October 16, 2013 (FISA Court: We Approve 99 Percent Of Wiretap Applications)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2013
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
FISA Court: We Approve 99 Percent Of Wiretap Applications
Tech titans’ muted response on NSA data mining
Latest NSA revelation is black eye for Yahoo
The NSA’s giant Utah data center will probably hold a bunch of spam
Busting China’s Bloggers - op-ed
Europeans Are Faulted Over Using Funds to Support Like-Minded Voices
PRIVACY
How Edward Snowden is nudging our privacy desires
Aaron Swartz’s last gift to journalism and online privacy finds a new home
Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
The Internet Is a Universal Human Right. Just Ask the Homeless
High-capacity Broadband and E-rate: Libraries as Community Leverage - op-ed
Google Fiber now explicitly permits home servers [links to web]
Government shutdown raises cybersecurity concerns [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
German researchers smash wireless speed record [links to web]
What a 100 G Wireless Personal Area Network Could Mean for Telecom [links to web]
Watch out AT&T: Verizon’s new LTE network monster stirs in NYC [links to web]
Why FirstNet Needs State CIOs [links to web]
MEDIA AND CHILDREN
Microsoft encourages Internet use for kids
CONTENT
Here’s why it’s legal for Google and Facebook to use your face in ads - analysis
Does Hollywood have itself to blame for its piracy problems? [links to web]
Our tweets are getting shorter [links to web]
The Money Is in the Email [links to web]
TELEVISION
Many in San Joaquin Valley look for free alternative to costly cable, satellite TV [links to web]
HEALTH
Major challenges looming for health IT leaders [links to web]
Need to Talk to a Doctor, Pronto? Now There’s an App for That, Too. [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
EU Telecoms Chief Kroes: Reform Package Can Be Finished by May
AT&T Could Struggle to Roam in Europe - analysis
Busting China’s Bloggers - op-ed
Europeans Are Faulted Over Using Funds to Support Like-Minded Voices
Labor’s NBN plans too ambitious: Conroy
MORE ONLINE
A Day to Remember the First Computer Programmer Was a Woman [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
FISA COURT: WE APPROVE 99 PERCENT OF WIRETAP APPLICATIONS
[SOURCE: National Public Radio, AUTHOR: Larry Abramson]
A letter released by a special surveillance court clears up some misconceptions about legal oversight for government wiretap activities. Responding to a letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Charles Grassley (R-IA), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court says, yes, it's true, we do approve 99% of all wiretap applications. But for the first time, the FISC also says that it demanded changes to 24.4 percent of those applications before granting final approval (that's for a recent three-month period). This is the court's way of saying, we are not a potted plant -- or a rubber stamp, as some have alleged. We are reading these applications closely, and pushing back where appropriate. But the letter also shows that the court could also be accused of operating hand in glove with government lawyers making these requests.
benton.org/node/161968 | National Public Radio
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RESPONSE TO NSA DATA MINING
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Tony Romm]
Another leak from Edward Snowden. Another flood of denials from the tech titans required to assist the National Security Agency. And another round of statements, from Silicon Valley and beyond, that sidestep the real issue at hand. Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo are veritable warehouses for some of the data the National Security Agency desires as it investigates foreign terror suspects, but they’ve not come out swinging publicly on Capitol Hill for specific limits on what the agency can collect — even as those companies have deployed their big-bucks lobbying and legal shops in a bid for more transparency. The contrast again was evident a day after Snowden’s documents helped The Washington Post determine the NSA is snapping up Web users’ contact lists. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo said they had no knowledge of the program, but each still stopped short again of asking for any substantial changes to federal law. The companies also didn’t name any new restrictions they’d back on the NSA’s collection practices — a muted response that speaks volumes at a time when Congress is at the drawing board on surveillance reform.
benton.org/node/161976 | Politico
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LATEST NSA REVELATION IS BLACK EYE FOR YAHOOO
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Alistair Barr]
The latest revelation that the National Security Agency collected millions of contact lists from the leading online messaging services is a particular black eye for Yahoo, security and privacy experts said. During a single day last year, the NSA's Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Microsoft's Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Google's Gmail service and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, the Washington Post reported. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year, the newspaper added, citing an internal NSA presentation leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The NSA may collect so many more address books from Yahoo than other big services because Yahoo, unlike those other providers, has left connections to its users unencrypted by default, the Washington Post said.
benton.org/node/161967 | USAToday
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THE NSA’S GIANT UTAH DATA CENTER WILL PROBABLY HOLD A BUNCH OF SPAM
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
The National Security Agency's data-collection activities are so resource-intensive, the agency can't complete its new server farms fast enough. But when it does, a significant share of what gets held on those servers could wind up being worthless spam. We now know the NSA collects hundreds of thousands of address books and contact lists from e-mail services and instant messaging clients per day. Thanks to this information, the NSA is capable of building a map of a target's online relationships. Sometimes, however, that process goes awry -- such as when one Iranian e-mail address of interest got taken over by spammers. Such incidents have caused huge amounts of unimportant information to flow through the NSA's systems, according to a chart in a top secret NSA presentation. Every day from Sept. 11, 2011 to Sept. 24, 2011, the NSA collected somewhere between 2 GB and 117 GB of data concerning this Iranian address. The exact numbers aren't clear because details of the chart have been redacted.
benton.org/node/161965 | Washington Post
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PRIVACY
HOW EDWARD SNOWDEN IS NUDGING OUR PRIVACY DESIRES
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Byron Acohido]
Market research company Lab42 released results of a study in which 54% of respondents said they desire more privacy at the risk of government security. "With the recent NSA leaks making headlines, consumer awareness toward their digital privacy is at an all-time high," said Jonathan Pirc, Founder of Lab42. The reason the National Security Agency has sought out information about our interests, acquaintances and preferences -- which we so freely divulge in search engines, social web sites and mobile web apps -- is elementary: the data exists. And the reason it exists is to support the online advertising industry which, led by Google and Facebook, is expected to generate record revenues topping $40 billion this year, according the Interactive Advertising Bureau, But Lab42's survey also shows that the intensive online tracking of US consumers online behaviors, carried out ostensibly to deliver more relevant ads, quite often delivers ads no one really cares about. While Google and Facebook may prefer that the online advertising ecosystem remain as is, with the rich getting richer, there are dozens of smaller players in the advertising industry that have adopted a more Europe-like approach to giving consumers control of their privacy information and earning consumer trust.
benton.org/node/161962 | USAToday
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AARON SWARTZ’S LAST GIFT TO JOURNALISM AND ONLINE PRIVACY FINDS A NEW HOME
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Andrea Peterson]
Before Aaron Swartz's suicide in January, he had nearly completed work with Wired's Kevin Poulsen on a secure system to accept messages and documents from anonymous sources over the Internet. The result of that effort was DeadDrop, an open-source python platform. The system assigns each source a unique code name so that a relationship can be established without news organizations ever knowing the source's identity. The Freedom of the Press Foundation announced it will be taking over the project, renaming it SecureDrop and providing on-site installation for news organizations along with ongoing technical support. Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that the anonymity made possible by the project is all the more important in light of recent NSA revelations and prosecutions against whistleblowers, which he believes "have shown the grave challenges to this relationship and the lengths governments will go to undermine it."
benton.org/node/161964 | Washington Post
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
THE INTERNET IS A UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT. JUST ASK THE HOMELESS
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Daniela Hernandez]
Roughly 50 percent of people making less than $25,000 a year doesn’t have access to the Internet, according to a May 2013 US Census Bureau report on computer and Internet trends. The Tech Lab aims to change that -- at least in San Francisco -- and others are doing the same in other parts of the country. Darrell Pugh is an instructor at the Tenderloin Technology Lab. The five-year-old operation offers free Internet access six days a week as well as basic computer skills classes and workshops on blogging, photo editing, social media, and even entrepreneurship. The lab is part of a growing movement where nonprofit organizations are using computers, mobile devices, the Internet, and even digital currencies to help improve the plight of the country’s poor and homeless, nudging them towards new jobs, new homes, regular healthcare, and other things most people take for granted. Instructors at the People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia are helping the underprivileged in similar ways, and in Pensacola, Florida, Jason King -- the founder of an organization called Sean’s Outpost -- is giving the local homeless a leg up by showing them the ins and outs of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency. Not everyone sees the value of places like the Tech Lab and People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia. Tan Vu — the director of digital inclusion and technology at the People’s Emergency Center — says it’s often hard to convince donors that the center’s mission is worthwhile. “We are actually struggling to have more money to continue our efforts than before,” he says. “There’s not enough recognition of how much certain parts of society need these kinds of services.”
benton.org/node/161955 | Wired
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HIGH-CAPACITY BROADBAND AND E-RATE: LIBRARIES AS COMMUNITY LEVERAGE
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Alan Inouye]
[Commentary] Broadband, especially of the high-capacity variety was once mostly the province of network engineers and large organizations. Now it is everyone’s concern. For libraries, this need and expectation for speedy Internet response is even more pronounced. A single broadband connection to one library provides access for thousands of people over the course of a year. And with these Internet connections come the full range of resources and expertise that libraries and librarians offer. Bolstering broadband investment in libraries is truly a fabulous way to leverage scarce community and national resources and support local economies. The open proceeding on the E-rate program at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the President’s proposal for a ConnectED initiative are truly exciting developments for the library community. What better way to leverage libraries than building on a successful E-rate program, and make a quantum jump from basic connectivity to high-speed broadband for libraries across the land?
[Alan S. Inouye, Ph.D. is Director of the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) in Washington, DC.]
http://benton.org/node/161947
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MEDIA AND CHILDREN
MICROSOFT ENCOURAGES INTERNET USE FOR KIDS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Kate Tummarello]
Most parents approve of their children using the Internet without their supervision, Microsoft said in a blog post, promoting the benefits of Internet use for young children. According to a new Microsoft survey, “eight years old is the average age at which parents allow independent Internet and device use,” the company wrote. The survey asked parents to identify the age at which they would give their children “unsupervised access to technologies such as mobile devices, social sites and online services.” At 94 percent, “almost all parents … allow their kids to use at least one online service or device,” the company’s Director of Online Safety Kim Sanchez wrote in the post.
benton.org/node/161966 | Hill, The
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CONTENT
HERE’S WHY IT’S LEGAL FOR GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK TO USE YOUR FACE IN ADS
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Jeff John Roberts]
Facebook puts your profile picture in advertisements. Google is about to do the same and other sites like Twitter will likely follow one day. How exactly is this legal? What if you don’t want to be in an ad: can the companies use your picture anyway? The short answer is yes. But as to whether any other company can do so, no. This is because under American state privacy laws, there is a “right of publicity” that allows you to control public displays of your image. However, you cannot sue Facebook or Google for using your image because you agreed to this in the terms of service when signing up for an account. The companies also reserve the right to make any changes to their policies from time to time.
benton.org/node/161960 | GigaOm
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
EU SCHEDULE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Frances Robinson]
The European Union can complete its overhaul of telecom regulations by next spring, the bloc's telecom chief Neelie Kroes said, addressing industry doubts that the reforms can pass by May. Kroes, who presented her long-awaited legislative proposals to overhaul Europe's telecommunications industry last month, now faces a tight deadline to get them approved by member states and European countries' leaders. She said there is no alternative to passing the package as a whole, saying Europe will lose three years in its efforts to keep up with other regions if the measures fail to go through. Europe lags behind North America and much of Asia in fourth-generation mobile-phone coverage, which is holding back developments in the digital economy. "Of course we are in a hurry," Kroes said. "We can't afford a delay of three years in the whole sector." The proposals will die unless they are passed before elections for the European Parliament next May, the effective deadline. A new European Commission is due to take office in November 2014.
benton.org/node/161975 | Wall Street Journal
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AT&T IN EUROPE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Miriam Gottfried]
AT&T has set its sights across the pond. But could Europe prove to be a sinkhole? The US telecom giant hasn't officially announced its intention to buy the rest of Vodafone's assets after the London-based company completes a deal to sell its 45% stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon Communications. But anyone listening to recent public comments by AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson could hardly reach any other conclusion. Stephenson has signaled he would likely pursue heavy investment in wireless networks. That could position AT&T to lead Europe's shift to next-generation LTE technology, where the Continent lags behind the US. Buying Vodafone, which gets more than two-thirds of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization from Europe, would also make AT&T less reliant on its increasingly competitive home market. But Europe could prove to be a quagmire. Buying Vodafone now would effectively be a bet that this is as bad as things can get there. Stephenson is also wagering that regulators' desire for investment will get them to lend a hand, perhaps one reason he has been so vocal about his deal-making intentions.
benton.org/node/161974 | Wall Street Journal
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BUSTING CHINA’S BLOGGERS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Murong Xuecun]
In August, Chinese authorities launched the most severe round yet in their “campaign against cybercrime.” Ostensibly to curtail online “rumors,” they are rounding up and jailing outspoken netizens across the country. Judging from official media accounts and police reports, the number of arrests is in the hundreds, and many of us believe it may be in the thousands. Meanwhile, the state media have published a steady flow of articles warning microbloggers to tone down their commentaries. It’s easy to see why the government feels threatened. The most popular microblogging service, Sina’s Weibo, has more than 500 million registered members and 54 million daily users, and has become the most important space for citizens to participate in public life — and expose government lies. Microbloggers dare to question the legitimacy of the one-party state. They expose corruption. They shame criminals. And bloggers don’t just express opinions; we act as information hubs. When we discuss issues online, people take notice. The vast state censorship apparatus works hard to keep us down. But posts race through Weibo so quickly that it’s difficult to control them with technology. Hence, the government is resorting to detainment.
benton.org/node/161973 | New York Times
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FUNDING LIKE-MINDED VOICES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Higgins]
During heated wrangling late last year over the size of a new long-term budget for the European Union, Notre Europe, a Paris-based policy group, wanted to make its voice heard. So it put one of its researchers on a small radio station in the French city of Nantes to answer questions and promote its vision of a “more effective” — and bigger — budget controlled by Brussels. The exercise in what appeared to be an energetic public debate had a catch, or two, however. The radio station, it turns out, received more than $100,000 from Brussels last year, according to official European Union records. Notre Europe itself had received more than $650,000 from Brussels last year, nearly half of its total budget. “The whole thing is surreal make-believe: people who get E.U. funding talk about how wonderful the E.U. is, and then lobby for it to get more money,” said Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a privately financed research group based in London that is offering $135,000 for the best plan for a British exit from the Union.
benton.org/node/161972 | New York Times
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LABOR’S NBN PLANS TOO AMBITIOUS: CONROY
[SOURCE: Financial Review, AUTHOR: David Ramli]
The Australian Labor minister most responsible for initiating the national broadband network has admitted the schedule to build the fiber network was too ambitious and his government overestimated the abilities of the construction industry. Stephen Conroy said it was “undeniable” that the company building the network, NBN, missed its targets. “We clearly underestimated and I think it’s fair to say the construction model could be legitimately criticized,” he told an Australian Computer Society event in Sydney. “We wouldn’t have been so aggressive if we’d known how tough it was for the company. So that was an area where we were overly -ambitious.” He said “the failure of the construction industry to mobilize resources” was the main cause of problems.
benton.org/node/161948 | Financial Review
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