BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2011
Public broadcasting and Mobile Innovation on today’s agenda http://benton.org/calendar/2011-11-08/
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
China's Internet firms vow to tighten regulation of Web
3,000 sign We The People petition seeking "vapid response," cookies [links to web]
Amazon boosts cloud-computing sales, seizing on US budget cuts [links to web]
The right of citizens to videotape police - op-ed [links to web]
FCC REFORM
Chairman Genachowski on Reforming FCC
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Network Neutrality Vote Expected Thursday in Senate
Sen Brown undecided on network neutrality vote [links to web]
Internet routing glitch kicks millions offline
Web sales tax fight heats up
WIRELESS
Report argues for interoperability in broadband spectrum bands
AT&T to Get More Sprint Data in T-Mobile Case, Court Rules
FCC Commissioner McDowell Opposes Unlicensed Spectrum Set Aside
Verizon to double data amounts for 4G smartphones
Ericsson expects mobile traffic to triple by 2016 [links to web]
Best Buy to Acquire Carphone Warehouse U.S. Mobile Stake
Apple's new Siri could get you into hot water behind the wheel
PRIVACY
Advertisers Move to Stop Digital Privacy Regulations
Regulators disagree about approach to online-privacy rules
PIRACY
The Stop Online Piracy Act: Big Content's full-on assault against the Safe Harbor
OWNERSHIP
New twist in Tribune Co. bankruptcy case could benefit billionaire Sam Zell
CONTENT
With Newsstand, Apple Finally Does Publishers a Favor [links to web]
Dish in Talks for Internet TV [links to web]
Media industry cashes in on Netflix deals [links to web]
RESEARCH
It Started Digital Wheels Turning
Request for Information on Public Access to Digital Data and Scientific Publications - press release [links to web]
COMMUNITY MEDIA
What happens when a community loses its newspaper? [links to web]
CPB and PBS Partner with 11 Communities as Demonstration Sites for Ready To Learn Media - press release [links to web]
POLICYMAKERS
Broadcasters urge swift confirmation of FCC nominees [links to web]
Alan Davidson, Head of Google’s Public Policy Operations, Resigns
GOP sees disconnect between universal phone, healthcare coverage - analysis
The Tweaker - analysis
CYBERSECURITY
Ex-U.S. general urges frank talk on cyber weapons
US will boost its cyber arsenal
Unresolved questions dog international cybersecurity policies
Cyber-theft of business ideas on a global scale - editorial
MORE ONLINE
Voting by iPad in Oregon [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
CHINESE FIRMS TO TIGHTEN REGULATION OF WEB
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: Michael Kan]
China's top IT firms have pledged to step up the regulation of their services as government authorities have intensified calls to control the development of the nation's Internet. Representatives from 39 companies made the pledge during a government sponsored meeting last week, stating that "Internet companies must strengthen their self-management, self-restraint, and strict self-discipline," according to a report from state-run press agency Xinhua. Attendees included the CEO of China's largest search engine Baidu, the heads of Chinese firms operating social networking sites, and executives from the country's three mobile carriers. The public declaration comes as the nation's authorities have tightened control of China's online social media sites, going as far to detain Internet users who have allegedly fabricated rumors. Authorities have said they want to promote the "healthy development" of the Internet in fighting such rumors. But experts have said Chinese officials are in fact worried that the nation's Twitter-like social networking sites are becoming platforms to criticize the government. Chinese companies are already required to abide by the country's strict censorship laws, which block content and websites deemed politically sensitive or anti-government. Foreign sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are currently blocked. During last week's meeting, China's top IT firms also agreed to crackdown on Internet rumors, online pornography and scams. The head of China's IT authority, the State Internet Information Office, said the companies must also take the lead in enhancing the credibility of online media companies while also strengthening their management.
benton.org/node/104904 | IDG News Service
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FCC REFORM
FCC REFORM PLAN
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski visited Georgetown University on Nov 7 to discuss FCC reform. He describe the key findings of the agency’s plan for retrospective analysis and its efforts to eliminate requirements where possible, modify rules as needed, and improve internal processes. He said these efforts are removing needless burdens on industry, enabling the agency to efficiently promote competition and empower consumers, and unleashing innovation and investment across the broadband economy.
The FCC has eliminated 190 obsolete regulations and identified twenty-five data collections that may be eliminated. The FCC has reformed and updated many rules. It has reduced backlogs, including an 89% reduction in satellite licensing applications and a 30% reduction in broadcast licensing applications. The FCC has significantly reduced the time between the vote on an FCC decision such as a rulemaking order and the release of the full text of the decision. It used to take on average 14 calendar days after a vote for the FCC to release the full text of its decisions, and major orders could take weeks or months to be released as language was finalized and documents were processed. Now our average is down to just 3 days, with a majority of decisions released within one day of the vote. The FCC also overhauled its website. It’s the first website that makes government data available in formats that can help entrepreneurs build innovative applications, including making all application programming interfaces or “APIs” available for developers.
The FCC plans to review experimental radio licensing policies. The FCC is examining rule changes that might remove impediments to the development of dynamic spectrum access technology, which will allow for more efficient spectrum use. The FCC is moving forward with a proceeding designed to protect consumers from fraudulent charges on their telephone bills – what’s commonly called cramming. The FCC will be undertaking a comprehensive review of the Commission’s technical standards for cable television service in response to changes in cable television systems technology.
benton.org/node/104930 | Federal Communications Commission | read the FCC plan | Broadcasting&Cable
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
NETWORK NEUTRALITY VOTE
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expects a debate on the primarily Republican-backed resolution of disapproval to block the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules. The Senate voted by unanimous consent last week for Sen McConnell to be recognized on the floor this week to make a motion to proceed to consideration of S.J. Res.6, the resolution pushed by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), a vocal opponent of the rules. There will be up to four hours of debate on that motion to consider the resolution, a motion that will likely pass, meaning there will be some further debate and then a vote on the actual resolution. The actual resolution will almost certainly not pass in the Democrat-controlled Senate, but Republicans will have had the chance to make their arguments on the Senate floor and draw attention to the rules and their criticism of the substance and the process. The Republican-controlled House has already passed a similar resolution.
benton.org/node/104927 | Broadcasting&Cable
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INTERNET GLITCH
[SOURCE: CNNMoney, AUTHOR: Laurie Segal]
The seemingly indestructible Internet relies on a few backbone systems to keep traffic flowing smoothly. Sometimes, one of those systems blips -- and millions of devices get abruptly kicked offline. That's what happened the morning of Nov 7, when a software glitch in the Internet's wonky sounding "Border Gateway Protocol" created a ripple effect that crashed data networks around the world. The outage appears to have originated with Juniper Networks, a company that makes router hardware for large networks. A set of updates to a core Internet routing protocol triggered a software glitch in some of Juniper's routers. When those routers crashed, key Internet pathways went down with them. By late morning, most sites were back to normal, shaking off the sluggishness that typically follows a major routing glitch. Like a human fending off a cold, the Internet occasionally succumbs to bugs, but it also tends to bounce right back.
benton.org/node/104917 | CNNMoney
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WEB SALES TAX FIGHT HEATS UP
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Michelle Quinn]
On the eve of the holiday shopping season, Internet retailers and the nation’s largest store chains are trying to undercut one another — in Congress — on the issue of Internet sales taxes. Wal-Mart has recently hired three lobbying firms to urge lawmakers to force online retailers to collect state sales taxes, as “brick and mortar” stores across the nation already do. A trade group for shopping centers, meanwhile, tripled the amount it spent on lobbying last quarter, and the group joined the powerful retail lobby in urging the deficit-reduction supercommittee last week to include an Internet sales tax bill in its final package. This week, a third online sales tax bill is expected to be introduced in Congress. “The cart is finally rolling,” said Jason Brewer, a spokesman for the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which supports congressional legislation. But cybermerchants are fighting back against the march of the big-box stores on Capitol Hill. They’re recruiting Internet activists and sympathetic lawmakers to stand in the way of some of the new legislation on Internet sales taxes. Online merchants, such as auction site eBay, have also added to their lobbying ranks recently to fight the tax push. The reason for the rush is that for the first time in more than a decade, Congress appears ready to grapple with the issue of Internet sales taxes.
benton.org/node/104934 | Politico
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WIRELESS
INTEROPERABILITY IN BROADBAND SPECTRUM BANDS
[SOURCE: Connected Planet, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
Interoperability among wireless carriers in the sub-1 GHz spectrum band could enable the U.S. government to earn as much as $3.5 billion more in upcoming spectrum auctions than if interoperability is not mandated, argues a report issued by Information Age Economics. The report, titled “Non-Interoperability at 700 MHz: Lower Revenues & Higher Prices,” was sponsored by the Rural Cellular Association. It offers harsh criticism for AT&T and Verizon, arguing that those companies have introduced 700 MHz services based on non-interoperability that “increase their market power in the U.S. at the expense of all other service providers and stakeholders.” Without an interoperability mandate, the report authors argue that many potential bidders will not bid in future 700 MHz auctions because they will be “discouraged by the prospect that they may not be able to acquire competitive devices, in terms of cost and performance, in a timely manner because component and device vendors will understandably focus their limited development resources on the larger business opportunities and profits offered by the Big Two.” Already device manufacturers focus on the Big Two in designing 700 MHz devices--and the report authors note that 700 MHz spectrum won by operators other than the Big Two in recent auctions has been “forced to remain unused for a much longer period than is desirable to the detriment of the U.S. economy, small and medium sized wireless operators and their customers.” The report authors argue that the Big Two are using potential interference concerns as an excuse for not supporting an interoperable approach to the 700 MHz band but that those concerns are unjustified.
benton.org/node/104908 | Connected Planet
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AT&T TO GET SPRINT DATA
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Tom Schoenberg]
Sprint Nextel must provide AT&T with updated internal documents relevant to AT&T’s defense against a U.S. lawsuit seeking to block its purchase of T-Mobile USA, the US District Court ruled. Sprint must turn over all documents requested by AT&T that the wireless carrier hasn’t already given the Justice Department, including data on its recent addition of Apple’s iPhone, U.S. Special Master Richard Levie in Washington said. Levie gave Sprint until Nov. 21 to meet AT&T’s requests. “AT&T is entitled to discover what effect the iPhone and other events of the past few months have had on Sprint’s relevant market share, a part of the government’s” case, Levie said, adding that the documents Sprint gave the Justice Department are more than six months old.
benton.org/node/104914 | Bloomberg
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MCDOWELL VS UNLICENSED SPECTRUM
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Speaking to the Global Forum in Brussels, Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell pitched using a combination of already allocated unlicensed-use spectrum in the TV band - the so-called "white spaces" - with better spectrum management by cellular companies as a way to address the current spectrum needs of all those new smartphones and tablets. "We should work together to encourage wireless providers to deploy enhanced antenna systems more aggressively and provide targeted consumer education on the benefits of using femtocells, both of which are ready off-the-shelf," said Commissioner McDowell. But he does not support setting aside a large continuous swath of unlicensed spectrum - as some computer companies have been advocating - as part of the current push to consolidate broadcasters and reclaim their spectrum for wireless auctions. "At this early stage, it is not apparent that we should stop the progress well under way in the white spaces arena to create a solution for a problem - an alleged shortage of unlicensed spectrum in the 700 MHz Band -- that may never exist." And then there is the budget issue. "Given today's unprecedented budget deficits, I question whether the U.S. can afford not to auction any and all spectrum recovered in this band," he said.
benton.org/node/104911 | Broadcasting&Cable | Commissioner McDowell | The Hill
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VERIZON DOUBLES DATA AMOUNTS
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Nicole Lee]
Starting soon , any customer who has a Verizon 4G smartphone will be eligible to get double the data for the same price. For example, someone who subscribes to the 2GB for $30 plan will receive 4GB instead. For $50 you can get 10GB instead of 5GB, and for $80 you can get 20GB instead of 10GB per month. Existing customers will have to request the change via customer service or through their My Verizon accounts, while new customers can request this when they sign up. The doubling of data promotion is only for a limited time, so Verizon customers should get on this quickly.
benton.org/node/104910 | C-Net|News.com | Reuters
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BEST BUY-CARPHONE
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Chris Burritt, Peter Woodifield]
Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer-electronics retailer, agreed to buy Carphone Warehouse Group’s stake in their U.S. mobile-phone joint venture for 838 million pounds ($1.34 billion) and close the U.K. stores it opened less than two years ago. The purchase of Carphone Warehouse’s interest in a profit- sharing agreement for the Best Buy Mobile business in the U.S. and Canada will boost earnings next year. Carphone Warehouse will return almost all of the proceeds to shareholders. Best Buy Chief Executive Officer Brian Dunn is betting on mobile phones in the U.S., where slumping television sales and competition from Amazon have led to five straight quarterly declines at stores open at least 14 months. The 11 “big box” stores that are being closed in the U.K. have been pinched by a decline in consumer spending.
benton.org/node/104922 | Bloomberg
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SIRI AND DRIVING
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Patrick May]
Apple's Siri may be a seductively smart companion. But let the new iPhone's voice-activated Gal Friday sit beside you as you drive up Highway 101 and you might get into trouble with the law. Or maybe not. Police say you can talk to Siri while driving. Just don't touch her. "It's legal to talk to Siri, as long as the phone's not in your hand," says San Jose police Lt. Chris Monahan. "But if you ask for directions and she puts them up on her screen for you to read, then California's vehicle code says you're breaking the law." But in an example of the law being a few steps behind the technology it's trying to address, the bill's author says that because Siri is not "a person" the law may not apply at all.
benton.org/node/104938 | San Jose Mercury News
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PRIVACY
ADVERTISERS’ SELF-REGULATION
[SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Katy Bachman]
In yet another attempt to keep the government from stepping in with regulations about consumers' privacy online, the advertising industry has decided to expand the scope of its self-regulatory program. This latest change to the program, which has thus far been successful at getting regulators to back off, was a response to calls from federal agencies for privacy programs covering all online data collection and use, not just data collected for purposes of advertising. In addition to having the choice to opt out of behaviorally targeted advertising, consumers will now also have the choice to opt out of data collected from websites that could be used for other purposes such as employment, credit, or insurance. There are also specific protections for the collection of sensitive data concerning children, health, and financial data. The new guidelines will be implemented next year and include enforcement mechanisms for companies that fail to comply. "Policymakers have raised concerns that the same data that is used for online behavioral advertising is being misused for other purposes. Although the business community has never done that—it's clearly prohibited—we wanted to put all the force of self-regulation behind it," said Stu Ingis, the general counsel for the Digital Advertising Alliance, a coalition of six advertising associations representing 5,000 companies that is administering the self-regulatory program. The DAA includes the Association of National Advertisers, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the American Advertising Federation, the Direct Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Network Advertising Initiative.
benton.org/node/104921 | AdWeek | MediaPost
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REGULATORS AND PRIVACY
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Larry Magid]
[Commentary] Data and privacy regulators from governments around the world met in Mexico City for the 33rd International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners. As you might expect, they were joined by companies anxious to be part of the conversation, along with people from nonprofits that focus on privacy issues. Directly behind the speaker’s podium were the logos of sponsoring companies, including Google, which has been at the receiving end of enforcement actions from some of the very regulators who took the stage, such as the Federal Trade Commission, which this year entered into a consent decree with Google over charges that it "used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers" when it launched Buzz in 2010. Buzz has been discontinued as Google focuses on its newly created Google+ social network. At the conference, it became increasingly clear that there are tensions not only between regulators and those they regulate but among regulators themselves, who don't always agree on just whether they should be wielding sticks or dangling carrots.
benton.org/node/104939 | San Jose Mercury News
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PIRACY
STOP ONLINE PIRACY ACT
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Timothy Lee]
The latest offensive in the content industry's never-ending war on copyright infringement is the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was introduced in the House two weeks ago. It incorporates key provisions of the Senate's Protect IP Act as well as another Senate bill that makes unauthorized streaming a felony. But it also includes new provisions that go beyond the language in either of those bills. If passed, it would be the most sweeping overhaul of copyright law in at least a decade. Supporters of the legislation say it's needed to combat "rogue" websites hosted overseas. Such rogue sites deliver infringing content to American consumers while remaining out of reach of American law enforcement. A series of bills, starting with last year's COICA legislation, have tried to shut down these sites by going after intermediaries, including DNS servers, payment processors, search engines, and ad networks.
benton.org/node/104919 | Ars Technica
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OWNERSHIP
TRIBUNE AND ZELL
[SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, AUTHOR: Michael Oneal]
For nearly three years, the various combatants in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case haven't been able to agree on much. But few would have anticipated that claims held by Chicago billionaire Sam Zell against the company had any but the slimmest chances of recovery. Then U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin J. Carey weighed in. In a long-awaited opinion delivered Oct. 31, Carey surprised everyone involved in the case by saying that holders of a deeply subordinated class of notes known as PHONES were being treated unfairly and should be able to recover at least a slice of a claim with an original value of more than $1 billion. Carey didn't mention Zell's $225 million claim, which stems from his failed 2007 leveraged buyout of Tribune Co., but sources said the judge's logic regarding PHONES provides an opening for Zell's lawyers to argue that he, too, should be eligible to collect a partial return because the two securities share similar legal language.
benton.org/node/104933 | Chicago Tribune
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POLICYMAKERS
DAVIDSON OUT AT GOOGLE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Claire Cain Miller]
Alan Davidson, who runs Google’s public policy operations for North and South America, will leave the company this month. He started Google’s Washington office in 2005 as a one-man operation. He previously was associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit group that advocates for an open Internet. Google has not named a successor and has no imminent plans to do so. Mistique Cano, a Google spokeswoman, said Google has “a deep bench” of people handling public policy, including Pablo Chavez, director of public policy in the United States.
benton.org/node/104929 | New York Times | Politico
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UNIVERSAL PHONE VS UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: David Lazarus]
[Commentary] Conservatives tend to become apoplectic at the thought of the government requiring people to pay for health insurance or any form of public program designed to provide universal coverage. Yet most of those same conservatives — including Republican lawmakers — are perfectly at ease with the idea of requiring that all phone users pay a fee intended to provide universal coverage for telecom services. This disparity (or hypocrisy) was on full display as the one Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission joined his three Democratic colleagues recently in voting to overhaul a decades-old system of providing subsidies for phone service in rural areas. Those subsidies — $4.5 billion worth — will now be dedicated primarily to ensuring that rural communities have access to high-speed Internet services. This is an important change, and the FCC was wise to make it. Federal subsidies for traditional phone service date to the 1930s. The so-called Universal Services Fund was established in 1997 and raises billions of dollars annually to defray phone companies' costs in extending phone lines to far-flung areas. But universal phone service is no longer an issue. These days, a more pressing concern is extending broadband Internet access to all homes. Almost one-third of the country currently lacks such access, the FCC says. The United States currently ranks ninth worldwide for wireless broadband access and 12th for wired access such as cable and DSL services.
benton.org/node/104928 | Los Angeles Times
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THE TWEAKER
[SOURCE: The New Yorker, AUTHOR: Malcolm Gladwell]
One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.
In 1779, Samuel Crompton, a retiring genius from Lancashire, invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanization of cotton manufacture. Yet England’s real advantage was that it had Henry Stones, of Horwich, who added metal rollers to the mule; and James Hargreaves, of Tottington, who figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; and William Kelly, of Glasgow, who worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; and John Kennedy, of Manchester, who adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; and, finally, Richard Roberts, also of Manchester, a master of precision machine tooling -- and the tweaker’s tweaker. He created the “automatic” spinning mule: an exacting, high-speed, reliable rethinking of Crompton’s original creation. Such men, the economists argue, provided the “micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”
Was Steve Jobs a Samuel Crompton or was he a Richard Roberts? In the eulogies that followed Jobs’s death, last month, he was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Walter Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker.
benton.org/node/104906 | New Yorker, The
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RESEARCH
BABBAGE COMPUTER
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Markoff]
Researchers in Britain are about to embark on a 10-year, multimillion-dollar project to build a computer — but their goal is neither dazzling analytical power nor lightning speed. Indeed, if they succeed, their machine will have only a tiny fraction of the computing power of today’s microprocessors. It will rely not on software and silicon but on metal gears and a primitive version of the quaint old IBM punch card. What it may do, though, is answer a question that has tantalized historians for decades: Did an eccentric mathematician named Charles Babbage conceive of the first programmable computer in the 1830s, a hundred years before the idea was put forth in its modern form by Alan Turing?
benton.org/node/104931 | New York Times
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CYBERSECURITY
CYBER WEAPONS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Andrea Shalal-Esa]
The United States should be more open about its development of offensive cyber weapons and spell out when it will use them as it grapples with an increasing barrage of attacks by foreign hackers, the former No. 2 uniformed officer in the U.S. military said. "We've got to step up the game; we've got to talk about our offensive capabilities and train to them; to make them credible so that people know there's a penalty to this," said James Cartwright, the four-star Marine Corps general who retired in August as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Cartwright, who raised the profile of cyber security issues while still in uniform, said that the increasing intensity and frequency of network attacks by hackers underscored the need for an effective deterrent. "You can't have something that's a secret be a deterrent. Because if you don't know it's there, it doesn't scare you," said Cartwright, now a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
benton.org/node/104925 | Reuters
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US CYBER ARSENAL
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jim Wolf]
The Pentagon's advanced research arm said it is boosting efforts to build offensive cyber arms for possible keyboard-launched U.S. military attacks against enemy targets. The military needs "more and better options" to meet cyber threats to a growing range of industrial and other systems controlled by computers vulnerable to penetration, including cars, said Regina Dugan, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. "Modern warfare will demand the effective use of cyber, kinetic and combined cyber and kinetic means," she said. Kinetic is military parlance for traditional ways of fighting such as dropping bombs, firing missiles and rolling tanks in. Dugan's agency, known as DARPA, opened the session to what it called "visionary hackers" as well as academics and others in an effort to "change the dynamic of cyber defense" amid mounting U.S. concern over vulnerabilities of networks and computer-controlled hardware.
benton.org/node/104924 | Reuters
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INTERNATIONAL CYBERSECURITY
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Josh Smith]
Cyberspace presents international security threats, many that can only be adequately met through international cooperation. But experts say countries around the world are just beginning to work out the complicated questions surrounding international responses to cybersecurity. In the United States, businesses and government agencies have reported a growing number of sophisticated cyberattacks. In a report to Congress, U.S. intelligence agencies said hackers in China and Russia are stealing large amounts of U.S. technological and trade secrets. Such attacks have national-security and economic implications, James Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for policy, said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum. With the United States seeking to retain its dominant role in the world, "It's just a lot harder to do when potential adversaries and others are inside our networks," Miller said. While repeating DOD policy that a government response to a cyberattack may not be limited to cyberspace, Miller said no one agency, business, or country can secure cyberspace by itself.
benton.org/node/104923 | National Journal
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CYBER THEFT
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Paint formulas, engine designs and insecticide research don't sound like prime targets for cyber-spies working at the behest of Russia or China. But these examples underline Washington's worry at aggressive Internet spying that is siphoning off U.S. economic and business trade secrets. In a report just released, more than a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies laid out concerns about how easily prized knowledge can be lifted and how determined other countries are to steal American expertise. The chief villains fingered in the report were Russia and China, countries long suspected of sponsoring or allowing online thievery but never named out of diplomatic nicety. The report points up a dark side to the Internet's potential. Praised for giving voice to protesters during Arab Spring, powering worldwide communication and spreading information and ideas quickly, the cyber-world now comes with another feature. It can be exploited by organized hackers, criminals and governments to steal trademark ideas and knowledge on a global scale. This country had better learn to guard itself.
benton.org/node/104937 | San Francisco Chronicle
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