November 2015

Paris Attacks Fan Encryption Debate

Apparently, White House and congressional staffers have asked Silicon Valley executives for new talks in Washington (DC) to resolve a standoff over encrypted communication tools in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks. The approaches are among the most concrete signs of how recent bombings and shootings have put a new spotlight on the debate about whether American companies should be allowed to offer ultrasecure messaging tools. There is no evidence the Paris attacks have changed technology companies’ view that strong encryption protects consumers, and that providing a way for police to eavesdrop would open the door to exploitation by criminals and repressive governments.

Late Nov 19, the Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Apple and Microsoft, said in a statement, “Weakening security with the aim of advancing security simply does not make sense.” But Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook and others face a difficult public-relations dance, because executives don’t want to be seen as brushing off the implications of a tragedy. “It’s not the ideal time to be out there touting the benefits of encryption,” said an attorney who has worked on encryption issues. There is no evidence Islamic State attackers in Paris relied on scrambled communications. Some used run-of-the-mill text messages, which can be easily monitored if a suspect is known, according to French media reports.

Electronic snooping by NSA won't stop ISIS

[Commentary] It's increasingly clear since the Paris terrorist attacks that the future of Americans' privacy is largely in Silicon Valley's hands. Valley leaders such as Apple's Tim Cook, and Alphabet/Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai are going to need the technology community's full support to ward off political pressure from the FBI and NSA, who want government access to encrypted data on mobile devices. The United States needs to aggressively pursue terrorists. But it must not allow emotions of the moment to result in an ill-conceived security policy undermining not only Americans' privacy but also the success of the nation's driving industry.

Apple and Google are on the spot because they have crafted what is known as end-to-end encryption, which doesn't allow the government access to data even with a warrant. This might be worrisome if the NSA and FBI's snooping on electronic communications was effective in preventing terrorist attacks. It's not. The White House-appointed review group reached that conclusion in 2014 after studying 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since 9/11. An independent study by the New America Foundation confirmed the findings. The president, FBI and NSA have yet to offer an argument, let alone evidence, showing otherwise. Allowing the FBI and NSA access to texts, e-mails, photographs, calendars, address books, bank accounts, health records and individuals' whereabouts is an unacceptable and unprecedented violation of Americans' privacy. Why not just install surveillance equipment in every room of our homes and be done with it? But the most obvious flaw in government reasoning is the most depressing: If US technology isn't secure, terrorists -- like most customers worldwide -- will just buy somebody else's. American technology is the gold standard. Undercutting it in the name of terrorism is folly. The last thing we need in the face of this new, heightened danger is a weakening US economy.

Police used apparently illegal wiretaps to make hundreds of arrests

Prosecutors in the Los Angeles (CA) suburb responsible for a huge share of the nation’s wiretaps almost certainly violated federal law when they authorized widespread eavesdropping that police used to make more than 300 arrests and seize millions of dollars in cash and drugs throughout the USA. The violations could undermine the legality of as many as 738 wiretaps approved in Riverside County (CA) since the middle of 2013.. Prosecutors reported that those taps, often conducted by federal drug investigators, intercepted phone calls and text messages by more than 52,000 people.

Federal law bars the government from seeking court approval for a wiretap unless a top prosecutor has personally authorized the request. Congress added that restriction in the 1960s, when the FBI had secretly monitored civil rights leaders, to ensure that such intrusive surveillance would not be conducted lightly. In Riverside County -- a Los Angeles suburb whose court and prosecutors approved almost one of every five US wiretaps in 2014 -- the district attorney turned the job of reviewing the applications over to lower-level lawyers, interviews and court records show. That practice almost certainly violated the federal wiretapping law and could jeopardize prosecutors’ ability to use the surveillance in court.

Comcast’s Stream TV service is sparking a controversy over the future of the Internet

It turns out that Comcast's new video app, Stream TV, comes with a big asterisk: If you have access to the service and you are one of the growing number of customers who has to abide by Comcast's 300 GB monthly data cap, Stream TV won't count against it. In essence, you'll be able to watch as much Stream TV as you want and never hit your limit. While "unlimited" may sound enticing, critics are seizing on the program as a potential violation of network neutrality -- the rules passed by the federal government earlier in 2015 that seek to prevent Internet providers from unfairly favoring some online content, including their own, over that of others. If big cable and telecommunication companies were allowed to do this, they could unfairly crush competitors and make it hard for consumers to get rival services from Netflix or a start-up, these critics worry.

But, likely to the alarm of net neutrality advocates, the government's rules might not even apply to Stream TV -- and that's exactly how Comcast hopes regulators will see it. "This is a cable video service" not cable Internet service, said Comcast spokesperson Lisa Scalzo. That might seem like a meaningless distinction, but it could make all the difference. That's because the government's net neutrality rules only cover some digital communications, while leaving other types out. If Comcast can successfully argue its point, then the Federal Communications Commission may be unable to bring its net neutrality rules to bear against Stream TV, even if it might want to.

Yahoo testing system to lock out users who employ adblockers

Yahoo is testing a way to fight back against people who employ adblockers, denying users access to their e-mail if they refuse to disable a tool that damages the technology company’s ability to sell advertising. The Silicon Valley group is running a small trial with Yahoo Mail users in the US, showing them a notice when they try to log in to their inboxes that reads: “Uh oh . . . We are unable to display Yahoo Mail. Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail.”

There is no technical reason why the e-mail cannot be displayed. The company is trying to protect its advertising revenue by ensuring people who use its free products can be marketed to -- something that using an adblocker prevents. Yahoo said it was “continually developing and testing new product experiences” and would not comment on whether the company was considering a similar approach with its other properties, such as its digital magazines or apps such as Yahoo Weather.

Young ‘digital natives’ naive about Internet advertising

Forget their ageist sneering -- children may know less about the Internet than many people think. Research in the United Kingdom has found that a large proportion of children lack a basic understanding of how the online world works.

Only one-third of those aged 12 to 15 could identify which Google search results were adverts, while one in five said that all information returned by search engines must be true. In addition, almost half did not know that YouTube -- dubbed the new children’s TV, thanks to the popularity of bloggers such as Zoella and Tanya Burr -- is funded by advertising. The findings, in a report by the UK communications watchdog Ofcom, come as regulators struggle to uphold television rules on advertising in the digital age. “The Internet allows children to learn, discover different points of view and stay connected with friends and family,” said James Thickett, Ofcom’s director of research. “But these digital natives still need help to develop the knowhow they need to navigate the online world.” In Ofcom’s research, children were shown a list of search results for the term “trainers”, and directed towards the top two results -- which were in an orange box with the word “Ad” written in it. Only 31 per cent of those aged 12 to 15 identified the sponsored links as advertising. Among those aged 8 to 11, the proportion was even lower -- 16 percent. However, children’s misunderstanding of media businesses was not restricted to new media. Among 12 to 15-year-olds, 17 per cent thought that the BBC was funded by advertising. The public broadcaster does not air ads in the UK.

Facebook tries to head off court order in Belgium

Facebook is mounting a defense against charges of improperly handling consumer data that were brought by Belgian regulators and affirmed by a court in the country. Executives from the company met with regulators at the Belgian Privacy Commission. Though it’s a relatively small case, it could be a bellwether for how European regulators reconcile the practices of American technology giants with Europe’s stricter privacy rules. The regulators are concerned about Facebook’s practice of tracking people who are not users of the site but visit without signing up. In June, they brought the charges against the company, and a court ordered the company to halt the practice earlier in Nov for non-users in Belgium. Facebook argues the cookies used to collect the data serve a security purpose.

“There’s a huge problem of account takeovers on the Internet right now,” Alex Stamos, the company’s head of security, said, according to the Journal. “Every day we catch about 400,000 attempts globally to log into an account with the correct username and password but it actually not being the user themselves.” The court that found against Facebook ordered the company to pay more than $250,000 per day once it officially received the court’s order. The Journal reported that the company has yet to receive the document because it is still being translated into English. Though the company’s executives met with regulators to see if they could find a solution to the issue before the court order went into effect, the company has also said it intends to appeal the ruling to a higher court. The case is being closely watched as part of a larger debate over how European regulators should treat the data security practices of American companies.

NBC gives equal time to Trump's GOP rivals

NBC has started offering Republican presidential candidates free air time during the week of Nov 23 to match the 12 minutes given to Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live". The offer, made in compliance with the Federal Communications Commission's "equal time" rules, would allow candidates to air their own content at specific times on stations where they requested time. John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore had filed requests with NBC stations following Trump's "SNL'" appearance on Nov. 7. At least two of the candidates -- Graham and Pataki -- have been offered 12 minutes on their requested stations during the 9 p.m. hour on Friday, Nov. 27, as well as 12 minutes during the "Saturday Night Live" broadcast on Saturday, Nov. 28. The Graham campaign sent its request to stations in Iowa and New Hampshire. The Pataki campaign's request went to stations in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and New York.

GOP: FCC Should Make Small Business Waiver Permanent on Open Internet Transparency Rules

Almost three dozen Republican members of Congress, including the leadership and membership of the House Commerce Committee and Communications Subcommittee and Small Business Committee, have called on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to make the small business exemption from the FCC's enhanced transparency rules under the new Open Internet order permanent. The FCC granted a temporary exemption for small Internet service providers (100,000 subscriber or fewer), but the FCC sought comment on whether that was the right number, and whether the exemption should expire or be made permanent.

Cable operators, led by the American Cable Association, have asked that the exemption be made permanent given the particular challenges of smaller operators in complying. The legislators agree. "We applaud the Commission's action in granting this temporary exemption and urge you to make it permanent," they told Chairman Wheeler in a letter Nov. 19. They took the opportunity to take aim at the new requirements in general, saying that "the enhanced transparency requirements jeopardize the ability of small Internet Service Providers to offer broadband services to our constituents..."

Snapchat would like you to give it some of your billions of dollars, politicians

[Commentary] There is a truly stunning amount of money that's about to flow across the country into direct mail suppliers, to Facebook and to local television stations. Billions of dollars, literally, handed over to political consultants and then on to content distributors so that you, humble reader, will be persuaded to get off your couch one Tuesday next November and cast a vote.

Snapchat, as we've noted before, has two advantages that it can leverage in trying to lure candidates. One is that it has a (hard to verify) massive number of views of its videos. The other is that most of its users are young. For a campaign that wants to entice younger voters, that's precisely the combination you'd want. But the question arises in that second word: voters. How can candidates know that the people looking at their snaps (as the images and videos on the service are called) are even voters worth targeting? What if a campaign is paying thousands of dollars to run an ad on Snapchat -- an ad that can't include links back to campaign Web sites, mind you -- and no actual voters are looking at it?

Benton

Search