David Meyer

The Federal Trade Commission has its eye on the privacy practices of a wide variety of data-collecting players, the deputy director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said.

Daniel Kaufman said the rise of mobile ecosystems and the Internet of things, with the myriad companies and devices they involve, required a broad view. For example, Kaufman said, the FTC targeted HTC over privacy-busting security flaws and Android flashlight app maker Goldenshores over its deceptive privacy policy. The agency even has a “mobile lab” staffed with technologists and attorneys who check out where devices and apps send users’ data, and how that squares with their claimed privacy policies.

“For us we have to look at the entire ecosystem and make sure all the players are doing what they should be doing and what the law allows,” Kaufman said.

The European Parliament’s industry committee has passed Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes’s big telecoms legislation package, including a contentious section covering network neutrality.

The legislation is ostensibly supposed to entrench the principles of net neutrality in European law for the first time, guaranteeing that broadband and mobile providers treat all Internet services equally. However, part of the wording refers to “specialized services” that can be exempted from this principle, and the wording of the package as passed defines these services quite broadly.

The European Parliament has overwhelmingly passed a large package of laws intended to strengthen data protection -- that’s “privacy” in non-legalese -- across the European Union.

The data protection regulation, passed by members of the European Parliament (MEPs) by 621 votes to 10 with 22 abstentions, was proposed by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding just over two years ago as a way of harmonizing data protection law across the 28 member states.

The next Parliament will need to take this over after the May election, and Europe’s governments still need to give their approval through the European Council, but it looks like web firms operating in the EU are about to face a very different regulatory landscape. This would include much higher fines for breaches of data protection law in the EU, the limited right for citizens to demand the erasure of their personal data, and strict limitations on what can be done with EU citizens’ data outside the union. A separate resolution passed could also lead to difficulties for US firms in handling the personal data of Europeans.

The company that handles the security of the so-called “Merkel phone” -- the customized BlackBerry that the German chancellor and other members of her administration have recently started using -- is now making a push to offer secure services to normal companies.

At the Cebit tech show in Hanover, Germany, Secusmart announced a deal with mobile carrier Vodafone to offer an app called Secure Call, which supposedly does what it says on the tin. In the words of Vodafone Deutschland CEO Jens Schulte-Bockum, “Secure Call is an effective weapon against phone tapping for people who want to protect their intellectual property.”

Additionally, Secusmart said it would try selling the Merkel phone more widely. The Merkel phone costs €2,000 ($2,800). Secure Call will reportedly cost around €10 per user per month, and it will support more platforms -- Android first, then iOS and Windows Phone. It will initially only be available in Germany. Meanwhile Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone’s biggest rival in Germany, is also expected to unveil an app for secure voice and SMS communications at Cebit. KPN, the Dutch telecommunications company that runs the E-Plus and Base brands in Germany, is also targeting the privacy-conscious by reselling Silent Circle’s secure communications services.

[March 10]

[Commentary] There are several trends in today’s tech landscape that I find worrying, and at first glance they seem to be a varied set: mass online surveillance; the erosion of network neutrality; and web giants that are growing in a seemingly unstoppable way.

However, I’ve come to realize they all have something in common. All of them -- including the rise of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) -- are anti-competitive in one way or another. In their respective fields, all the trends I’m about to discuss create the potential for a monolithic, monopolistic player to block the rise of new entrants and ensure its long-term dominance. Each case involves an over-concentration of power that becomes deeply threatening to plurality and progress.

When I heard of the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, my first thought was that in a market where you already have a depressing lack of choice, such as broadband access in many parts of the US, this merging of the two biggest players would be a grossly anticompetitive deal that would harm consumers. Given the lack of network neutrality laws, the creation of such an unassailable monolith could also injure the content and tech startup industries.

And so we return to the NSA, its British counterpart GCHQ, and all the other intelligence agencies that we now know to be more powerful than they appeared a year ago. The competitive issue here is not one of pricing, scaling or advertising prominence; it is one of ideas. True democracy, at least as I understand it, is a system based on and committed to the preservation of a free marketplace of ideas. Mass state surveillance changes all that. Without the option of privacy, we already begin to self-censor; we become less likely to express dissenting ideas online or over the phone. The key issue in antitrust, and also in the case of state surveillance, is one of timing -- how far you let things go before somebody has to step in.