December 2013

Patriot Act author: Director of National Intelligence should be prosecuted

Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr (R-WI), the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress.

"Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it," he said. He said the Justice Department should prosecute Clapper for giving false testimony during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March. During that hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not -- or at least does "not wittingly" -- collect information on Americans in bulk. After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all US phone calls, Clapper apologized for the misleading comment. The intelligence director said he tried to give the "least untruthful" answer he could without revealing classified information. Rep Sensenbrenner said that explanation doesn’t hold water and argued the courts and Congress depend on accurate testimony to do their jobs.

Media too focused on failures, President Obama says

President Barack Obama criticized the media’s focus on the failures of government like the Internal Revenue Service scandal and the botched HealthCare.gov rollout -- saying that not enough attention is paid to quiet successes.

President Obama cited Craig Fugate’s stewardship of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an example of an important government agency functioning as expected in relative obscurity. Fugate “has managed as many natural disasters over the last five years as just about anybody and has done a flawless job,” President Obama said. “Nobody knows who this guy is,” President Obama said of Fugate. “And if, in fact, we go in after Sandy or after the tornadoes -- in Oklahoma or -- or Missouri and we’re helping a lot of people effectively and quickly. And they’re getting what they need. Nobody hears about that.”

Venezuela Cyber Crackdown Ensnares Bitly

Venezuelans have been scrambling for dollars for weeks, taking refuge in the greenback as their own currency is in free fall. Rather than address the economic imbalances behind the bolivar's plunge, the government is going after the bearers of the bad news -- it's blocking websites people use to track exchange rates on the black market.

Cyber-activists say the crackdown goes to absurd lengths, even targeting Bitly, the popular site for shortening Web addresses to make it easier to send them as links via Twitter and other social media. For more than two weeks, access to the service has been partially censored by several Internet service providers in Venezuela, apparently because Bitly was being used to evade blocks put on currency-tracking websites.

Regulator tells Telefónica to loosen grip on Brazil

The Brazilian antitrust regulator has told Telefónica to either reduce its ownership of rival Telecom Italia or sell a stake in its local business to reduce the Spanish group’s control over the country’s mobile telecoms market.

Cade, the competition watchdog, said that it had “identified potential risk to competition” since Telefónica bought a larger stake in Telecom Italia’s dominant shareholder this year. Telefónica’s Vivo competes in the Brazilian mobile market with Telecom Italia’s TIM Brasil. The two groups control more than half of the country’s mobile market. “As a result of the transaction, a company that already has a minority stake in TIM would control Vivo,” Cade said. The regulator recommended that Telefónica should either remove its indirect stake in TIM Brasil or sell a controlling stake to a new shareholder in Vivo.

Verizon quietly unleashes its LTE monster, tripling 4G capacity in major cities

Verizon has been rapidly working behind the scenes on upgrading its LTE infrastructure across the country.

On the third anniversary of its initial 4G network launch, Verizon Wireless revealed that it has now set the new network beast loose in dozens of major markets across the country. In the commercial corridors of major cities like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Washington (DC), Verizon has tripled its LTE capacity by tapping new airwaves, while in downtown San Francisco and Los Angeles it has boosted capacity by 150 percent. The end result is that in cities where it’s completed the upgrade, customers will not only have access to much faster peak speeds than its first LTE network could support -- as high as 80 Mbps -- but it will be able to support many more connections at faster speeds.

Real Journalism vs. Global Big Brother

[Commentary] Every new revelation about the global reach of the National Security Agency underscores that the extremism of the surveillance state has reached gargantuan proportions. The Washington Post just reported that the NSA "is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world." Documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden have forced top officials in Washington to admit the indefensible while defending it. One of the main obstacles to further expansion of their Orwellian empire is real journalism.

Real journalism is "subversive" of deception that can't stand the light of day. This is a huge problem for the Obama Administration and the many surveillance-state flunkies of both parties in Congress. What they want is fake journalism, deferring to government storylines and respectful of authority even when it is illegitimate. In motion now, on both sides of the Atlantic, are top-down efforts to quash real journalism when and how it matters most. In the two English-speaking countries that have done the most preaching to the world about "Western values" like freedom of the press, the governments led by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Cameron are overseeing assaults on real journalism. They're striving to further normalize fake journalism -- largely confined to stenographic services for corporate power, war industries and surveillance agencies. A parallel goal is to harass, intimidate and destroy real journalism. The quest is to maximize the uninformed consent of the governed. Journalism is at a momentous crossroads. The alternative to unrelenting independence is sheepism, and that's not journalism; it's a professionalized baseline of bowing to government and corporate pressure even before it has been overtly exerted.

Tech groups praise House ‘patent troll’ vote

Tech companies and trade groups praised the House for passing the Innovation Act.

Tech companies, trade organizations and advocacy groups thanked the House for its vote. The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) called the bill “a commendable, bipartisan effort to grow innovation, jobs and the economy.” “This legislation would make it less profitable for patent trolls to sue, and give targets of unfair patent infringement claims better tools to fight back,” CCIA CEO Ed Black said in a statement. CCIA group includes Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Samsung. The Application Developers Alliance -- which includes Google, Yahoo and small app developers -- said the vote is “a victory for app developer creators and innovators, who too often are road kill for patent trolls.” Alliance President Jon Potter applauded the discussion of demand letters, or the letters that firms send accusing recipients of patent infringement and threatening legal action. Even trade groups and companies that had initially resisted Rep Goodlatte’s bill voiced support for the version that passed the House. BSA – The Software Alliance said the bill “strikes an important balance that will make life harder for bad actors and better for innovators.” BSA represents Apple, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle, among other software companies.

Patent debate shifts to the Senate

Patent reform advocates are focusing their attention on the Senate now that the House has passed the Innovation Act, authored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlate (R-VA).

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Dec. 17 on the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act, authored by Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen Mike Lee (R-UT). When defending his bill to the House Rules Committee, Rep Goodlatte highlighted the similarities between his Innovation Act and the Senate bill, and pointed to a National Review piece he and Sen Lee had written about their shared views on patent reform. Sen Leahy applauded the House’s vote on the Innovation Act: “Targeted reforms should address abuses in the system while ensuring that legitimate inventors can continue to succeed and grow our economy. I look forward to working through the Committee process in the Senate to achieve this goal.”

Judge to punish lawyers for frivolous lawsuit over AOL-Microsoft patent “conspiracy”

Giant tech companies don’t usually cut sympathetic figures in court but a federal judge decided that the lawyers who had been harassing them with a frivolous lawsuit deserved to be punished.

In a decision issued in San Jose, US District Judge Lucy Koh -- last seen overseeing the Apple-Samsung patent damages trial -- found that a lawsuit that accused AOL and Microsoft of cooking up a bogus patent auction with the help of Goldman Sachs was “frivolous” and “utterly lacking” in facts. The lawyers in question will have to pick up AOL’s legal tab, and Judge Koh is also preparing to set out other punishments, which could include fines and disciplinary measures.

The New Haven Independent seeks to expand its hyperlocal mission to low-power radio

The New Haven Independent, which launched in 2005 amid the first wave of online-only community news sites, may soon expand into radio.

The nonprofit Independent is one of three groups asking the Federal Communications Commission for a low-power FM (LPFM) license in New Haven (CT). If successful, editor and founder Paul Bass says that “New Haven Independent Radio” could make its debut at 103.5 FM in about a year. “It would be a fun thing if we get it. I’m told it’s very hard,” Bass says. “We’re by no means talking as if we’re going to get this license. We thought it would be worth a shot.” He envisions a mix of news from the Independent and La Voz Hispana de Connecticut, the Independent’s content partner (and landlord), as well as music, public affairs, and shows produced by local nonprofit organizations. The station would be on the air at least 16 hours a day. The three New Haven applications are part of the FCC’s great LPFM land rush. Legislation signed by President Barack Obama in 2011 eased restrictions on low-power stations, and the FCC is expected to approve about 1,000 applications sometime in 2014. More than 2,800 applications were received by the deadline in November, according to the website Radio World.

Benton

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