January 2014

NSA and GCHQ target 'leaky' phone apps like Angry Birds to scoop user data

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the Internet, according to top secret documents.

The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation -- and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger. Many smartphone owners will be unaware of the full extent this information is being shared across the Internet, and even the most sophisticated would be unlikely to realize that all of it is available for the spy agencies to collect. Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes.

Tech's growing problem in San Francisco

[Commentary] In case you've missed it, Silicon Valley has its own version of Occupy Wall Street. This culture war lacks rampant arrests, bursts of violence or national media coverage, but the dissent of anti-gentrification groups over income and housing is creating a stir just the same.

The impact of Silicon Valley’s workforce is creating an “eviction crisis" in San Francisco says Rebecca Gourevitch, an organizer with Eviction Free San Francisco. "A lot of people feel these companies make so much money, and … yet are oblivious." The protests highlight the yawning gap between those benefiting from the enormous wealth generated by the tech boom and those left behind. The average monthly rent here has soared 12%, to $3,096, from 2013, according to RealFacts. In San Jose, the average rental price is $2,124, up 10% from 2013; in Oakland, the average rent climbed 9%, to $2,015. Rent hikes have coincided with a migration of tech start-ups here, and the decision by many of their young employees to live in the city. The sweeping gentrification has not only altered the character of some neighborhoods, but alienated residents who complain of the self- entitled, boorish behavior of tech workers. Much is at stake -- with Twitter and Square recently moved into larger digs here -- and some tech leaders appear to be getting the message. They've promised to create more jobs and affordable housing.

Rep Darrell Issa: James Clapper lied to Congress about NSA and should be fired

A group of congressmen led by Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA) is pushing for President Barack Obama to fire James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who they say misled Congress about the extent of the National Security Agency's surveillance activity.

The lawmakers called Director Clapper's position "incompatible" with the administration's effort to restore trust in the NSA, according to a letter sent to the White House. The group is mostly Republican, but includes one Democrat, Rep. Alan Grayson (FL). "Director Clapper continues to hold his position despite lying to Congress under oath about the existence of bulk data collection programs in March 2013," the letter reads. "Asking Director Clapper, and other federal intelligence officials who misrepresented programs to Congress and the courts, to report to you on needed reforms ... is not a credible solution."

If You Used This Secure Webmail Site, the FBI Has Your Inbox

While investigating a hosting company known for sheltering child porn, the Federal Bureau of Investigations incidentally seized the entire e-mail database of a popular anonymous webmail service called TorMail.

Now the FBI is tapping that vast trove of e-mail in unrelated investigations. The bureau’s data windfall, seized from a company called Freedom Hosting, surfaced in court papers when prosecutors indicted a Florida man for allegedly selling counterfeit credit cards online. The filings show the FBI built its case in part by executing a search warrant on a Gmail account used by the counterfeiters, where they found that orders for forged cards were being sent to a TorMail e-mail account.

Connection Failed: Internet Still A Luxury For Many Americans

Among US households with incomes of $30,000 and less, only 54% have access to broadband at home, says Kathryn Zickuhr, a research associate with Pew Research Center’s Internet Project.

Members of these households are most likely to use Internet access outside home -- at work, school or a public library. About 13% of these household report accessing the Internet on their cellphones. A further look into poverty reveals more and more unconnected Americans. According to Pew Research, one-third of those making less than $20,000 a year do not go online at all. Another third go online, but do not have Internet access at home. Of those making $30,000 or less, 45% of mobile internet users go online mostly with their cellphones. Even as some schools forge ahead by incorporating computers, many students are left behind due to the lack of connection at home. In a February 2013 survey conducted by Pew Research, College Board Advanced Placement program and National Reading project, 54% of teachers said that all or almost all of their students had access to digital tools such as computer and internet connection at school. Only 18% said the students had similar access to such tools at home. More than half of the teachers of the lowest income students, at 56%, said that students' lack of resources presents a major challenge to incorporating computers into their teaching. For teachers of students from mostly lower-middle income, that number was 48%. Overall, two-thirds of those using internet at public library said that they did research for school or work, revealed a survey conducted by Pew Research. Out of all age groups surveyed, 16 to 17 year olds were the group to access the internet the most. About 39% of them said that they had used a library computer or Wi-Fi in the last 12 months. For 18 to 29 year olds, that number was 38%. For 30 to 49, it was 31%. For parents of minors, that number was 34%.

Spectrum Sharing: The Opportunity is Now

[Commentary] We’re reaching a critical period in spectrum policy. Finding more wireless capacity has never been more important, and efforts on two major fronts are aiming toward that goal. If we truly hope to maximize the potential of the airwaves, and do so in a way that promotes innovation and competition, we must flip our baseline assumptions. Sharing spectrum should be the default, exclusivity the exception.

Yet it’s quite possible that current efforts to free up spectrum will move in the opposite direction, even undermining already-authorized spectrum sharing opportunities. Fifteen years is a long time in technology-driven industries. The debate is still raging, but three very significant things have happened. First, wireless got big. So the issues we’re fighting about mean a great deal. Second, the market has spoken. There was an open question in the mid-90s whether licensed or unlicensed bands would promote growth and innovation. The answer is pretty clear: unlicensed. Third, we don’t really have to choose between licensed and unlicensed. A frequency can be licensed and still shared, for example, if licenses are limited in the scope of the rights they grant. Similarly, unlicensed allocations can be designed to occupy an entire band, as with Wi-Fi, or structured to coexist with other systems. And where before companies lined up in the licensed camp unthinkingly, today some of the biggest investments in Wi-Fi and spectrum sharing come from companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cisco, and Qualcomm. Sharing is no longer a crazy idea at the fringes. This is not the right time to leave potential wireless capacity on the table.

[Werbach is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania]

Remarks Of FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly Before The Hudson Institute

Policy-makers in Washington, DC should be constantly on guard against unnecessary restrictions that interfere with the freedoms of any willing buyer or seller in our economy because, we have no idea what types of products or services our regulations may discourage from coming to market. Championing economic freedom will be my guiding principle when it comes to overseeing the communications industry.

To inform my decisions, I will consider the following:

First, the Federal Communications Commission must consider whether it has the authority to regulate as well as realizing the confines of that authority.
Second, the FCC must have verifiable and specific evidence that there is market failure before acting. In many cases, competition and industry self-regulation are sufficient to ensure that services are provided and consumers are protected.
Third, when the FCC does intervene, its solution should be carefully tailored and apply only to the relevant set of providers or services. We must guard against over-regulating by analogy.
Fourth, the benefit of regulation must outweigh the burdens. Even when rules are grounded in the statute, based on evidence, addressing a real harm, and targeted at a specific problem, there are still costs to intervening, and we must consider those costs as part of our analysis. Let’s accept the reality that costs are always passed on to consumers one way or another.

When it comes to IP transitions, I believe that the FCC must ensure that its policies and regulations do not impede innovation so that providers are free to implement the latest technologies and services. When it comes to governing the forthcoming IP trials specifically, I suggest the following criteria.

First, any trials should not interfere with the choices that consumers are making every day to go with IP services.
Second, trials should not delay the FCC’s work. The trials won’t resolve many important legal and policy issues. Therefore, they should not serve as an excuse for delaying appropriate decisions.
Finally, it should be made clear that any rules the FCC establishes in the trials will be non-binding on what is happening outside of the trials or for future decisions. These trials should be exactly that: trials, not stalking horses for new regulations.

As we move forward, we should consider a variety of approaches to complete Universal Service Fund reform. For example, I am interested in deploying the Remote Areas Fund, which was intended to bring basic voice and broadband service to extremely high-cost areas through various technology platforms, including satellite and fixed wireless. As we continue to reform the various programs, we should look for ways to offset the costs of modernization within the existing budgets. Budgets make for hard choices. But those hard choices will force efficiency, encourage innovation, and benefit ratepayers. Finally, we need to take a close look at program management. Projected requirements -- which drive contributions -- are consistently much higher than the actual disbursements.

Concerning incentive auctions, technically, the FCC will need to simultaneously integrate the reverse auction to obtain spectrum, with the forward auction to allocate the spectrum for wireless use, while “repacking” the remaining broadcasters. In order to be successful, we need many things to fall into place, including broadcaster participation because without them, the auction simply fails. Educating broadcasters about their options -- whether it be selling spectrum, channel sharing or moving from UHF to VHF -- will be an enormous challenge. Simplicity and transparency are paramount to providing broadcasters the certainty needed to decide to participate or continue to serve their communities.

When Congress extended the media ownership review from a two year to four year requirement, the intention was to ensure a thorough, competitive analysis of this space. Instead, what has resulted is regulatory paralysis. I am aware of the difficulties in completing this task and the corresponding legal challenges, including the 3rd Circuit’s ruling. Nevertheless, we are required to comply with the statute. Let’s face it, the media landscape has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a world where Americans obtain information solely from local broadcasters and newspapers. We have satellite providers, cable networks, the Internet, and mobile platforms. I am open to thoughtfully updating the FCC’s rules to reflect the realities of today’s media marketplace.

FCC’s O’Rielly: Net neutrality ruling won’t change marketplace

The recent federal court ruling overturning the Federal Communications Commission “network neutrality” rules will not radically change the market for Internet access, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly said.

While some worry that Internet providers will now begin charging bandwidth-heavy websites -- like Netflix or Google -- for better access to subscribers, Commissioner O’Rielly said he does next expect to see that change. “I’m not expecting the marketplace to change all that much going forward,” he said, citing ongoing conversations with Internet service providers. Instead, Commissioner O’Rielly predicted “a pretty stable marketplace.” “It’s in [the Internet providers] best interest to serve the customers,” he said. Commissioner O’Rielly said he “would be reluctant to impose new obligations in this space going forward” and declined to speculate as to how FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will respond to the court’s ruling. The FCC’s authority over Internet providers was “intended by Congress to be rather narrow,” he said, citing his time as a Hill staffer during the 1996 Communications Act rewrite that led to the Telecommunications Act.

Lessons From The World's Most Tech-Savvy Government

[Commentary] What makes Estonia interesting in terms of governance is not just that the people can elect their parliament online or get tax overpayments back within two days of filing their returns. It is also that this level of service for citizens is not the result of the government building a few websites. Instead, Estonians started by redesigning their entire information infrastructure from the ground up with openness, privacy, security, and ‘future-proofing’ in mind.

[Tamkivi is former President of the Estonian Association of IT and Telecoms]

Five faulty premises, part 1: The need for low-cost access to high-speed broadband

[Commentary] Does everyone need low-cost access to high-speed broadband? The challenging questions are at what level and by what means do we maintain the historical commitment to universal service. Many in the telecom policy space -- often those with the loudest voices -- have long advocated that every American needs access to high-performance telecommunications services (today, that is high-speed Internet service) at low cost. Indeed, everything the Federal Communications Commission does today is done with this goal, directly or indirectly, in mind.

Where is the consumer in all of this? Those advocating high-speed broadband as a universal service often have more to gain from such programs than the median consumer. Firms like Google, that provide services and applications that run over communications infrastructure, are clear beneficiaries; as are networking equipment manufacturers. Politicians, too, often have much to gain from this strategy, as the costs of provisioning these networks are not transparent to voters and indirectly bourn. And the Ivory Tower is more likely to reward academics who promote regulatory programs that appear to advance social needs than those who argue against programs that appear to benefit the public interest. But just as communications technologies and the services that they facilitate are diverse, so too are consumer preferences. It is absolutely the case that there are basic services that we should do our best to ensure everyone has reasonable access to. But today we need to think more carefully about what these services are than we have historically needed. Most important, we should resist the urge to treat every American as though they have the same needs and wants as Washington, Silicon Valley, and Ivory Tower policy makers.

[Gus Hurwitz a visiting fellow at AEI's Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy]

Benton

Search