January 2014

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2014

Some DC events may be postponed http://benton.org/calendar/2014-01-22/ but the spectrum auction goes on (preview below)

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   New documents: NSA provided 2-3 daily “tips” to FBI for at least 3 years
   Intelligence chairmen ask Obama for NSA reform bill [links to web]
   Obama’s restrictions on NSA surveillance rely on narrow definition of ‘spying’ - analysis
   Some Spy Changes Hampered by Complications
   Why Obama’s NSA Reforms Won’t Solve Silicon Valley’s Trust Problem [links to web]
   Obama's NSA reform speech neglects Silicon Valley - editorial [links to web]
   President Obama throws tech companies under the bus - op-ed [links to web]
   What Obama's NSA reform means for tech [links to web]
   A new day at the NSA - op-ed
   The President's NSA Illusions - Michael Mukasey op-ed [links to web]
   How candidate Obama would’ve replied to President Obama’s NSA speech [links to web]
   Phone Companies Worry They'll Be Required To Store Customer Data For NSA
   Supreme Court must restrain phone searches - San Francisco Chronicle editorial [links to web]

PRIVACY/SECURITY
   White hat hacker says he found 70,000 records on Healthcare.gov through a Google search
   No, hackers didn’t steal 70,000 records from HealthCare.gov
   FTC Settles with Twelve Companies Falsely Claiming to Comply with International Safe Harbor Privacy Framework - press release [links to web]
   New Security Report Confirms Everyone Is Spying on Everyone [links to web]
   What Americans should fear in cyberspace - op-ed [links to web]
   Google-backed venture uses shape-shifting code to defeat hackers [links to web]
   A market for anti-NSA technology emerges [links to web]
   Time for an international convention on government access to data - Microsoft press release [links to web]

BROADBAND/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
   Don’t touch my Internet (unless you want a riot) - op-ed

SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
   FCC to Hold Major Auction of Wireless Airwaves
   Source: Snow or No, FCC Auction Still a Go [links to web]
   Navigant Study Refutes Claims TV Broadcasters Received Free Spectrum - press release [links to web]
   What T-Mobile threat? Verizon keeps on growing [links to web]
   Verizon Mobile Profit Under Threat as Price War Escalates [links to web]
   As countries adopt LTE, mobile data use starts skyrocketing [links to web]

VIDEO/AUDIO
   Nearly 300 TV Stations Sold In 2013
   Why Verizon is buying Intel Media: it’s all about taking on Comcast - analysis
   Verizon bets on the future of television - analysis [links to web]
   Amazon Considering Online Pay-TV Service [links to web]
   Amazon Denies It Has Plans to Create an Over-the-Top TV Service [links to web]
   Weather Channel asks DirecTV to waive customers' cancellation fees [links to web]
   Showtime, HBO, Starz blast NPD study that says they lost subscribers [links to web]

OWNERSHIP
   Mounting cash piles an embarrassment of riches for tech companies
   Google bus backlash: San Francisco to impose fees on tech shuttles
   Nearly 300 TV Stations Sold In 2013
   TWC’s Marcus Stands Firm Amid Bids, Jabs [links to web]
   Cable companies sue Apple-backed patent coalition

CONTENT
   Yale Students Tangle With University Over Website
   This Google Glass user went to the movies. Then he got interrogated for about four hours. [links to web]

DIVERSITY
   Why Would A Major Network Cut Back On Latino News - op-ed [links to web]

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   The EU Data protection reform: helping businesses thrive in the digital economy - speech [links to web]
   Netflix goes live on cable box in Sweden, wants to do the same in the US soon [links to web]
   British broadband providers rebuff calls to act as online gambling police [links to web]
   As countries adopt LTE, mobile data use starts skyrocketing [links to web]
   Chinese Internet Traffic Redirected to Small Wyoming House

MORE ONLINE
   Cable and Satellite Pricing Confusion Brings Out the Worst in People [links to web]
   Notable in Their Absence From Davos [links to web]

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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

NEW DOCUMENTS: NSA PROVIDED 2-3 DAILY “TIPS” TO FBI FOR AT LEAST 3 YEARS
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Cyrus Farivar]
According to newly-declassified court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the National Security Agency (NSA) was (and may still be) tipping off the Federal Bureau of Investigations at least two to three times per day going back at least to 2006. Hours after President Barack Obama finished his speech on proposed intelligence and surveillance reforms, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified a number of documents from the nation’s most secretive court. The new documents are heavily-redacted orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to the FBI. These items request that the court order an entity (likely a business) to provide “tangible things” under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The documents do not refer to who the target is, nor which company or organization they apply to. The newly-declassified court orders appear to indicate that while the FBI is being granted the order, it is in fact the NSA that is obtaining and analyzing the information first before handing it over to the FBI.
benton.org/node/172763 | Ars Technica
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A NARROW DEFINITION OF SPYING
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Barton Gellman]
[Commentary] President Barack Obama placed restrictions on access to domestic phone records collected by the National Security Agency, but the changes he announced will allow it to continue -- or expand -- the collection of personal data from billions of people around the world, Americans and foreign citizens alike. President Obama squares that circle with an unusually narrow definition of “spying.” It does not include the ingestion of tens of trillions of records about the telephone calls, e-mails, locations and relationships of people for whom there is no suspicion of relevance to any threat. President Obama gave his plainest endorsement yet of “bulk collection,” a term he used more than once and authorized explicitly in Presidential Policy Directive 28. In a footnote, the directive defined the term to mean high-volume collection “without the use of discriminants.” That is perhaps the central feature of “the golden age of signals intelligence,” which the NSA celebrates in top-secret documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden. President Obama for the first time put his own imprimatur on a collection philosophy that one of those documents summarized this way: “Order one of everything from the menu.” “It’s noteworthy that the president addressed only the bulk collection of call records, but not any of the other bulk collection programs revealed by the media,” said Alexander Abdo, an attorney with the ACLU’s national security project. “That is a glaring omission. The president needs to embrace structural reforms that will protect us from all forms of bulk collection and that will make future overreach less likely.”
benton.org/node/172761 | Washington Post
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SOME OBAMA SPY CHANGES HAMPERED BY COMPLICATIONS
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Steven Braun]
Several of the key surveillance reforms unveiled by President Barack Obama face complications that could muddy the proposals' lawfulness, slow their momentum in Congress and saddle the government with heavy costs and bureaucracy, legal experts warn. Despite Obama's plans to shift the National Security Agency's mass storage of Americans' bulk phone records elsewhere, telephone companies do not want the responsibility. And the government could face privacy and structural hurdles in relying on any other entity to store the data. Constitutional analysts also question the legal underpinning of Obama's commitment to setting up an advisory panel of privacy experts to intervene in some proceedings of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the NSA's data mining operations. President Obama has asked Congress to set up such a panel, but senior federal judges already oppose the move, citing practical and legal drawbacks.
benton.org/node/172758 | Associated Press
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A NEW DAY AT THE NSA
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Doyle McManus]
[Commentary] Individually, the concrete steps President Barack Obama announced toward reforming the National Security Agency's surveillance programs were modest. Taken together, though, they signal the end of an era of unfettered escalation in US intelligence-gathering. The President didn't cancel any existing surveillance programs; indeed, he reaffirmed the government's argument that telephone metadata should still be collected -- though with new safeguards. To many civil liberties advocates, his cautious moves were disappointing. But while Obama's practical steps were small, the conceptual steps were large. Instead of accepting the doctrine that a global war against terrorists justifies almost any expansion of information-gathering, he said the entire U.S. intelligence enterprise should be subject to more public scrutiny and more stringent cost-benefit tests.
benton.org/node/172748 | Los Angeles Times
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PHONE COMPANIES WORRY THEY'LL BE REQUIRED TO STORE CUSTOMER DATA FOR NSA
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Privacy advocates are cautiously optimistic about a number of reforms that President Barack Obama promised to make to the National Security Agency. But President Obama punted on one critical issue that has privacy groups and the telecommunications industry worried: Will the government require phone companies to maintain vast databases of phone records? The most controversial revelation from the leaks by Edward Snowden is that the NSA collects records on virtually all US phone calls. The records include phone numbers, call times and call durations -- but not the contents of any conversations. The telecommunications companies themselves have no interest in new regulatory requirements for data retention. Storing the vast amounts of data would be expensive and could open the companies up to new lawsuits. CTIA, a lobbying group representing the cellphone carriers, issued a statement emphasizing that the government can balance security and privacy "without the imposition of data retention mandates that obligate carriers to keep customer information any longer than necessary for legitimate business purposes." Verizon, AT&T and other telecommunications companies are some of the most powerful lobbying forces in Washington and would likely fight any proposal for data retention.
benton.org/node/172793 | National Journal
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PRIVACY/SECURITY

WHITE HAT HACKER SAYS HE FOUND 70,000 RECORDS THROUGH A GOOGLE SEARCH
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Adrianne Jeffries]
The federal health insurance marketplace at Healthcare.gov still has major security issues according to some experts, including a flaw that allows user records to show up in Google results. At least 70,000 records with personal identifying information including first and last names, addresses, and user names are accessible by using an advanced Google search and then tweaking the resulting URLs, according to David Kennedy, founder of the security firm TrustedSec. Kennedy notes that he never modified any URLs, just that he noticed that it was possible. It's just one of several issues he's identified with the site, and it's actually one of the easier ones to fix: Kennedy estimates it would take just a few days to hide the records.
benton.org/node/172803 | Verge, The | TrustedSec
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HACKING HEALTH WEBSITE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
So far as we know, HealthCare.gov still has not been hacked by a malicious actor -- despite the fact that security researcher David Kennedy still considers the Web site vulnerable. "We never accessed 70,000 records nor is it directly on the Healthcare.gov website," wrote Kennedy. "No dumping of data, malicious intent, hacking, or even viewing of the information was done." In short, Kennedy explained that he used basic Google tools to search the Web site, but he didn't hack it. Some media reports, however, latched onto this line in an earlier statement: "The 70,000 mark of information disclosure being reported was through using a basic Google search terms and browsing through a web browser" and assumed Kennedy had been able to access 70,000 records. That was not the case, Kennedy said, but he did not elaborate much on the 70,000 figure: "The number 70,000 was a number that was tested for as an example through utilizing Google’s advanced search functionality as well as normally browsing the website," he wrote.
benton.org/node/172831 | Washington Post
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BROADBAND/TELECOMMUNICATIONS

DON’T TOUCH MY INTERNET (UNLESS YOU WANT A RIOT)
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Dominic Basulto]
[Commentary] Increasingly, it appears that Americans are taking the Internet for granted, and that’s a problem. It’s only January, and we’ve already had a federal appeals court strike down the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules and President Barack Obama placed into the awkward position of having to explain the nation’s rampant National Security Agency spying on both American citizens and overseas allies. Both of these are significant events that could impact the future of the Internet, but what has been the outcome so far? Sure, there’s been a bit of moral outrage over allegations of NSA abuses, a few op-ed pieces, but mostly a lot of confusion about what things like net neutrality actually mean, and why we should even care. Contrast what’s happening in America with the scene of hundreds of rioting protesters in Turkey, who are literally taking to the streets in Istanbul and Ankara to protest what they perceive as the government’s heavy-handed role in censoring the Internet.
[Basulto works for Bond Strategy; he was the editor of Fortune’s Business Innovation Insider]
benton.org/node/172779 | Washington Post
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS

SPECTRUM AUCTION BEGINS TODAY
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Thomas Gryta, Gautham Nagesh]
The Federal Communications Commission will hold its first major auction of wireless airwaves in six years on Jan 22, kicking off tens of billions of dollars of spending by big US carriers. The FCC seeks to get at least $1.6 billion when it auctions off a slice of spectrum called the H block, which includes two high-frequency bands. Dish is the only major company signed up to take part and is largely expected to win the largest share of the licenses after the carriers declined to participate. AT&T and Verizon Wireless control the vast majority of low-band spectrum. Sprint and T-Mobile are eager to get more. Without it, the two smaller national carriers say they can't hope to compete with the top pair.
benton.org/node/172835 | Wall Street Journal
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VIDEO/AUDIO

NEARLY 300 TV STATIONS SOLD IN 2013
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: ]
Television station transactions exploded in 2013 because the healthy TV environment in 2012 bolstered investor confidence, according to BIA/Kelsey's MEDIA Access Pro, a data service and analytical software that tracks the local television industry. Nearly 300 TV stations were sold in 2013. That number of transactions is up 205 percent from 2012. Likewise, the total sale valuation for television stations were up -- a 367 percent increase in 2013 from 2012 for over $8 billion.
benton.org/node/172796 | TVNewsCheck
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WHY VERIZON IS BUYING INTEL MEDIA: IT’S ALL ABOUT TAKING ON COMCAST
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Janko Roettgers]
[Commentary] Verizon’s purchase of the Intel Media assets is a fascinating story of a company that was ready to give up on TV -- until it abruptly changed course to turn on one of its former partners and take on one of the biggest players in the industry. The big question now is: How will Verizon use Intel media’s assets? Verizon and Intel said that “the transaction will accelerate the availability of next-generation video services, both integrated with Verizon FiOS fiber-optic networks and delivered “over the top” to any device.” With Intel Media’s OnCue service, Verizon is getting a chance to truly compete with Comcast, if only from a technical perspective. The company could simply transition FiOS TV to a true IP-based platform with an innovative catch-up service that would allow its subscribers to watch anything they have missed in the last three days. Even if that was all that Verizon wanted to do with OnCue, it would still be a good investment. However, pretty much everyone expects Verizon to do more with Intel Media’s assets. An Internet-delivered pay TV service would give the company a chance to finally break free from the chains of its FiOS footprint and market its TV service everywhere. And with Verizon Wireless now even more closely aligned with the rest of its business, it could easily bundle TV with mobile to create its own double- and triple-play offerings. It also could turn cable companies like Comcast into a dumb pipe and offer a competing TV service over their infrastructure.
benton.org/node/172771 | GigaOm
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OWNERSHIP

TECH COMPANY CASH
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Richard Waters]
A growing number of big US technology companies are heeding the call from Wall Street to hand more of their excess cash back to shareholders. But that does not look likely to stop a huge build-up of liquid reserves that has already left the sector with a cash mountain of historic proportions. By the middle of last year, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few tech winners had left just six companies -- Apple, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Oracle and Qualcomm -- with more than a quarter of the $1.5 trillion held by US non-financial corporations, according to rating agency Moody’s. With nearly $150 billion in its coffers, Apple alone was sitting on close to 10 per cent of corporate America’s cash. Behind this build-up lies a boom in profits in an industry that often displays winner-takes-all characteristics and where capital needs are usually low. Apple’s spending on plant, equipment and acquisitions has used up just 10-15 percent of its operating cash flow in recent years. Even Google, at the peak of a spending surge three years ago that unnerved Wall Street, was investing little more than a third of its cash flow on building out its network. Alongside the strong cash generation has been a habit of hoarding, caused partly by an innate conservatism in a sector where fortunes can reverse quickly.
benton.org/node/172837 | Financial Times | Financial Times
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GOOGLE SHUTTLE BUS FEES
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Michael Cabanatuan, Kurtis Alexander]
San Francisco's transportation agency imposed fees and restrictions on Google buses and other corporate commuter shuttles, but the move is unlikely to stop the protests or quell the animosity fueled by the sleek private buses. The Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors voted 5-0 with one member absent to charge the corporate shuttles a fee of $1 per day per stop, prevent them from using some of the busiest Muni bus stops and require them to yield to public transit vehicles. The vote came after a hearing that lasted more than three hours, with dozens of people lining up to speak. More than 100 people filled a City Hall meeting room and a spillover room where the hearing was broadcast. The directors approved the 18-month test, which will begin in July, while acknowledging it won't satisfy many of those who blame the buses for boosting housing prices or changing the culture of San Francisco.
benton.org/node/172823 | San Francisco Chronicle | NY Times | AP
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CABLE COMPANIES SUE APPLE-BACKED PATENT COALITION
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Julian Hattem]
A handful of cable companies are suing a coalition of tech firms that controls the rights to more than 4,000 patents. In a document filed with the US District Court for Delaware, Charter Communications, Suddenlink and other cable firms said that lawsuits and threats from the Rockstar coalition over patent rights it owns “have cast a cloud of uncertainty” over their operations. The cable companies’ complaints echo those of Google, which has accused Rockstar of an aggressive campaign to push its products out of the market. Apple, Microsoft and Research in Motion are part of the Rockstar coalition.
benton.org/node/172801 | Hill, The
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CONTENT

YALE BLUE BOOK
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Ariel Kaminer]
Yale shut down a website that offered a better, more user-friendly version of the university’s online course catalog, helping to turn a local campus issue into something of a civil rights cause. Now, after a few days of controversy, a similar tool is up and running, and it appears to be Yale that has gotten a schooling. University administrators said they were concerned that the site was available to people who were not Yale students, that it gave undue prominence to numerical ratings without including descriptive evaluations that went with them, and that it infringed on Yale trademarks. Designers Peter Xu and Harry Yu, twin brothers at the university, offered to make those fixes, but instead got notice to shut down the site. To Mr. Xu and Mr. Yu, that seemed like a violation of free speech -- a right held dear by both academics and Internet activists, many of whom rallied to the brothers’ cause as The Yale Daily News, The Washington Post and other news organizations reported on the shutdown. Brad Rosen, a lecturer in Yale’s computer science department who teaches “Law, Technology and Culture,” said the debate got at a central tension of contemporary life. “Different stakeholders have different assumptions about how information is going to flow,” he said.
benton.org/node/172815 | New York Times
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
   Chinese Internet Traffic Redirected to Small Wyoming House

CHINESE TRAFFIC REDIRECTED
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nicole Perlroth]
In one of the more bizarre twists in recent Internet memory, a large portion of Internet traffic in China was redirected to a small, 1,700-square-foot house in Cheyenne (WY) on Jan 21. A large portion of China’s 500 million Internet users were unable to load Web sites ending in .com, .net or .org for nearly eight hours in most regions of China. The China Internet Network Information Center, a state-run agency that deals with Internet affairs, said it had traced the problem to the country’s domain name system. And one of China’s biggest antivirus software vendors, Qihoo 360 Technology, said the problems affected roughly three quarters of the country’s domain name system servers. Those servers, which act as a switchboard for Internet traffic behind China’s Great Firewall, routed traffic from some of China’s most popular sites, including Baidu and Sina, to a block of Internet addresses registered to Sophidea Inc., a mysterious company housed on a residential street in Cheyenne.
benton.org/node/172813 | New York Times
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