June 2014

Cloud companies have to act on privacy, even if the government won’t

Most of the laws governing data privacy and security in the US are nearly 30 years old, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said -- but with gridlock in Congress, that may not get better any time soon.

Private companies have to step up and make sure that customers’ data is secure, Smith said.

“We’re living in a time when Congress doesn’t get much done,” he said, but acknowledged that data privacy issues are also uniquely complex, making it more difficult for lawmakers to act on them. “It’s technically complex, it’s legally complex” and it involves two equally important values -- privacy and public safety.

The Gigaom interview: T-Mobile’s John Legere on the myth of mobile data scarcity

It’s fair to say that since John Legere became CEO of T-Mobile US nearly two years ago, the US mobile industry has changed a lot. Not only has T-Mobile triggered some big shifts in how mobile devices and service plans are sold, Legere has also injected a lot of excitement into a normally staid mobile market.

As to whether T-Mobile questions the notion that mobile data capacity is a rare commodity that has to be metered and meted out sparingly, Legere said: “I do believe there have been artificial barriers and scarcity put up by the duopolists.”

Part of the reason is pure capitalism, he thinks. AT&T and Verizon want to maximize the return on their investments, so they charge as much as they can for data. By preserving the illusion that data is a limited resource, they can justify such high rates. Consequently, when T-Mobile offers lower rates for data, people assume that T-Mobile is vastly underpricing that resource.

Legere and his CTO Neville Ray believe that their competitors are also using the notion of scarcity as a crutch when they should actually be investing more in their networks. While T-Mobile does offer cheaper individual smartphone data plans than its competitors, Legere pointed out that T-Mobile hasn’t embarked on a quest to commoditize data or to start a price war in the US mobile market.

DARPA: Without better security, the Internet of things will be messy

The burgeoning Internet of Things is a great idea but it won’t really take off without some serious breakthroughs in security, said Dan Kaufman, director of the Information Innovation Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Kaufman pointed out that the PC industry was unusual in that customers pay thousands of dollars for products that are broken from the start -- you buy a new machine and the first thing you have to do is patch it -- and this model won’t fly when you’re dealing with smart homes and so on.

“If we don’t have a fundamentally new security model, then I don’t know how we’re going to enjoy the Internet of Things,” Kaufman said. “Patch Tuesday for your car or your insulin pump doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

That said, DARPA is working on it. Kaufman noted that the defense research agency is trying to build an unhackable operating system, and it’s starting with the real-time operating systems that power embedded systems, such as those that will underpin the Internet of Things.

'Kill Switch' coming to Google, Microsoft phones

Google and Microsoft will include a so-called kill switch in the next version of their smartphone operating systems, authorities announced. The technology allows for a stolen Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone-powered Nokia device to be disabled, making it useless to the thief.

With Google and Microsoft on board, kill switches will be available for 97% of the smartphone market, said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who made the announcement.

Americans' Confidence in News Media Remains Low

Americans' faith in each of three major news media platforms -- television news, newspapers, and news on the Internet -- is at or tied with record lows in Gallup's long-standing confidence in institutions trend.

This continues a decades-long decline in the share of Americans saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers or TV news, while trust in Internet news remains low since the one prior measure in 1999.

These results are from a Gallup poll conducted June 5-8.The three major sources of news ranked in the bottom third of 17 different US institutions measured in the poll.

Confidence in newspapers has declined by more than half since its 1979 peak of 51%, while TV news has seen confidence ebb from its high of 46% in 1993, the first year that Gallup asked this question. Gallup's only previous measure of Internet news was in 1999, when confidence was 21%, little different from today.

The field of news media has changed dramatically since Gallup first began measuring the confidence the public held in newspapers or TV news decades ago. Amid this rapid change, Americans hold all news media platforms in low confidence. How these platforms can restore confidence with the American public is not clear, especially as editorial standards change and most outlets lack the broad reach once available to major newspapers and broadcasters.

FCC Plans $34.9 Million Fine Against Chinese Online Retailer Of Signal Jamming Devices

The Federal Communications Commission plans to issue the largest fine in its history against CTS Technology, Limited, a Chinese electronics manufacturer and online retailer, for allegedly marketing 285 models of signal jamming devices to US consumers for more than two years.

The FCC applied the maximum fine allowed to each jammer model allegedly marketed by CTS, resulting in a planned fine of $34,912,500. “All companies, whether domestic or foreign, are banned from marketing illegal jammers in the US,” said Travis LeBlanc, Acting Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. “Signal jammers present a direct danger to public safety, potentially blocking the communications of first responders.

Operating a jammer is also illegal, and consumers who do so face significant civil and criminal penalties.” CTS operates a website that markets consumer electronics to individuals in the United States, where it allegedly misled US consumers by falsely claiming that certain signal jammers were approved by the FCC.

In addition to the planned $34,912,500 fine, the Commission is ordering CTS to cease marketing illegal signal jammers to US consumers and provide information to the FCC about any persons and entities in the United Sates that purchased its devices.

Internet Traffic Exchange: Time to Look under the Hood

It has become clear from consumer complaints to the Federal Communications Commission -- and even in some comments consumers have filed for the Open Internet Notice of Public Rulemaking -- that consumers are frustrated by recent trouble with their Internet experience for certain services and content providers.

The recent disputes between Netflix, Cogent and Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast and Verizon are an example of this issue. We need to get to the bottom of this.

The release of the Measuring Broadband America report provides even more evidence that there are problems here worth examining. This annual report measures broadband speeds in a sampling of subscribers to 14 ISPs across the country serving over 80 percent of broadband consumers.

The data in this report confirms that we need more information, and we’re taking a number of additional steps, including:

Releasing the full raw data set to the public so others can analyze our findings.
Taking steps to better understand the issues; including taking a deeper look into causes of congestion and by analyzing network impact on video service providers such as YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix and others.
Working to develop tools that measure and validate how these types of congestion issues affect the consumer experience. We expect to have instituted additional testing methodologies providing more information on network congestion and peering by winter 2014.

[Knapp is Chief and Johnston is Chief of the Electromagnetic Compatibility Division at FCC’s Office of Engineering & Technology]

Slow Netflix? It’s not always your ISP’s fault

[Commentary] In the last week of May, a large number of New Zealand customers started experiencing difficulties accessing Netflix. In the context of the current net neutrality debates in the US, it was inevitable that some immediately jumped to the (erroneous) conclusion that their Internet service providers (ISPs) were deliberately slowing down or blocking Netflix traffic for some strategic reason.

However, a little local journalistic sleuthing elicited only denials from local ISPs that they were ‘shaping’ Netflix traffic. Furthermore, the problem appeared to be affecting customers of a number of ISPs. A day later, all became clear: Netflix itself was primarily responsible for the interruptions to its New Zealand customers, but it wasn’t intentional.

The New Zealand ISPs were also contributing to the problem, but this too was accidental. It turns out that Netflix had made some technical changes to its content distribution that had caught the ISPs ‘on the hop’. The change meant that the ISPs were no longer detecting and caching the popular content, so everyone had to endure the long wait as every copy requested was streamed live from the US.

[Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation and a faculty member of Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand]

Undermining transparency at the FCC

[Commentary] It can take weeks, and sometimes months, for the Federal Communications Commission to release an order they voted on. Unfortunately, this process is standard operating procedure at the FCC.

The key question is whether the absence of a public text of what the commissioners voted on plus editorial privileges allows for substantive changes in the order or simply fixing typos. Small changes can tilt rules to favor or disadvantage different groups enough to be valuable to someone but not enough to cause an uproar. Such changes should not be possible to make in the shadows.

One simple change to the FCC's rule-making process would address the problem: For final orders, publish the text on which the commissioners will vote before the vote begins. The commission could still grant editorial privileges, but it would then be possible to see what has changed between the vote and the final, published rule.

[Wallsten is vice president for research and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute]

Bulk Collection Foes Pan USA Freedom Act

More than three dozen groups opposing bulk data collection have told the Senate it needs to strengthen the USA Freedom Act that passed the House in May.

They argue that the House compromise version of the bill to end bulk collection of data by the National Security Agency and other government agencies was too "watered down" and could still allow for far too much collection of data.

Those groups, who definitely support ending bulk collection, were unable to support the compromise bill.

In a letter to Senate leaders, the groups, which included New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI), Free Press and the ACLU, said that the Senate version needs to be improved, first and foremost by effectively banning bulk collection. They argue that it could still allow for what amounts to data dragnets.

"The bill’s overbroad and open-ended definition of 'specific selection term' could abusively be read to authorize collection of the records of thousands or millions of innocent Americans," they argue. "For example, it could conceivably allow the use of a selection term as broad as a zip code, all of the gmail.com Internet domain, or all of Verizon’s premises." Unless the definition is narrowed, they say, they can't support the bill.

Benton

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