Edward Snowden's greatest fear may be coming true. Since disclosing government surveillance programs last year, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor has said the worst possible outcome would be that "nothing will change." But the odds of that happening increase daily.
Google engineers are accelerating what has become the newest arms race in modern technology: They are making it far more difficult -- and far more expensive -- for the National Security Agency and the intelligence arms of other governments around the world to pierce their systems.
As fast as it can, Google is sealing up cracks in its systems that Edward J. Snowden revealed the NSA had brilliantly exploited. It is encrypting more data as it moves among its servers and helping customers encode their own e-mails. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo are taking similar steps. After years of cooperating with the government, the immediate goal now is to thwart Washington -- as well as Beijing and Moscow. The strategy is also intended to preserve business overseas in places like Brazil and Germany that have threatened to entrust data only to local providers.
In January, the math community had its big event of the year -- the Joint Mathematics Meeting -- where 3,000 mathematicians and math students gathered to talk about new advances in the field and jostle for jobs. The National Security Agency is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the country and so it always has a sizeable presence at the event to recruit new candidates.
This year, it was even easier for the agency as the conference took place at the Baltimore Convention Center, just 22 minutes away from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade. Thomas Hales, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, who describes himself as a “mathematician who’s upset about what’s going on,” is dismayed at the idea of the brightest minds in his field going to work for the agency. In reaction to the Snowden revelations about NSA’s mass surveillance and compromising of encryption standards, Hales gave a grant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to fly a representative to Baltimore to try to convince mathematicians young and old not to go help the agency with data-mining and encryption-breaking.
Nearly 60% of schools in America lack sufficient Wi-Fi capability to provide students with 21st Century educational tools. Far too many schools have no Wi-Fi at all. For those that are lucky enough to be connected wirelessly, such networks often don’t meet the capacity needs of students and teachers. Solving this challenge is a national priority. Unfortunately, the present E-rate program does little to advance Wi-Fi connectivity. Luckily, my fellow Commissioners and I are in a position to act to close the Wi-Fi gap. To have an impact in the 2015 school year, the Commission will need to act this summer to adopt new rules modernizing E-Rate, including the program’s mechanism for distributing support. If we don’t move quickly on new rules, we will miss the opportunity for Wi-Fi to have its greatest impact in the coming funding year. The consequences of delay would be huge.
Cable rage is real, and here's the data to prove it.
A survey of subscribers on the nation's biggest cable providers has found that more than half of Americans would abandon their cable provider if they felt they could. Fifty-three percent of respondents to a recent survey said they'd leave their current cable company -- if they had a choice. But as many as 70 percent said their options are too limited, according to the study by consulting group cg42. The list of options may soon narrow even further with several impending mergers, such as the proposed deal between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, as well as the acquisition of DirecTV by AT&T (not a cable merger but one that would eliminate a player in the wider pay-TV market). Consumers pushed back against those agreements, with 72 percent saying that the larger the cable companies become, the worse off consumers will be.
[Commentary] The Voice of America prides itself on its objective and thorough reporting in scores of countries, including many that lack their own independent media. Critics say it has drifted from its mission of reporting to the world about the United States and its policies and instead is duplicating the work of the four “surrogate broadcasters” -- Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Network -- that aim to report the news for local audiences in countries where media are restricted.
A bipartisan bill headed for the House floor would take a dangerous step toward converting the VOA into another official mouthpiece. The bill’s supporters argue that listeners already assume that VOA is meant to promote U.S. government views and that tax dollars shouldn’t support a purely journalistic operation. But VOA distinguishes itself from state services like Russia Today by embodying the democratic values of independent media and open debate. The US will never beat China and Russia in the game of official propaganda, but it can win the war of ideas -- if it doesn’t lose faith in its own principles.
Conventionally, the most common way of gauging the most popular books in America has been looking at the New York Times' bestsellers list. But as we shift from reading on paper to screens, there's an interesting new option: Amazon's lists of the most-highlighted passages and most-highlighted books on Kindles around the world.
Here are seven things the lists tell us about Americans reading today: 1) The Hunger Games is really, really popular, 2) The Bible is also extremely popular on Kindle, 3) A lot of people start classics -- but probably don't finish them, 4) Readers want to be told what to do, 5) Modern novels are pretty scarce, 6) Lots of medical students are using Kindles to study, and 7) George W. Bush has made his mark.
The Pakistani government suspended the broadcasting license of Geo News, a popular television channel, in a major escalation of Geo’s dispute with the country’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority said the suspension would last for 15 days. It also imposed a $104,000 fine. The dispute began with accusations that the spy agency was behind a shooting attack on a senior Geo journalist in April. It has broadened into a wider confrontation that is seen as a threat to press freedom and a sign of tensions between Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders.
Facebook said that it had blocked users in Pakistan from access to the pages of a popular Pakistani rock band and several left-wing political pages, drawing sharp criticism from free-speech activists who accused the American company of caving in to government censors. Following an outcry on social media and inquiries by reporters to the Pakistani government and to Facebook, the government reversed itself and Facebook restored access to Laal’s page. But advocates said that at least six other Facebook pages that promoted progressive debate in Pakistan and that had been blocked during the week remained inaccessible.
Recent incidents such as Target's security breach, the Heartbleed bug, and eBay's systems hack have called attention to how much consumers trust the businesses they patronize to keep their personal information safe.
That trust currently appears to be hard to come by. Just 21% of Americans have "a lot of trust" in the businesses or companies they regularly interact with to keep their personal information secure.
In addition to low trust in companies' abilities to keep their data secure, Americans report decreasing trust in companies in general. Thirty-seven percent say their general level of trust in the businesses and companies they regularly do business with has declined either a little or a lot over the past year.
Nonetheless, consumers trust banks to protect their personal data at levels considerably higher than their overall confidence in the institutions themselves. The key differentiator here may be the protection of personal information.
While, in general, the industry has suffered a negative reputation since the 2008 financial crisis, banks and credit card companies are potentially held to specific legal parameters regarding the protection of personal information. This higher standard could influence the amount of trust consumers say they have in the security of their sensitive data with financial institutions compared with other industries.
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