October 2013

How NSA breakthrough may allow tracking of “burner” cell phones

Cato Institute researcher and Ars alum Julian Sanchez recently pulled a few sentences from a 2009 declaration by National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander.

They describe an unnamed tool that routinely accessed the vast database of call records assembled by the NSA. Sanchez argues that the purpose may be to identify burner phones used by NSA targets. The tool, according to Alexander's declaration: “was automatically invoked to support certain types of analytical research. Specifically, to help analysts identify a phone number of interest.” Sanchez explains precisely what phone data the tool queries: “The times and dates of the first and last call events, but apparently not the times and dates of calls between those endpoints. In other words, this tool is supporting analytic software that only cares when a phone went online, and when it stopped being used.”

A Library of Congress for the Internet? Perma CC gives pages a good home

Links on the Internet can be brittle, and it doesn’t take much shifting for an important source or article to disappear after being cited authoritatively. Times Higher Education has highlighted a new consortium, Perma CC, that seeks to provide a central archive for important webpages referenced in scholarly works and legal documents. The site is intended to be a permanent place to host sourced material, where authors or publishers can hand off a URL and the page will be hosted permanently on Perma CC’s services as well as mirror sites.

Connected devices: Creating jobs and growth

[Commentary] If we could better control the physical world, how might we improve our lives? This question is being asked by daring mobile innovators in laboratories, startups and garages across the country as the connected revolution moves from smartphones to the world around us.

An exploding ecosystem, already numbering 10 billion connected devices, is a prime venue for economic transformation and exponential growth. We are on the verge of another wireless-driven technological revolution fueled by a vast sea of connected devices. Today, total global revenue from the Internet of things is $200 billion. By 2020, that revenue is estimated to reach $1.2 trillion. Pragmatic policy choices can help ensure continued American leadership in the innovation economy. To advance the emerging connected device revolution, we need to continue to free up spectrum for commercial wireless use, and accelerate the transition to IP networks. President Barack Obama has already taken important steps to make more spectrum available and accelerate the transition to faster and more capable next-generation IP-based wireless LTE networks. It is absolutely essential that we continue to invest and upgrade our next-generation networks today in order to keep pace with innovation and meet the wireless demands of consumers and businesses tomorrow.

To amplify the benefits when things start talking, policymakers need to start talking too. They need to ask for a bigger vision and bolder action for a brighter connected future. With pragmatic policies that tap our talent and tenacity, harness innovation and investment and expand wireless capacity and digital networks, the coming connected device decade will forever change our daily lives.

[Kohlenberger is a former White House policy advisor to two US presidents and is president of JK Strategies. He serves as executive director of jobs4america and serves on the board of the Benton Foundation and the Advisory Board for Mobile Future.]

Why keeping Internet traffic within borders is a tall order

Germany’s biggest telecommunications company, Deutsche Telekom, recently proposed keeping all domestic Internet traffic within national borders. In other words, if someone in Germany wants to visit a German website, that traffic would not be routed through the US or Britain, and would therefore not be intercepted by those countries’ data-addicted intelligence services.

A Deutsche Telekom spokesman said: “Telekom is strongly in favor of keeping German Internet traffic within national borders (‘national routing’). The next step would see this solution expanded to include Schengen countries.” The statement went on to bemoan the effect the surveillance scandal is having on the public’s trust in cloud services. So, how realistic is this proposal, and what would its effect be? While the intercontinental undersea cables could be relatively easily tapped, doing the same to the terrestrial cables would be trickier. This is more-or-less analogous to what Deutsche Telekom is proposing for Europe: greater security for intra-regional communications, without cutting off the region from the outside.

What Real-Time Wi-Fi Feels Like

Just how fast is "real time" wireless? Imagine an entire Blu-ray disc worth of data could be communicated between a transmitting device and receiving device in about two or three seconds. Or the entire memory contents of your typical iPhone could be dumped to a storage system in about a second or so. News that researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have achieved an experimental wireless transmission rate of 100 gigabits per second will make it possible. Concretely, if the use of the system finds its way into commercial devices sooner rather than later, it'll be used to help bridge difficult gaps in fiber optic networks, like those being installed to bring broadband to the wilder parts of the world. This is because its input signals are optical and can be taken in a bit-transparent way. Rather nicely the tech uses some fairly simple and robust devices--which means it's not necessarily many years from production.

How Americans Get TV News at Home

Even at a time of fragmenting media use, television remains the dominant way that Americans get news at home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Nielsen data. And while the largest audiences tune into local and network broadcast news, it is national cable news that commands the most attention from its viewers.

Almost three out of four US adults (71%) watch local television news and 65% view network newscasts over the course of a month, according to Nielsen data from February 2013. While 38% of adults watch some cable news during the month, cable viewers -- particularly the most engaged viewers -- spend far more time with that platform than broadcast viewers do with local or network news. On average, the cable news audience devotes twice as much time to that news source as local and network news viewers spend on those platforms. And the heaviest cable users are far more immersed in that coverage -- watching for more than an hour a day -- than the most loyal viewers of broadcast television news. Even those adults who are the heaviest viewers of local and network news spend more time watching cable than those broadcast outlets. This deeper level of viewer engagement with cable news may help to explain why cable television -- despite a more limited audience -- seems to have an outsized ability to influence the national debate and news agenda.

Group Presses for Safeguards on the Personal Data of Schoolchildren

A leading children’s advocacy group is challenging the educational technology software industry, an estimated $8 billion market, to develop national safeguards for the personal data collected about students from kindergarten through high school. In a letter sent to 16 educational technology vendors -- including Google Apps for Education, Samsung School, Scholastic and Pearson Schoolnet -- Common Sense Media, an advocacy group in San Francisco that rates children’s videos and apps for age appropriateness, urged the industry to use student data only for educational purposes, and not for marketing products to children or their families. “We believe in the power of education technology, used wisely, to transform learning,” said James Steyer, the chief executive of the group. “But students should not have to surrender their privacy at the schoolhouse door.” Tim Drinan, a Google spokesman, said that advertising was turned off by default in Google Apps for Education products like document-sharing and that the system did not scan students’ e-mails for advertising purposes.

Google Jousts With Wired South Korea Over Quirky Internet Rules

South Korea is one of the world’s most digitally advanced countries. It has ubiquitous broadband, running at speeds that many Americans can only envy. Its Internet is also one of the most quirky in the world.

The highly regulated Internet comes as a surprise to many people, Koreans included, because South Korea is a strong democracy with a vibrant economy seemingly ready for the digital information age. South Koreans were early adopters of Internet games and smartphones. It has world-beating electronics companies like Samsung and LG. But here the Internet is just different. Travelers who want to go from Gimpo International Airport to the Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul cannot rely on Google Maps. Google Maps can provide directions only for public transport, not for driving, to any place in Korea. Anyone crazy enough to try the journey on bicycle or on foot, directions for which Google Maps provides elsewhere, will be similarly stymied. South Korean security restrictions that were put in place after the Korean War limit Google’s maps, the company says. The export of map data is barred, ostensibly to prevent it from falling into the hands of South Korea’s foe to the north. Google and other foreign Internet companies say the rule also prevents them from providing online mapping services, like navigation, that travelers have come to rely on in much of the rest of the world. Foreign Internet companies say the country’s rules prevent them from competing against domestic rivals because they cannot provide the same services they do elsewhere Now the government of President Park Geun-hye is moving to ease some of the Internet regulations. However, for Google and other foreign companies, there is a hitch. They will be permitted to use the map as of 2014, on a case-by-case basis. Now, Google adapts its English-language maps of South Korea from the government’s Korean-language maps. Google is permitted to provide directions using public transit systems like the Seoul subway, because train and bus routes and schedules are available through public records.

The NSA's Watchfulness Protects America

[Commentary] Since it was exposed in June by leaker Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency's call-records program has become controversial and many have questioned whether its benefits are worth the costs. My answer: The program -- which collects phone numbers and the duration and times of calls, but not the content of any conversations, names or locations -- is necessary and must be preserved if we are to prevent terrorist attacks. The NSA call-records program is working and contributing to our safety. It is legal and it is subject to strict oversight and thorough judicial review. I believe we should increase the program's transparency and its privacy protections. Toward that end, the Senate Intelligence Committee will soon consider a bill to make improvements to these counterterrorism programs. The proposed legislation will, for example, require court review when the call records are queried, and mandate a series of limitations on how the records can be obtained, stored and used. But we must also learn the lesson of 9/11. If we end this vital program, we only make our nation more vulnerable to another devastating terrorist attack.

[Sen Feinstein is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.]

Bolstering a Phone’s Defenses Against Breaches

The so-called bring your own device, or BYOD, trend can lead to trouble. Almost half of companies that allow personally owned devices to connect to the corporate network have experienced a data breach, either because of unwitting mistakes by employees or intentional wrongdoing, according to a 2012 survey of 400 technology professionals by researchers at Decisive Analytics.

With that risk in mind, Lookout is taking aim at companies and government agencies in much the same way attackers are: it is using its app to slip under the door of enterprises via the hundreds of millions of employees who regularly bring their personal devices to work. Lookout is among a handful of tech companies trying to capitalize on the BYOD phenomenon that people in charge of securing corporate networks say has become their biggest headache. In the past, they could mandate that employees use company-approved BlackBerry smartphones, which came with a tightly controlled network. But with BlackBerry’s future uncertain and consumers clamoring to use their iPhones, iPads and Android-powered devices at work, tech managers have had to consider alternatives and deal with the potential security threats that come with those alternatives.

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