October 2013

Google Fiber general manager Kevin Lo torpedoes broadband myth

The notion that consumers don't want, won't pay for or don't need high-speed broadband has been described as a mere myth by the Google executive rolling out fiber networks in US cities.

"I can say with full confidence that simply isn’t true … there is huge consumer demand for faster Internet," Google Fiber general manager Kevin Lo said. Lo further said that faster Internet speeds will lead to the "next chapter of the Internet." His views were in line with former communications minister Stephen Conroy who recently told a luncheon that Tony Abbott’s national broadband network plan was inadequate for the future. "Nielsen's law of Internet bandwidth is possibly less widely known. It states that a high-end user's connection speed grows by 50 percent per year. They stand in stark contrast to Abbott’s law stated in April that 25 megabits per second is more than enough bandwidth for Australian households. The digital age is upon us, but the realization of the opportunities it presents is really just beginning," Australian Senator Conroy said.

Former NSA chief: NSA and US Cyber Command are now ‘indistinguishable’

A Q&A with Gen. Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency.

He’s concerned about government overreach by the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department. But, he said, the mounting scrutiny simply makes it harder for the NSA to explain why its surveillance activity is above board. Gen Hayden also believes the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command's functions to be so similar as to overlap completely; eventually, it will no longer be feasible to appoint one person to manage both agencies at the same time.

NASA’s moon laser just blew your home Internet out of the water

In the nation's capital, the fastest residential Internet connection money can buy tops out at 75 Mbps. That's pretty zippy. But it doesn't compare to the 622 Mbps monster pipe that NASA just successfully tested over a distance of 239,000 miles. Unfortunately, to take advantage of those speeds, you'd have to be downloading data from the moon. That's because NASA's system consists of a laser that's pointed at Earth's natural satellite -- or more specifically, at a spacecraft orbiting the moon called LADEE. Why a laser? NASA says the radio spectrum it's traditionally relied on to transmit signals is getting increasingly overloaded with traffic.

Is Local Television In Trouble Or Not?

[Commentary] To my mind, there are 10 major cultural trends that underwrite the necessity of a local media reinvention:

Power and authority are weakened by the nature of the Web. Information is power and information is distributed today instead of centralized.
We are drifting into a horizontal culture instead of one that is deliberately top-down.
People can organize on a dime.
People can make and distribute their own media.
Personal branding is the default social construct.
Advertising is in a major revolution, because, like the people to whom they sell products, business and industry can make and distribute their own media, too.
Disintermediation continues to impact industry. People never wanted bundles of stuff in the first place. Exhibit A: Music.
The networked world increasingly takes precedence over time and space. Who knew Amazon could deliver overnight?
Traditional "jobs" with benefits and structure have become increasingly more difficult to get and support. We'll all be independent contractors soon.
We shouldn't be nearly as concerned about the government spying on us as they should be concerned about us keeping track of them.

Who Should Regulate Native Advertising?

Native advertising is being heralded as the savior of digital publishing, but as marketers' content treads increasingly on editorial ground, one of the big questions is: How should it be regulated?

To hear top marketers and ad execs, the issue is far from resolved. The Wonderfactory co-founder and creative director Joe McCambley argued that publishers can’t allow advertising to mingle with content unimpeded. But Forbes Media COO Mike Federle contended that it should be consumers, not institutions like the American Society of Magazine Editors or the Federal Trade Commission, that set the guidelines for how native advertising is presented. Added LiquidThread North America president Brent Poer, “How puritanical are we? Should we put a scarlet letter ‘A’ on all native advertising?”

Why in-contract price hike controls will likely mean the end of UK handset subsidies

Britain’s telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, has told the country’s fixed-line and mobile carriers that they will no longer be allowed to keep customers tied to their monthly contracts if they raise prices before the contract is up. That means any price hike, no matter how small, or even the lowering of a voice or data allowance mid-contract. The move follows a consultation earlier this year and it has massive implications for handset subsidies.

Snowden revelations hit war on terror as EU MPs call for suspension of data-sharing deal

The European Parliament has voted to suspend a data-sharing agreement with the US, which gave the Americans access to certain details of financial transactions in order to track terrorist financing. The vote comes amid growing anger in Europe over Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. The Parliament itself cannot suspend the deal, but the European Commission can. However, the Commission has indicated that it doesn’t intend to suspend anything just yet.

This Time, Citizens Collect Feds’ Communications Metadata

As recently as August 2013, a Verizon glitch exposed government officials' text message histories in a way that would have allowed anyone to discern their inner circles, according to security researchers.

The vulnerability was fixed after a non-government customer pointed out the danger to the company this summer. Attackers could simply type their target's phone number into a URL to see a spreadsheet of text message contacts, timestamps and dates, according to researchers. The content of the messages was not visible. "This was a very basic Web application security flaw that was trivial to exploit. All you need is a browser, no special hacking tool," said Johannes Ullrich, dean of research for the SANS Technology Institute. Verizon Communications, the largest telecommunications supplier to the federal government, said no government users, or any other users, were affected by the bug. "No customer information was impacted," company spokesman Kevin Irland said. "Verizon takes customer privacy seriously. As soon as this was brought to the attention of our security teams, we addressed it."

Now You Can Petition Some Members Of Congress Directly

Change.org, one of the most popular websites for online activists, launched a new service that allows lawmakers to create official pages where constituents can petition them on everything from potholes to major national policies.

A handful of prominent legislators have already signed up for the new service including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), said Jake Brewer, the site’s external affairs director. Any of Change.org’s 50 million users will be able to create or sign an appeal directed at a lawmaker who creates an account on the site, but lawmakers will be able to see how many of the signers are actual constituents based on information they provided when they registered with the site, Brewer said. The site’s designers have twin goals. They hope collecting constituent demands into a single petition rather than hundreds or thousands of e-mails will give politicians a positive incentive to respond and engage with them. They also hope that making the entire process public will give politicians a “negative incentive” to engage with petitioners because they don’t want to look unresponsive in the public eye.

Supreme Court to get reporter's privilege plea

A showdown over the right many journalists claim not to testify about their sources in criminal cases is headed for the Supreme Court after James Risen, a New York Times reporter, asked a federal appeals court to put its ruling denying such a privilege on hold while he asks the justices to take up the issue.

Risen’s lawyers filed a motion with the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, asking that the court halt the effect of its decision requiring him to testify in the expected trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who has been indicted for leaking Risen information about a CIA operation to provide Iran with flawed nuclear designs as part of an effort to set back that country's alleged nuclear weapons program. "The situation faced by Mr. Risen here is not unique and is likely to recur," Risen attorneys David Kelley and Joel Kurtzberg write in the motion. "As has frequently been pointed out, this Administration has initiated more prosecutions for allegedly improper leaks than all past administrations combined. There is no indication that these practices are likely to wane. The questions of law in this case are not only unsettled, but also vitally important to our democracy," the lawyers write.

Benton

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