June 2014

At last, a victory for privacy

[Commentary] Finally, a victory for personal privacy.

In an era of increasing government intrusion into the lives of the governed, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously -- that's right, unanimously -- that police cannot just go bounding through suspects' personal cell phones without first obtaining a search warrant. The court acknowledged what should be obvious, that Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure apply to cell phones. One of the key principles of the legal system is that police cannot search citizens without cause. The Supreme Court properly recognized that it's as unreasonable to examine a suspect's smartphone without a warrant as it would be to search through a suspect's home or office.

In Prisons, Sky-High Phone Rates

Inside the Clallam Bay Corrections Center, a state prison, one private company, JPay, has a grip on Internet and financial services. Another, Global Tel-Link, controls the phones. These companies are part of a new breed of businesses flourishing inside American jails and prisons.

Many of these players are being bankrolled by one of the most powerful forces in American finance: private equity. Private investment firms have invested many billions of dollars in the prison industry, betting -- correctly -- that it is a growth business. Wall Street previously championed companies like Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest private corrections company. But unlike companies that have thrived by running prisons, the likes of Global Tel-Link and JPay are becoming de facto banks, phone companies and Internet service providers for inmates and their families across the nation. It is a lucrative proposition, in part because these companies often operate beyond the reach of regulations that protect ordinary consumers. Inmates say they are being gouged by high costs and hidden fees. Friends and families say they have little choice but to shoulder the financial burden. But private enterprises are not the only ones profiting. Eager to reduce costs and bolster dwindling budgets, states, counties and cities are seeking a substantial cut in return for letting the businesses into prisons.

FCC and GSA Team Up to Help Schools and Libraries Save Money on Wi-Fi

In support of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s two overarching goals for the E-rate modernization proceeding -- ensuring all schools and libraries have access to high speed broadband and maximizing the cost-effectiveness of E-rate supported purchases -- the FCC and the General Services Administration (GSA) have entered into an agreement to partner to deliver to schools and libraries the opportunity to consolidate their purchasing power and save significant money on wireless access points, routers, and the other equipment they need to deploy modern, robust Wi-Fi networks.

We expect this opportunity to be available for E-rate applicants in Funding Year 2015. Specifically, the two agencies agreed to work together to establish blanket purchase agreements (BPAs) administered by GSA's National Information Technology Commodity Program (NITCP) for the benefit of E-rate eligible schools and libraries. Once implemented, the BPAs would allow schools and libraries to utilize the GSA's reverse auction platform to seek bids from equipment vendors at prices even better than those already available under the relevant GSA schedule. Given that data in our record indicates that equipment makes up as much as 80 percent of the total cost of internal network deployment, this would provide a real opportunity for all schools and libraries to save potentially significant amounts as they upgrade their internal connections, and allow our limited E-rate dollars to go further.

Lack of diversity could undercut Silicon Valley

The technology industry's predominantly white and Asian male workforce is in danger of losing touch with the diverse nation -- and world -- that forms its customer base.

Recently released numbers from some of the largest and most powerful companies confirm what many had suspected: Opportunity here is not created equal. Blacks and Hispanics are largely absent, and women are underrepresented in Silicon Valley -- from giant companies to start-ups to venture capital firms. The industry that bills itself as a meritocracy actually looks more like a "mirrortocracy," says longtime high-tech entrepreneur Mitch Kapor, co-chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact. Even as companies scramble to find workers in the most competitive hiring market in recent memory, most are continuing to bring aboard people who look like they do. And that, Kapor says, could undercut Silicon Valley, which needs the best people and ideas to create the next Facebook or Google.

Aereo could have saved the airwaves from the broadcasters’ ransom

[Commentary] The Aereo case came down, at its heart, to whether the US’s top court would go with the spirit of the law, or its letter.

The strict constructionists on the court, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented: Aereo had found a cunning loophole in the law. The majority, however, insisted that the law in question -- the Copyright Act of 1976 -- be “read in light of its purpose”. The Act created a whole new revenue stream for broadcast television networks. No longer did they need to survive on ad revenue alone; now, they could also charge the cable networks for access to their channels. Aereo was a threat to that model. From the consumer’s point of view, it was a company that looked very much as though it was rebroadcasting a huge range of free-to-air TV stations – only instead of the stations arriving through a cable pipe, they arrived on your computer, or your phone, over the internet.

Once again, the broadcasters wanted the ability to charge for such rebroadcasting activity. But the world of 2014 is different to the world of 1976 in two ways:

When the people who own the broadcast channels make most of their money from cable TV, they are not going to push the free-to-air option. In fact, the cable companies spend a lot of time and effort preventing broadcast networks from making their content available for free.
Spectrum used by the broadcast networks has become enormously valuable. In a free market, there would be almost no broadcast TV at all: it is an incredible waste of spectrum, which can be put to much more effective use, for example by mobile phone networks.

[Salmon is a senior editor at Fusion]

Facebook Bid to Shield Data From the Law Fails, So Far

Facebook and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are in a bitter fight over the government’s demand for the contents of hundreds of Facebook accounts.

Facebook argues that Manhattan prosecutors violated the constitutional right of its users to be free of unreasonable searches by demanding nearly complete account data on 381 people, ranging from pages they had liked to photos and private messages. When the social networking company fought the data demands, a New York judge ruled that Facebook had no standing to contest the search warrants since it was simply an online repository of data, not a target of the criminal investigation. To protect the secrecy of the investigation, the judge also barred the company from informing the affected users, a decision that prevented the individuals from fighting the data requests themselves. The case, which is now on appeal, pits the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches by the government against the needs of prosecutors to seek evidence from the digital sources where people increasingly store their most sensitive data.

T-Mobile no longer counts speed tests against your monthly data cap

Testing the download and upload speeds of your smartphone with apps like Speedtest will no longer count against your monthly data allowance on T-Mobile.

The carrier says similar apps intended to help customers gauge network performance have also been "whitelisted" and will add nothing to their data usage totals. In the past, T-Mobile has relied on user-initiated tests from Speedtest to back claims that it offers the fastest 4G LTE data service in the United States. Power users may appreciate the new policy, but net neutrality advocates are sure to hate it. Yet again, T-Mobile is giving special treatment to certain data traveling over its network. "So you actually think somebody would have a net neutrality issue with you giving it to them for free?" asked T-Mobile CEO John Legere. "I don't foresee the Uncarrier's issues and what we're doing with the industry being other than something that the proponents of net neutrality would really be supportive of."

New sensors will scoop up 'big data' on Chicago

The curled metal fixtures set to go up on a handful of Michigan Avenue light poles later this summer may look like delicate pieces of sculpture, but researchers say they'll provide a big step forward in the way Chicago understands itself by observing the city's people and surroundings.

The smooth, perforated sheaths of metal are decorative, but their job is to protect and conceal a system of data-collection sensors that will measure air quality, light intensity, sound volume, heat, precipitation and wind. The sensors will also count people by measuring wireless signals on mobile devices. Some experts caution that efforts like the one launching here to collect data from people and their surroundings pose concerns of a Big Brother intrusion into personal privacy.

Google Glass app about to change sports fan experience

Although Google's head-worn computing platform, known as Glass, didn't get much time onstage at the company's developer conference, behind the scenes some of the first Google-approved software coders are working on futuristic applications for the platform.

One of the coolest is from CrowdOptic of San Francisco, which has developed software that integrates video data streams from multiple Glass wearers inside an arena and can beam the most popular view wirelessly to an overhead screen. Just as Google's famous algorithm ranks Web pages in part by how many users have already linked to a page, CrowdOptic can choose the point-of-view of the majority of Google glass wearers on a shared network.

UK watchdog raises privacy concerns over Google Glass

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has waded into a growing debate about how people use Google’s smart glasses, which can be used to capture videos and take pictures without the knowledge of those in range.

The arguments range from simple personal intrusion -- with offenders now coming to be called “glassholes” in the US -- to more serious concerns about how people can be spied on or identified for commercial reasons. The ICO said that the wearers of the glasses and other wearable technology will come under the same rules as CCTV, which means that they could breach the Data Protection Act in some circumstances. The main issue raised so far has been whether people have been given adequate notice that they might be filmed.

Benton

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