June 2012

Is the government reading your emails right now?

Law enforcement officials have a court order to access your emails, where you made phone calls, all sorts of electronic information. Or they don't have that court order. Thing is, you don't know either way. In a new paper, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Smith estimates about 30,000 electronic surveillance orders are issued each year in federal courts, a number he finds alarming. Unless the orders lead to actual charges, the person being watched doesn't know.

Cisco's new, smarter network for the Internet of things

By 2015, more people will access the Internet from mobile devices than from conventional PCs. A year later, in 2016, 19 billion devices and gizmos will be connected to the mobile Internet -- not just your smartphone and tablet, but your washing machine, cars and clothes will be connected too. That's a giant problem for wireless carriers, which are already struggling to keep up with surging data demand. Trying to innovate their way out of the crunch, the industry is using new tools and tricks to optimize every bit of infrastructure. Cisco added a key piece to the puzzle on June 5, releasing a new tool that will let carriers sift through and prioritize the traffic flooding their networks. It sounds pretty geeky -- "mobile packet core" product launches don't inspire iPhone-like frenzies -- but this back-end upgrade has some significant implications for everyday users.

Canada on track to pass 100-percent wireless penetration rate

Canadians’ growing love affair with mobile devices is putting the country on track to achieving a wireless penetration rate that exceeds 100 percent in about three years.

More than three-quarters of Canadians owned a wireless device at the end of 2011 but that number is expected to climb as it becomes increasingly common for consumers to own more than one mobile gadget. And the explosive popularity of data-hungry devices such as smartphones and tablet computers is creating growth opportunities for wireless carriers, some of which are already seeing their data traffic increase by 5 percent per week.

Intel Community’s Sharing of Cyber Tools Raises Legal Questions

Before the establishment of US Cyber Command in 2010, a combatant commander who wanted to take down an enemy’s surface-to-air missile sites or other defenses without blowing them up had only one option: Call the National Security Agency at Fort Meade (MD) and plead for assistance.

NSA jealously guarded its role as steward of the nation’s offensive cyber weapons, said one retired intelligence official, but that is changing. In May 2010, the Senate added “chief of Cyber Command” to the duties held by NSA’s director, Army Gen. Keith Alexander. Alexander subsequently directed NSA to begin turning over offensive cyber tools to Cyber Command. Over the last few months, the dual-hatted general has set in motion an even bigger change. Cyber Command has begun arming combatant commanders with a selection of offensive tools and establishing teams of cyber warriors, called combat-support elements, at military sites beyond Fort Meade. This is adding complexity to the legal questions being asked by members of Congress, retired defense officials and independent experts.

Coordinate after-hours care to keep patients out of ER: Study

Clinicians who want to keep their patients out of the emergency department should develop after-hours clinical arrangements that allow physician notification, sharing of electronic health records and financial support from payers, according to a study.

Researchers from the Center for Studying Health System Change examined five types of after-hour care arrangements offered by U.S. physicians to identify the key elements needed to ensure effective 24-hour access to non-emergency department care by their patients. Such round-the-clock access is key to reducing unnecessary emergency department use, the authors noted, but little guidance is available to primary-care physicians on what such a model should look like. The study, based on in-depth interviews with 44 primary-care physicians, practice managers, nurses and health plan representatives from 28 organizations that provide after-hours care, found that a shared EHR and systematic notification procedures between the after-hours and daytime providers are key to such systems. Also, after-hours care systems work best when adopted as part of a broader primary-care practice strategy that improves access during regular business hours, as well. The researchers also concluded that small practices face the biggest logistical challenges in supporting after-hours care. However, their participation in such initiatives is critical because more than 70% of office visits are to practices with five or fewer physicians.

Medicare & Medicaid creates new data office

A new office at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services will now be responsible for the agency's data functions and will also oversee the release of information and product. The CMS has established the Office of Information Products and Data Analytics to manage the agency's portfolio of data and information at a time when the agency processes more than 1.3 billion claims a year, receives data submissions under the meaningful use requirements of the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs, and prepares to receive more data as part of the health insurance exchanges that will start in 2014.

As Google Tinkers with Search, Upstarts Gain Ground

Google's willingness to tinker with its Web search may be opening a gap for new search engines to fill. January saw Google launch Search, plus Your World, a service that adds links shared by friends to the results page a user sees, based on activity collected from other Google services such as Google+ and Gmail.

February brought news that Google would correlate users' activity across all its sites, to better target its ads. At about the same time as these controversial changes were implemented, usage of two search startup companies, Blekko and DuckDuckGo, started to climb rapidly, and the two haven't looked back since. The two sites still command only a tiny percentage of online searches, but their recent growth suggests they didn't receive millions from venture capitalists in vain. Both companies make a point of emphasizing their relatively simple design and a commitment to protecting users' privacy, values some people claim Google has abandoned with its social efforts.

Could You Spare Some Internet Access?

Though the idea of having Internet available everywhere is no longer a fantasy, it's not quite reality, either. Many of us carry smart phones everywhere we go, but we don't always have a high-speed data or Wi-Fi connection. And in many places, Internet access can still be hard to find. Open Garden wants to change this. The San Francisco–based startup recently rolled out a smart-phone app that lets you connect to the Internet by piggybacking on the Web access of other Open Garden app users, using peer-to-peer connections that form a mesh network. The company's hope is that, in addition to making Internet access ubiquitous, Open Garden will become a platform on top of which developers can build new kinds of mobile services.

The Curious Case of Internet Privacy

[Commentary] Here's a story you've heard about the Internet: we trade our privacy for services. The idea is that your private information is less valuable to you than it is to the firms that siphon it out of your browser as you navigate the Web. They know what to do with it to turn it into value—for them and for you. This story has taken on mythic proportions, and no wonder, since it has billions of dollars riding on it. But if it's a bargain, it's a curious, one-sided arrangement.

To understand the kind of deal you make with your privacy a hundred times a day, please read and agree with the following:

“By reading this agreement, you give Technology Review and its partners the unlimited right to intercept and examine your reading choices from this day forward, to sell the insights gleaned thereby, and to retain that information in perpetuity and supply it without limitation to any third party.”

Actually, the text above is not exactly analogous to the terms on which we bargain with every mouse click. To really polish the analogy, I'd have to ask this magazine to hide that text in the margin of one of the back pages. And I'd have to end it with This agreement is subject to change at any time. What we agree to participate in on the Internet isn't a negotiated trade; it's a smorgasbord, and intimate facts of your life (your location, your interests, your friends) are the buffet. Why do we seem to value privacy so little? In part, it's because we are told to.

Older adults and Internet use

As of April 2012, 53% of American adults age 65 and older use the internet or email. Though these adults are still less likely than all other age groups to use the internet, the latest data represent the first time that half of seniors are going online.

After several years of very little growth among this group, these gains are significant. As of February 2012, one third (34%) of internet users age 65 and older use social networking sites such as Facebook, and 18% do so on a typical day. By comparison, email use continues to be the bedrock of online communications for seniors. As of August 2011, 86% of internet users age 65 and older use email, with 48% doing so on a typical day. Looking at gadget ownership, we find that a growing share of seniors own a cell phone. Some 69% of adults ages 65 and older report that they have a mobile phone, up from 57% in May 2010. Even among those currently age 76 and older, 56% report owning a cell phone of some kind, up from 47% of this generation in 2010.

Benton

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