1. Monthly archive
  2. January 2014

January 2014

Facebook faces suit over data allegations

Facebook is facing a class-action lawsuit over claims the social network monitors users’ private messages to sell the data to advertisers.

The plaintiffs allege Facebook systematically intercepts private messages to obtain data it shares with marketers, giving the company an advantage over other data aggregators. The suit cites independent research that it claims has found that when a user shares a link to another website in a private message, it is recorded to contribute to a profile of the sender’s web activity. It also said the guidance Facebook gives to web developers states that a link in a private message can contribute to the number of “likes” that a page -- which can represent, for example, a company or a band -- receives. The class action has been brought by Facebook users Matthew Campbell from Arkansas and Michael Hurley from Oregon, on behalf of all Facebook users in the US who have sent links via private messages. It said the number is likely to be in the millions as there are more than 166m Facebook account holders in the country. “Representing to users that the content of Facebook messages is “private” creates an especially profitable opportunity for Facebook, because users who believe they are communicating on a service free from surveillance are likely to reveal facts about themselves that they would not reveal had they known the content was being monitored,” said the suit, filed this week with the US district court for Northern California. Facebook said: “We believe the allegations are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”

[Jan 2]

Lessons from the AT&T breakup, 30 years later

Thirty years ago, on the first day of 1984, the old US telephone system broke apart. Based on Judge Harold Green’s Modified Final Judgment of 1982, AT&T on January 1, 1984 became a long-distance company, while seven regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) took control of the nation’s local phone networks. Although the breakup of the telephone monopoly was a big event, in retrospect, three parallel developments in communications loom larger. The Internet, mobile, and cable all disrupted and drove the communications world more than Washington policy. The AT&T breakup probably helped upstart fiber-optic long-distance firms Sprint and MCI, who did not own local lines and had to compete with the integrated AT&T network. Severing AT&T’s local networks put all three on the same footing. One year before the AT&T breakup, on January 1, 1983, Arpanet, the Internet’s precursor, had adopted TCP/IP as its operating protocol. In October 1983, just months before the AT&T split, Ameritech launched its cellular wireless network and introduced the Motorola DynaTAC phone, selling for $3,995. Just 12,000 subscribers signed up the first year. With nationwide sign-ups under 100,000, few discerned the impact mobile phones (save mobile devices writ large) would have on the economy, or on telecommunications policy.

[Jan 3]

It’s Time to Take Mesh Networks Seriously

[Commentary] Compared to the “normal” Internet -- which is based on a few centralized access points or Internet service providers (ISPs) -- mesh networks have many benefits, from architectural to political.

Yet they haven’t really taken off, even though they have been around for some time. I believe it’s time to reconsider their potential, and make mesh networking a reality. Not just because of its obvious benefits, but also because it provides an Internet-native model for building community and governance. Compared to more centralized network architectures, the only way to shut down a mesh network is to shut down every single node in the network. That’s the vital feature, and what makes it stronger in some ways than the regular Internet. For these concerned about the erosion of online privacy and anonymity, mesh networking represents a way to preserve the confidentiality of online communications. Given the lack of a central regulating authority, it’s extremely difficult for anyone to assess the real identity of users connected to these networks. And because mesh networks are generally invisible to the Internet, the only way to monitor mesh traffic is to be locally and directly connected to them. Yet beyond the benefits of costs and elasticity, little attention has been given to the real power of mesh networking: the social impact it could have on the way communities form and operate. What’s really revolutionary about mesh networking isn’t the novel use of technology. It’s the fact that it provides a means for people to self-organize into communities and share resources amongst themselves: Mesh networks are operated by the community, for the community. Especially because the Internet has become essential to our everyday life.

[Primavera De Filippi is currently a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School]

[Jan 2]

Reckless Reforms

[Commentary] The President's review panel on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, established to evaluate government surveillance activities, joined a growing chorus of critics of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Obama Administration's aggressive approach to intelligence. Yet the group's report is seriously flawed. It reflects a misunderstanding of the function of foreign intelligence activities and offers some recommendations that are likely to harm these activities, while also doing little to nothing to protect individual rights. Already, the report has prompted criticism from those who see it as threatening the capabilities of the intelligence community.

[Jan 2]

Fox to Live-Stream Super Bowl Online for Free, But NFC Playoff Games Will Be Locked Behind Pay-TV Wall

Fox Sports will live-stream Super Bowl XLVIII on Feb 2 -- the third year in a row the NFL’s championship game will be webcast for free to US Internet users. However, Fox’s NFC postseason games on the Internet will be restricted only to subscribers of a handful of pay-TV partners, with the three largest being Comcast, AT&T U-verse and Cablevision Systems, according to sources familiar with the broadcaster’s plans.

Fox’s Super Bowl coverage is slated to begin at 6:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, Feb 2, live from MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford (NJ). The stream of the Super Bowl will be available at foxsportsgo.com and on the FoxSportsGo mobile app for iOS devices. The Super Bowl webcast will include the halftime show featuring Bruno Mars. Fox is making the NFC playoff games available only in a “TV Everywhere” model as part of its broader strategy to ensure it can continue to collect retrans fees from cable and satellite distributors -- who have bridled at broadcasters making their content freely available online.

[Jan 2]

AT&T wants T-Mobile customers to switch. And it’s offering them hundreds to do it.

AT&T is dangling a tempting deal in front of consumers in what looks like a preemptive strike against upstart rival T-Mobile. The company has announced that it's giving current T-Mobile subscribers a credit of up to $450 per line for switching to AT&T and trading in their old smartphone -- a $250 base credit, plus $200 per line. That's $100 more than T-Mobile is reportedly going to offer switchers to its own network. AT&T's announcement beats T-Mobile on timing: Experts expect T-Mobile’s plan to be unveiled next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This gives AT&T a few days' head start on outmaneuvering T-Mobile, the company it so recently sought to buy. The renewed competition ultimately serves the rest of us. T-Mobile floated a new idea -- paying for your early termination fees -- and AT&T responded. This is how business is supposed to work.

[Jan 3]

Human Behavior Trove Lures Economists to U.S. Tech Titans

Wooing this year’s best graduate students in economics will be familiar faces from Harvard, Princeton and other US universities seeking assistant professors -- and EBay’s not yet three-year-old economic research team.

The American Economic Association’s annual meeting kicks off and EBay won’t be the only technology company aiming to tap more brainpower at what doubles as the discipline’s premier job fair. In the past few years, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have amassed teams of in-house economists to make sense of the oceans of data they’re collecting. The trend has also been a boon for researchers handed some of the world’s richest and largely unexamined treasure troves of human behavior. “It used to be that if you got a Ph.D. in economics, you went to government, you went to academics, you went to a consulting firm, or you went to Wall Street,” said Greg Rosston, deputy director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy. “Now there’s another option.”

[Jan 2]

Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower

[Commentary] When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government. That’s why Rick Ledgett, who leads the National Security Agency’s task force on the Snowden leaks, recently told CBS News that he would consider amnesty if Snowden would stop any additional leaks. And it’s why President Barack Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home.

(Jan 1)

New Web suffixes set to enter market

After eight years of debate, numerous delays and countless quarrels, an effort to expand the Web’s address system beyond the familiar .com and .net to more than 1,000 new endings is reaching its conclusion. By the end of January, companies can start selling website names on the first batch of approved new suffixes.

Proponents and critics of the program agree it’s now at a sink-or-swim moment. Its success depends in large part on whether the domain-name industry -- the companies managing many of the new endings -- can persuade businesses and consumers to use them. The rollout also represents a key test for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit group overseeing the expansion. ICANN said the program would spark a new wave of online innovation, approving it over the objections of advertisers who warned it would be costly for businesses and confusing for Web users.

(Dec 30)

Egyptian Puppet Called Terrorist Mouthpiece

Egypt’s crackdown on support for the Muslim Brotherhood turned surreal as prosecutors agreed to investigate the allegation that a puppet that babbles nonsensically in an advertisement for a multinational phone company was in fact sending coded instructions to Islamist terrorists.

Prosecutors said that officials from Vodafone Egypt, the local branch of a phone company based in Britain, were summoned to respond to a complaint about the ad filed by a counterrevolutionary video-blogger and singer who calls himself Ahmed Spider. In an appearance on Egyptian television, the little-known blogger spent nearly an hour dissecting what he called the secret codes embedded in the ad, in which a puppet widow named Abla Fahita tries to reactivate the phone line used by her late husband.

(Jan 2)

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