1. Monthly archive
  2. January 2014

January 2014

Here’s how AT&T could get in hot water for sharing customer data with the CIA

[Commentary] AT&T may have committed itself to publishing periodic transparency reports, but here's one thing those disclosures won't cover: secret deals between the company and the Central Intelligence Agency, which the New York Times has reported amounted to $10 million in annual federal payments.

The arrangement had AT&T handing over phone numbers and call records to spies, according to the Times. Since the CIA isn't considered law enforcement, its relationship with telecommunications companies would mostly evade the sunlight that these transparency reports are meant to provide. In light of that, consumer advocates have come up with another tactic: going through telecom regulators. The Federal Communications Commission has taken up a petition from a bevy of advocates headed by the interest group Public Knowledge. If the FCC ultimately agrees with the petitioners that anonymized and non-anonymized data should be treated the same by law, it would become illegal for phone companies to sell or share anonymized metadata without consumers' consent. By opening up the issue to public comments, the FCC has implied it's taking the advocates seriously. So far, none of the carriers have filed responses. I've reached out to them for comment and will update if and when they reply.

[Dec 23]

MIT Engineers Invent A Cameraless Tracking System That Sees Through Walls

A team of engineers at MIT has created a system called WiTrack. It's a 3-D motion-tracking system like Kinect, except it doesn't use cameras and it can track you anywhere in a house, even through walls. One very useful application already exists: fall detection. WiTrack can detect someone falling down with 96.9% accuracy, making it a potential boon for shoring up safety in households where elderly people are living independently.

[Dec 23]

TV Broadcasters Fire Back at Aereo's Supreme Court Claims

Both sides in the debate over Aereo's legality hope that the US Supreme Court agrees to a review. But will a dispute over the dispute get in the way of that happening?

Aereo, of course, is the technology company that captures over-the-air TV broadcasts and transmits them to subscribers' digital devices. The company claims this is fair because each transmission is captured and relayed individually and privately. The broadcasters contend that it is a public performance in violation of copyright laws. ABC, CBS, Fox, NBCU and other broadcasters filed a reply brief to what Aereo had to tell the Supreme Court. According to the document, "Aereo’s response brief gets a great deal wrong, but it gets one important thing right: This exceptionally important case warrants this Court’s immediate review." The question, though, is what would the Supreme Court be agreeing to hear? The broadcasters want to present the issue of "whether a company 'publicly performs' a copyrighted television program when it retransmits a broadcast of that program to thousands of paid subscribers over the Internet." "Rather than defend the Second Circuit’s reasoning, Aereo devotes substantial effort to attempting to recast itself as something it plainly is not -- a mere supplier of equipment that individuals may use to enhance their 'private reception of broadcast television,' ” says the broadcasters' reply. "Make no mistake about it. Aereo is not a hardware supplier. It offers a subscription service."

[Dec 23]

NSA Panel Member Recommends Increased Data Collection

Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA and a member of President Barack Obama's task force on surveillance, said that a controversial telephone data-collection program conducted by the National Security Agency should be expanded to include e-mails. He also said the program, far from being unnecessary, could prevent the next 9/11.

Morell, seeking to correct any misperception that the presidential panel had called for a radical curtailment of NSA programs, said he is in favor of restarting a program that the NSA discontinued in 2011 that involved the collection of "meta-data" for Internet communications. That program only gets a brief mention in a footnote on page 97 of the task-force report, "Liberty and Security in A Changing World." "I would argue actually that the email data is probably more valuable than the telephony data," Morell told National Journal in a telephone interview. "You can bet that the last thing a smart terrorist is going to do right now is call someone in the United States." Morell also said that while he agreed with the report's conclusion that the telephone data program, conducted under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, made "only a modest contribution to the nation's security" so far, it should be continued under the new safeguards recommended by the panel. "I would argue that what effectiveness we have seen to date is totally irrelevant to how effective it might be in the future," he said. "This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11 and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and 2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened."

[Dec 23]

Behold: The World's First Digitally Signed International Agreement

A diplomatic milestone got lost in the shuffle: On Tuesday, December 10, Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen sat down at their respective desks in Tallinn and Helsinki and concluded what they claim is the world's first digitally signed international agreement. The leaders, who met in person the next day in Helsinki, used ID cards to sign the memorandum of understanding, which will govern cooperation on e-services between the two countries.

[Dec 23]

The FCC’s plan for TV blackouts: what it means for sports fans

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a major step to end a TV blackout rule that can prevent local fans from seeing games of their home teams. Cable and satellite companies hailed the move as a victory for fans, but the NFL and local broadcasters say it will lead to fewer free games on TV. But what exactly would the FCC rule do? The short answer is it could affect football fans in a few cities but won’t get rid of blackouts altogether. If the FCC ends the rule, could this be it for sports blackouts? Alas, no. The NFL will still be able to black out the over-the-air games like they do already. And fans will not be protected from other minor blackouts that occur when an individual cable or satellite companies can’t come to terms with channels controlled by teams. [Dec 22]

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