June 2014

Why Hackers Should Care About Accessibility

Most people think of "accessibility" as those little-used options on their computer for disabled users. But not only does accessible design make a piece of technology useful to all, but it also increases the product’s user base and also makes it easier to use for people across age brackets and cultural boundaries.

“This is something that’s very relevant, and it’s not a luxury anymore,” explained Faith Haeussler, county coordinator of Philadelphia Link, a collaborative that helps the disability community become more independent. “There’s a shortage of caregivers, I think technology has to come in and take over some of the responsibility. I really believe that technology is going to help keep people with disabilities in their homes.”

Instead of the traditional model of telling people with disabilities what they need, individuals with disabilities were seen as knowledge experts, sitting side-by-side with hackers and developing design decisions at the conception of each project.

“As a quadriplegic, I know that I could not do the work that I do without technology,” said German Parodi, a grassroots disability activist and student. “Collaborating from the bottom up, we’re respecting each other and trying to build a future collectively.”

More stations producing local news

The RTDNA/Hofstra University Survey was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2013 among all 1,659 operating, non-satellite television stations and a random sample of 3,263 radio stations.

The number of TV stations originating local news actually went up by two this year to 719 stations. However weakly, that reverses an eight-year trend of fewer newsrooms. Those 719 TV stations run news on those and another 307 stations; a record total of 1,026 stations running local news.

For the second year in a row, the average amount of news on local TV dropped slightly from the year before -- down 6 minutes after a 6 minute drop in 2013. But the latest RTDNA/Hofstra University Annual Survey found the median remained at 5 hours per weekday, and both average and median remained the same for both Saturday and Sunday.

Generally, the bigger the market and the bigger the news staff, the more news a station is likely to run. The median amount of local radio news fell by 10 minutes per weekday from 2013. The weekend remained the same, with the typical radio station running no local news on Saturday or Sunday.

In cases of two or more stations in a market, overwhelmingly, 85.6%, there is a centralized newsroom handling the news for all the stations. Overall in the survey, 75.3% of local radio groups reported that at least one station in the group runs local news.

In total, 70% of radio stations run local news -- 76.2% of AM stations and 67.1% of FM stations. The overall percentage is down 7.7 from 2013, with AM stations down 2.6 points and FM stations down 10.1.

Online publishers still aren’t usually liable for user-generated content

A federal appeals court judge has decided that a gossip site is not liable for content it invites users to submit, even if some of that content is illegal in some way, making it the latest decision that immunizes websites, including news sites, against liability for user-generated content.

The US Supreme Court has never addressed the issue, so there is no national standard for whether online sites and companies are liable for user submissions, though nominally protected under Section 230 of the federal communications decency act.

The court’s decision, which reversed a $338,000 judgment against thedirty.com, leaves in place, for now, immunity that websites enjoy when it comes to publishing third-party content -- like online comments on news sites -- as long as the website does not add any unlawful material to that content. (The same protection does not extend to letters to the editor in print publications, paper’s version of user-generated content.) Plaintiffs can sue the author of the comments, but not the operator of the website where the comments are posted unless the website materially changes a user’s content from lawful to unlawful.

Amazon unveils its smartphone. But who will buy it?

[Commentary] Forget point-and-shoot. This is point-and-shop. Amazon.com announced that it's officially getting into the smartphone market, releasing the Fire Phone -- a clear play to get more users for its $99 per year Amazon Prime membership.

The phone, which will be offered exclusively through AT&T, has a button on the side that will immediately recognize products that users scan, listen to or watch, and then send them directly to Amazon.com to buy it.

“Fire Phone puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand," Amazon chief executive Jeffrey Bezos said in a company press release.

But there's one big problem for Amazon: It's not a great time to get into the smartphone market right now, particularly in the United States where the interest in new smartphones is flat. Nearly everyone who might want a smartphone in this country probably has one, and once customers get into a certain smartphone maker's orbit, they tend to stay there.

There's a reason that Apple and Samsung command nearly 50 percent of the world's smartphone market between them -- and nearly all of the profits -- leaving all other companies to pick at the scraps. "It's a nasty business," said Carl Howe, an analyst for the Yankee Group. "At best they'll break even, and you need a lot of sales of other stuff at single-digit margins."

FCC Releases Fourth "Measuring Broadband America" Report

The Federal Communications Commission released the results of its ongoing nationwide performance study of residential broadband service in its fourth “Measuring Broadband America” report.

The report continues the Commission’s efforts towards bringing greater clarity and competition to the home broadband services marketplace. The 2014 report reveals that most broadband providers continue to improve service performance by delivering actual speeds that meet or exceed advertised speeds, but some providers showed significant room for improvement, particularly with respect to consistency of speeds. This report highlights five evolving trends:

Internet service providers (ISPs) continue to deliver the combined upload/download speeds they advertise, but a new metric in 2014 -- consistency of speeds -- shows there’s still work to be done.
Download speeds performance varies by service tier, with some ISPs delivering less than 80 percent of advertised speeds.
Fiber and Cable technologies continue to evolve to higher speed offerings, but DSL is beginning to lag behind.
Consumers continue to migrate to higher speed tier.
Upload speeds vary sharply.

Network congestion study:
The study uncovered network congestion at certain interconnection points during the report’s reporting period. Although that data is not included in the findings of the report, the FCC will make this data fully available with the report for the public to review and analyze. The FCC is also taking steps to better understand the issues that presented themselves, including by analyzing network impact on video service providers such as YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix and others and requesting more information from ISPs and video providers about peering issues. We are 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.

NCTA: FCC Report Shows ISPs Delivering On Speed Promises

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association said that the Federal Communications Commission's latest broadband speed test -- conducted in cooperation with major Internet service providers (ISPs)/NCTA members," helps to refute the unsubstantiated allegations that cable operators routinely under-deliver and are solely responsible for any deficiencies in the performance experienced by consumers."

E-mail privacy act has votes to pass House

According to legislators and others, a bill protecting e-mail privacy has enough votes to pass in the House if it is brought up for a vote. The Email Privacy Act has 218 co-sponsors, according to the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Microsoft, Google and eBay, as well as Dish, Aereo, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Reps Kevin Yoder (R-KS) and Jared Polis (D-CO) are lead sponsors on the bill, which would change the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to require a warrant before ISP's would have to disclose the contents of e-mail communications.

“This bill would finally offer email, social messaging and other cloud-stored data the same protection as files stored inside someone’s home," said CCIA president Ed Black. "If the government agency wants to obtain cloud-stored data, it would need to go before a judge and get a warrant for that search.” "With 218 representatives backing H.R. 1852, the bipartisan 'Email Privacy Act,' the House of Representatives should seize the opportunity to pass legislation that takes a meaningful step in addressing concerns that Americans have about law enforcement access to their data," said the Information Technology Industry Council.

Lawmakers aim to close the NSA's 'backdoor'

A bipartisan duo in the House is hoping to use a defense funding bill to keep the National Security Agency (NSA) from spying on the Internet. Reps Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) are introducing an amendment to the 2015 Defense Appropriations bill that would keep intelligence agencies from using funds to conduct warrantless and “backdoor” searches of US communications.

The amendment would cut off funding for efforts to build security vulnerabilities, or “backdoors,” into US tech products or services that can be used for surveillance, according to a memo from the lawmakers’ offices. The provision would also prevent agencies from searching communications to or from people in the US without a warrant, according to the memo.

While the authority for those searches is aimed at collecting foreign communications, information about US persons can be swept up if one party is based in the US or if the communication is processed or stored in another country. The defense bill will be considered on the House floor imminently.

Google Ready to Comply With ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ Rules in Europe

Your right to be forgotten on the Internet is almost here. Google will start to remove links to online content in Europe by the end of the month to comply with a recent landmark European court ruling intended to protect individuals’ privacy, according to sources with direct knowledge of the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

This step follows a month-long effort by Google to comply with the European Court of Justice’s decision, which requires all search providers operating in Europe to consider people’s requests to remove links that they say violate their online privacy.

Google has already received more than 50,000 submissions from people asking the company to remove links. That includes more than 12,000 requests within the first 24 hours of the form’s being made available, according to one of the people with direct knowledge of the matter.

While the company will start to remove links by the end of June, the process is expected to take several weeks before it is fully operational. Google’s engineering teams -- both in Europe and further afield -- have been tweaking the company’s search infrastructure since the ruling was made in May.

How the NSA may be using games to encourage digital snooping

German magazine Der Spiegel posted a new cache of documents related to National Security Agency surveillance activities within Germany.

Among the trove is a report that sheds new light on how the US government may be using games to motivate analysts using XKeyscore, a tool for searching through online data that the agency collects that was revealed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

XKeyscore allows analysts to “search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals” around the world according to a Guardian story published in the summer of 2014.

A document published by Der Spiegel describes an XKeyscore training at the NSA's European Cryptologic Center, revealing that analysts may also be rewarded for their exploration within the system with something called "Skilz points."

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