March 2013

The owner of the lone television network critical of the government in Venezuela said he was coerced into selling the station by a hostile government. The development raised concerns that media freedoms will be further eroded as the politically polarized country prepares for presidential elections next month. Guillermo Zuloaga, who owns Globovisión, a television news channel which has been a critic of late President Hugo Chávez's government, said the station became unviable after a campaign of harassment against it, including the imposition of millions of dollars in fines.

Tom Donilon, the president's national security adviser, urged China to stop hackers from breaking into U.S. computer systems and stealing business secrets. "The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country," he said.

Officials have urged China to recognize the "urgency and scope" of the problem and to take "serious steps" to stop the hackers. He said the Chinese government should engage in a dialogue to establish acceptable rules of behavior in cyberspace. "From the President on down, this has become a key point of concern and discussion with China at all levels of our governments," Donilon said. He said cybersecurity is becoming a "growing challenge" to the economic relationship between the United States and China. Donilon did not directly accuse the Chinese government of launching the attacks on U.S. computer systems, only noting that the attacks are coming from inside the country. "Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale," he said.

Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell plans to tell Congress that aggressive action is needed to stem that tide. "We are losing the fight for Internet freedom," Commissioner McDowell plans to tell members of the Senate Commerce Committee on March 12.

"Unless defenders of Internet freedom and prosperity act quickly, boldly and imaginatively, this tragic trajectory will become irreversible," he says, according to his prepared testimony for an FCC oversight hearing in the committee. He also plans to tell the committee he thinks the FCC should: 1) at least test how to apply, or not apply, traditional regulations to an all-IP world (AT&T has asked the FCC for such test beds); 2) do nothing to restrict the pool of wireless bidders for broadcast spectrum -- including via de facto spectrum caps; 3) and modernize media ownership rules, but not start applying local ownership caps to joint sales agreements.

You are what you like on Facebook. That's the conclusion of a new study that says your Facebook "likes" reveal a whole lot more about you than you might think –- including how old you are, how you vote, whether you are liberal or conservative, if you have a high or low IQ, if you are an introvert or if you are gay, even if you use drugs.

The study was a collaboration of the Psychometrics Lab at the University of Cambridge and Microsoft Research Cambridge. Researchers analyzed data from 58,000-plus American Facebook users who had supplied their profiles and “likes” through Facebook's myPersonality app. Then they made some educated guesses about personalities and behavior. And that may not get a thumbs up from people who get click happy on Facebook, indiscriminately liking articles, photos, status updates or any one of millions of pages for their favorite brand, celebrity, movie, TV show or pop star, never once stopping to think what this public information says about them.