June 2014

US Marshals step in, thwart efforts to learn about cell tracking devices

How sensitive are local cops when it comes to disclosing information about stingrays, the fake cell phone towers used to track targeted phones? Apparently, they're sensitive enough to involve the United States Marshals Service with an ongoing case in Florida.

After being informed of a straightforward public records request to learn more about the Sarasota Police Department's use of stingrays, the US Marshals suddenly moved the stack of paper records hundreds of miles away. It's a move that will frustrate ongoing efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) to access the documents in question.

Senators Seek GAO Study of Network Resiliency

In advance of the Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing June 5 on the IP transition, Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor (D-AK), Sen Bill Nelson (D-FL), chair of the Subcommittee on Science and Space, and parent Commerce Committee Chairman Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have asked the Government Accountability Office to study how the communications sector plans to "guarantee" resiliency and reliability as they transition to new technologies.

The senators want the following questions answered:

To what extent has the communications sector transitioned from traditional copper-based networks to IP networks?
As part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, what action has the federal government taken to ensure the reliability and robustness of communication networks that have transitioned to IP?
What key challenges do IP network operators face during times of crises and how do the challenges affect consumers?
To what extent do priority access programs for emergency preparedness communications exist for IP networks?

Cyberbullying Law Challenged in Court

New York's high court will consider one of the first legal challenges to state and local laws that make it a crime for people to bully others online, especially children.

The 2010 Albany County law, one of more than a dozen around the country that criminalize cyberbullying, pits free-speech advocates against a community that has given prosecutors a larger role in affairs that typically had been handled by schools.

The court's ruling could set the tone for other state high courts hearing challenges to such laws, as well as for states and localities considering criminal penalties for cyberbullying, legal experts said. Besides Albany, four other New York counties and more than a dozen states, including Louisiana and North Carolina, have similar laws.

Speech is generally protected by the First Amendment, but the US Supreme Court has carved out exceptions, such as true threats and fighting words.

Life sentences for serious cyberattacks are proposed in Queen's speech

The UK government has said it wants to hand out life sentences to anyone found guilty of a cyberattack that has a catastrophic effect, under plans announced in the Queen's speech.

Any hackers that manage to carry out "cyberattacks which result in loss of life, serious illness or injury or serious damage to national security, or a significant risk thereof" would face the full life sentence, according to the serious crime bill proposed in the Queen's speech.

As well as targeting cyberterrorists, the new offence in the proposed update to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 would also hand harsher sentences to those hackers carrying out industrial espionage, believed to be a growing menace affecting UK business. The law would have a maximum sentence of 14 years for attacks that create "a significant risk of severe economic or environmental damage or social disruption". Currently, the section of the CMA covering such an offence carries a 10-year sentence.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said the bill would be difficult to justify, given current laws already carry punishments for those who carry out significant acts of terrorism, whether via computers or other means. "If a supposed cyberterrorist endangers life or property, there are existing laws that can be used to prosecute them," Killock said.

Such acts have "only been seen in Hollywood movies", said Mustafa Al-Bassam, a computer science student who was convicted under the CMA for his participation in cyberattacks on companies as part of the hacktivist collective LulzSec.

The government has also not addressed complaints over the application of current computer crime law, which some in the security industry claim actually makes the Internet less safe.

Internet of Things Security Threats Seen by 55% in IT Survey

Real, potential or undiscovered, security threats posed by rapidly growing machine-to-machine (M2M) connections and the emerging Internet of Things are troubling IT administrators, according to a research report from GFI Software.

Threats to the rapidly increasing number of Internet-enabled addressable mobile devices on their networks in particular are weighing on their minds.

Commissioning Opinion Matters to survey over 200 US IT decision makers working for organizations with as many as 250 people, GFI Software found that besides opportunities, IoT “means growing security threats, greater device management challenges and increased costs for IT management” for small- and medium-sized US businesses (SMBs). Gartner Research forecasts that the number of “things,” i.e. devices connected to the Internet will surge rapidly higher, with 26 billion addressable devices connected to corporate networks by 2020. That, GFI says, “will create billions of new unsecured endpoints that will in turn produce new vectors of attack designed to either compromise the device or gain access to the infrastructure.”

According to its research survey, 96.5 percent of IT decision makers said IoT would have at least some negative impact on their organizations. More than half (55 percent) believe it will result in new security threats and extend existing threats to a greater number of devices. Furthermore, 30 percent expect IoT to increase IT spending. Over one-quarter (26.7 percent) said device management “will spiral out of control” due to the rise of IoT. Fourteen percent said that deploying patches across multiple platforms will pose a particular challenge.

Internet TV Delivery Set To Pass Antenna-Only

According to a new study from the Consumer Electronics Association, The Market for US Household Television Services, the percentage of US households with a television that relies exclusively on an antenna for reception (6%) is about to be eclipsed for the first time by the percentage of households relying only on the Internet for TV programming (5%).

CEA data since 2005 shows a continuous decline in the percentage of US TV households relying only on antennas for programming. “We are at a pivotal point in consumer behavior, as fewer and fewer American homes are now using only antennas to watch their favorite television programs, and more and more households turn to the Internet as a source of TV content,” said Gary Shapiro, president-CEO, CEA.

Despite phenomenal growth in tablet and smartphone penetration rates, televisions are still the most widely used viewing devices, according to the study. TVs have the highest household penetration of any viewing devices (97%) and strongest video content viewership (93%), especially now that Internet-enabled televisions have reached mainstream consumers. According to the study, viewership of video programming on connected devices continues to grow. Nearly half of TV user households watched video on either a portable computer or smartphone, and more than a third watched on either a tablet or desktop computer.

Specifically:

46% of US TV user households watched video on either a laptop, notebook or netbook (up from 38% in 2013)
43% watched video on a smartphone (up from 33% in 2013)
35% watched video on a tablet (up from 26% in 2013)
34% watched video on a desktop computer (up from 30% in 2013)
Additionally, the study shows the percentage of US TV households consuming at least some TV programming via the Internet has nearly doubled. Almost half of US TV households (45%) received at least some television programming from the Internet in 2014, a 17 point increase from 2013 (28%).

One in five journalists has had a credential request denied

A Harvard study “Who Gets a Press Pass? Media Credentialing Practices in the United States,” released by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is the first of its kind to perform a quantitative analysis of credentialing in the US, the study captures the experience of journalists nationwide in their efforts, from 2008 to 2013, to obtain credentials from various organizations.

It also highlights the need to reform credentialing systems so they reflect the reality of the current news ecosystem -- and protect the ability of all journalists to bring news to the public. The overarching goal, according to the study, was to identify patterns in credentialing practices that would lead to “better structure and predictability in the credentialing process,” recognizing that the US journalism industry is “more diverse than ever before, with a wide array of independent newsgatherers complementing the work of institutional news organizations.”

The survey asked the respondents about their efforts to obtain credentials from 17 types of federal, state, local, and private organizations, including state legislatures, municipal governments, and county law enforcement agencies. Out of the 676 respondents who said they had applied for a credential from one or more organizations, a full 21 percent -- one out of every five -- said they were denied at least once.

As the study concludes, the results suggest that credentialing organizations give preference to formal employment relationships over other types of arrangements. The last 10 years have seen major swings in media-consumption patterns, and innovations in technology have created new means for people to commit acts of journalism -- all complicating efforts to define a journalist for credentialing, shield law, Freedom of Information fee waiver, and other purposes.

Ukraine Political Attitudes Split, Crimeans Turning To Russian Sources For News

Ukrainians’ political attitudes diverge by region despite the majority of the country turning to only a handful of top TV outlets for news, according to new survey results by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The research shows Crimea as having a very different news market; in 2012, the top five news sources were Ukrainian, whereas now all five are Russia-based TV channels and social media.

People in the west, north, and center regions of Ukraine are more likely to hold a favorable view of the role played by US in the crisis than those in the east, south, and Crimea. On the other hand, respondents in the east, south, and Crimea are more likely to see Russia as playing a mostly positive role. Support for economic reform, joining the EU, and NATO integration are similarly divided by region.

“The only consensus point across the country is that the vast majority of Ukrainians are opposed to foreign involvement in decisions about the country’s future,” said Neli Esipova, director of research, global migration and regional director for Gallup. The crisis has taken a toll on the media environment in Ukraine, resulting in the cessation of broadcasts by some TV channels. However, these changes have not significantly affected Ukrainians’ sources for news.

“Only one in five Crimeans say the cessation of some Ukrainian TV channels in Crimea has changed their newsgathering habits, and only one in 10 Ukrainians outside Crimea say that the cessation in broadcasting of some Russian TV channels has changed their newsgathering habits,” said Sarah Glacel, senior audience research specialist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Court fight heats up over 52 pages of still-secret surveillance info

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's long quest to make key rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) public is nearing its end. EFF lawyer Mark Rumold faced off with Department of Justice attorney Steven Bressler in the same courtroom they had sparred in 14 months ago.

They were overseen by the same judge, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers.

Things weren't the same, though. The lawsuit has changed dramatically, due in part to the Snowden leaks about government surveillance, which began to appear in newspapers in June 2013. And the scope of the case has narrowed. That's partly because the EFF has focused its demands on what it believes are the most important documents: several still-secret FISC opinions, as well as one memo from the White House's Office of Legal Counsel, comprising some 52 pages.

It's also narrowed because the Department of Justice has released some of the documents that were asked for. The most striking revelation from those documents was that some FISC judges sharply criticized the National Security Agency's record of compliance with rules the court had set out for handling its giant database of phone calls and other data.

Snowden calls for stronger online security

Ahead of the one-year anniversary of his first leaks about the National Security Agency, former contractor Edward Snowden is calling for Internet users and companies take up the reins on their own.

"One year ago, we learned that the Internet is under surveillance, and our activities are being monitored to create permanent records of our private lives -- no matter how innocent or ordinary those lives might be,” he said. “Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same.”

Snowden is throwing his support behind an online effort that Web companies and advocacy organizations are calling Reset the Net.

Google, Mozilla, reddit and other leading websites are teaming up with advocacy organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee for the push, which is aimed at increasing users’ privacy protections online. The campaign is looking for popular websites and online services to offer more online security in the absence of and in addition to any legislation from Congress.

Benton

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