August 2015

US court hands win to NSA over metadata collection

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a judge's ruling that would have blocked the National Security Agency from collecting phone metadata under a controversial program that has raised privacy concerns. The appeals court said there were not sufficient grounds for the preliminary injunction imposed by the lower court.

The ruling was a setback for privacy advocates but did not reach the bigger question of whether the NSA's actions were lawful. It means the massive program to collect and store phone records, disclosed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, can continue unaffected until it expires at the end of November. Under the USA Freedom Act, which Congress passed in June, the program was allowed to continue for 180 days until new provisions aimed at addressing the privacy issues go into effect. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the ruling was "consistent with what this administration has said for some time, which is that we did believe that these capabilities were constitutional." Larry Klayman, the conservative lawyer who challenged the program, said he would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Moving From Dot-Com to Not-Com

There’s a downside to the relative freedom and lack of gatekeepers on the Internet, including that most anyone can buy a Web address that ends in “.com.” Online, scammers can pay $10 for an address that looks like that of your bank, your favorite clothier, or your auto dealer and create a site that looks enough like the original to trick you into buying phony merchandise or revealing your login and password. Every day, almost 1,000 Americans file some kind of identity-theft complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission, and about 750 report being scammed by an impostor, as in a phishing scheme. That’s part of the reason hundreds of businesses, from Google to Wal-Mart, have paid $185,000 a pop to apply for the rights to Web domains that read, say, .google or .walmart.

Companies are betting that operating their own domains will be more secure because they’re directly in control of the security and maintenance. The catch, says Ken Westin, an analyst with cybersecurity company Tripwire, is that they’ll have to take more responsibility for oversight of their private domains than they did in Verisign’s dot-com world.

Satellite Technology and Spectrum Key to Better Weather Forecasting

[Commentary] Ten years ago, one of the deadliest hurricanes in history struck the Gulf Coast, decimating coastal cities and communities from Gulfport (MS) to New Orleans (LA). At the time, the National Weather Service (NWS), an agency of the US Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), accurately forecasted more than two days ahead of time that the central Gulf Coast would be directly impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

A decade later, we are better positioned to deal with these types of disasters. In recent years, NOAA has deployed new satellite technology that has dramatically improved the NWS’s forecasting ability, allowing meteorologists to issue more accurate forecasts, with more lead time, for a hurricane or another major weather event. Such information will allow local officials to better target evacuations to those areas most likely to be affected and avoid disruptions to unaffected areas. NOAA has also made significant investments in its supercomputing capacity to improve its hurricane forecasting capabilities.

[Dr Kathryn Sullivan is Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lawrence E Strickling is Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator]

Verizon did kill wireless contracts, but only for new customers

Verizon Wireless' announcement three weeks ago that it's no longer offering contracts and device subsidies was missing one caveat: customers who are still on contracts can continue to renew them and get new phones under the traditional subsidy model. "Yes, Verizon customers can keep and renew their two-year contract, and take advantage of any subsidized devices we offer as part of that contract," Verizon said in a clarification it issued Aug 26. "A good example: you’ve been waiting to buy a soon-to-be-launched smartphone on Verizon’s network.

Yes, you can renew your current contract once that cool new handset launches -- and take advantage of subsidized contract pricing." Contract customers can also keep their current monthly price and buy a new device on an installment plan that spreads the cost over 24 months, interest free. The installment plan is the standard option for new customers. Though contracts are seemingly going out of style, some people may want to keep them in order to get phone subsidies that can eliminate or dramatically reduce the upfront cost of a new device. Some longtime customers may also be on older price plans that are no longer available; those customers will be able to keep them.

You can't escape the campaign ad

The Democratic National Committee met in Minneapolis (MN) the week of Aug 24. Among the items on the agenda was a strategy to transform the party’s voter databases into something they can use to target online ads. Republicans are doing something similar, all in an effort to catch voters who spend more time than ever online.

For political campaigns, television ads and robocalls just aren’t enough anymore. “You’d want to reach people on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter, or wherever they are talking to each other about political or other speech," says Nuala O’Connor of the Center for Democracy & Technology. She’s worried about merging voter details with the consumer data used to target online ads. And there’s a lot of data out there, says John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation. “Anything that can tell you a slice about your identity as a person, a sophisticated data manipulator can use to make inferences about your identity as a voter or a citizen," he says.

FCC Group Presents Multiple Post-CableCARD Paths

As expected, an Federal Communications Commission-appointed committee on Aug 28 presented the FCC with multiple paths toward a post-CableCARD world for retail video devices, including downloadable video security options that would allow for competitive user interfaces. Formed in January, the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee (DSTAC) provided its recommendations to the FCC a week ahead of a September 4 deadline. The DSTAC came together following the passing of the STELAR Act, legislation that will sunset the current set-top security integration ban in December 2015 and called on the FCC to take a look at a successor approach that could spur the retail market for video navigation devices for not just cable operators, but other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs).

The DSTAC report, at six pages, has yet to be released (the FCC did not announce when it would make them public), but two members of the committee -- Jay Rolls, SVP and CTO of Charter Communications; and Milo Medin, VP of access services at Google, provided a summarized view of the group's findings. While the final recommendations offer multiple paths that could be mixed and matched to achieve the goals of the initiative, Rolls said the DSTAC did find agreement on several points.

Commissioner Wright Will Be Missed at the FTC

[Commentary] Commissioner Joshua D. Wright left the Federal Trade Commission to return to his faculty position at George Mason University. Commissioner Wright was one of two Republican commissioners and, in his almost three-year tenure at the FTC, Commissioner Wright focused mostly on the FTC’s antitrust responsibilities. That being the case, should the privacy community care about Commissioner Wright’s departure? I think so.

Many privacy advocates have criticized what they see as Commissioner Wright’s overly empirical, economically driven approach to privacy and other consumer protection matters. Admittedly, privacy related harms do not always lend themselves to an evaluation of dollars lost or an empirical comparison of consumers’ privacy rights with other benefits gained from a company’s product or practice. Despite this criticism, Commissioner Wright contributed mightily to efforts to assure that the FTC used its deception and unfairness powers to protect privacy in a fact-based, disciplined manner that took into account the nature and degree of consumer harm compared to the consumer and economic benefit.

[Robert R. Belair is managing Partner of Arnall Golden Gregory LLP's DC office. Maayan Lattin is an Associate in the Privacy, Consumer Regulatory and Government Regulatory Practices at AGG]

European Publishers Play Lobbying Role Against Google

In private sessions in the summer of 2015, giant publishers and media companies from Germany, France and elsewhere have met with European officials about proposals to regulate Europe’s digital economy. The discussions have covered a broad range of contentious issues, according to public disclosures and several people who attended or were briefed on the meetings. Central to almost all of them has been limiting the reach of a single American company: Google.

The company has a long list of detractors crying foul about how it operates in Europe, including rivals like Microsoft and Yelp. But as Europeans take a lead globally in regulating the Internet and containing American tech companies, the Continent’s old media -- influential newspaper and magazine publishers -- are emerging as one of Google’s most persistent adversaries. With Google attracting attention and ad revenue that once funneled to publishers, the goal is clear: Find ways to make more money, by strengthening copyright rules and limiting Google’s power as an advertising platform.

FTC Announces PrivacyCon, Issues Call to Whitehat Researchers and Academics for Presentations

The Federal Trade Commission will host a conference in January examining cutting-edge research and trends in protecting consumer privacy and security. The event, called PrivacyCon, is the first of its kind and will bring together leading stakeholders, including whitehat researchers, academics, industry representatives, federal policymakers, consumer advocates and others. FTC staff issued a call for presentations seeking original research on new vulnerabilities and how they might be exploited to harm consumers, as well as recent research in areas such as big data, the Internet of Things, and consumer attitudes toward privacy.

The FTC is seeking research from a variety of disciplines, such as data analytics, computer security, marketing, and economics. Panel discussions at the conference, which will be held on Jan. 14, 2016, will address the research presentations, develop suggestions for further collaboration between researchers and policymakers, and highlight steps that companies and consumers can and should take to protect themselves and their data.

PrivacyCon: The research search is on

It’s called PrivacyCon and the first-of-its-kind FTC event is scheduled for January 14, 2016. The conference will examine trends in protecting consumer privacy, with a focus on original research findings. That’s why the FTC staff has put a call out to academics, white hat researchers, and other researchers who can add to the "What's on the horizon?" knowledge base about privacy.

We’re looking for research on emerging vulnerabilities, as well as studies on topics like big data, the Internet of Things, and consumer attitudes toward privacy. We plan to fill seats around the table with experts from a broad range of disciplines – data analytics, computer security, marketing, and economics, to name just a few. What’s the goal? To develop strategies for how researchers and policymakers can work together and to discuss steps companies and consumers can take to protect sensitive data.

Benton

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