iPhone overcrowding the world’s 3G networks?

Regardless of which platform is winning today’s smartphone race, the installed base of active iPhones remains huge, and according to a new report from mobile infrastructure maker Ericsson, those iOS devices are having an outsized impact on the world’s 3G networks. Traffic originating from the iPhone is nearing 50 percent of all data traversing carriers’ HSPA networks. Those numbers could have a chilling effect on emerging LTE operators, which are trying to migrate to 4G but are finding themselves contending with the iPhone’s enormous 3G demands.

Will Election 2012 deliver a mobile ad breakthrough?

The campaign for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will spend big dollars this summer to deliver ads to voters’ iPhones and iPads. The Romney team will deliver mobile ads in swing states to complement TV ads. Romney campaign is the first to buy ads delivered on Apple’s advertising platform, iAd.

The campaign explained the ad purchases to the Journal, saying that mobile devices are ”the most personal device you carry. We felt like we wanted to connect with people where they spend their time.” Romney’s move also suggests that, in the same way that 2008 was the first social media election, the 2012 campaign will be the first to include widespread adoption of mobile ads. Both campaigns are predicted to spend $159 million on online advertising, and the mobile portion of that could help shape the extent to which consumers will accept ads on their phones and tablets. So far, mobile advertising has sputtered despite perennial predictions of a big breakout.

Benton

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