Ars Technica

Republican Reps grilled Attorney General Loretta Lynch over why she chose not to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for sending classified data through her private e-mail server when she was Secretary of State. But the Obama appointee refused to answer, saying it would be "inappropriate" to respond to lawmakers' repeated questions. "While I understand that this investigation has generated significant public interest, as attorney general, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further on the underlying facts of the investigation or the legal basis for the team’s recommendation,” Attorney General Lynch told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

Halfway through the more than two-hour hearing, Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said that the Attorney General's refusal to prosecute and answer questions was an "abdication of your responsibility." Before that, he said Attorney General Lynch's decision not to prosecute "defies logic and the law." "Were a rank-and-file federal employee to do what Secretary Clinton did, they would face severe punishment, including termination, revocation of security clearances, or criminal prosecution," Chairman Goodlatte said. Chairman Goodlatte said that Clinton's "extreme carelessness" likely jeopardized the nation's security and that, if Clinton is elected president, "she cannot be trusted with the nation's most sensitive secrets." Attorney General Lynch told the committee that "all the relevant facts were considered and investigated thoroughly" before she accepted the recommendation last week by FBI Director James Comey not to prosecute.

[Commentary] We're in the midst of a major change sweeping the Web: the familiar HTTP prefix is rapidly being replaced by HTTPS. That extra "S" in an HTTPS URL means your connection is secure and that it's much harder for anyone else to see what you're doing. And on today's Web, everyone wants to see what you're doing. The push for HTTPS everywhere is about to get a big boost from Mozilla and Google when both companies' Web browsers begin to actively call out sites that still use HTTP. The plan is for browsers to start labeling HTTP connections as insecure.

In other words, instead of the green lock icon that indicates a connection is secure today, there will be a red icon to indicate when a connection is insecure. Eventually secure connections would not be labeled at all, they would be the assumed default. Unfortunately HTTPS advocates sometimes present HTTPS as synonymous with "security." The phrase "secure Web" gets used a lot in discussions, but as those three retailers illustrate, using HTTPS does not mean a website is necessarily secure. In fact, HTTPS says nothing about the website, the server it resides on, or what happens to whatever data you might give it. And therein ultimately lies the biggest challenge for HTTPS—people need to understand what it means.

Civil liberties Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) approved plans to create a law that will block terrorist content online. The counter terrorism directive also deals with terrorism training and financing as well as “Internet propaganda, and the misuse of the Internet for terrorist purposes." It was passed by 41 votes to four, with 10 abstentions meaning that the parliament’s chief negotiator, German MEP Monika Hohlmeier, can now start talks with the European ministers for justice and home affairs on a final text.

The initial draft proposal contained no reference to online activity, but Hohlmeier introduced two new sections taken in part from the EU law against child sex abuse. Under the latest wording, national authorities must take measures to ensure the prompt removal of illegal content hosted from within their territory that constitutes public incitement to commit a terrorist offence. If this is not feasible, they may take the necessary measures to block access to such content “while adhering to transparent procedure, adequate safeguards, and subject to judicial review.” “It’s easy to ban something on the Internet, but of course you can’t ban everything, and if people use terrorist-related Internet facilities, then they will be correspondingly dealt with," said Hohlmeier.

“Comcast does not have ‘data caps’ today,” the company wrote in a filing with the New York Public Service Commission on its proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

“Comcast announced almost two years ago that it was suspending enforcement of its prior 250GB excessive usage cap and that it would instead be trialing different pricing and packaging options to evaluate options for subscribers -- options that reflect evolving Internet usage and that are based on the desire to provide flexible consumption plans, including a plan that enables customers who want to use more data the option to pay more to do so as well as a plan for those who use less data the option to save some money… Some of these trials include a data usage plan that allows customers who use very little Internet each month to receive a discount on their service fee, and variations on a plan that provide customers with the ability to buy additional increments of usage if they exceed a base amount (starting at 300GB) that is included with their service.”

Comcast argued that the federal government is the appropriate entity to investigate data caps, and that, as a consequence, New York regulators shouldn’t bother examining them in their review of the Comcast/TWC merger -- even though Comcast could impose data caps on TWC customers who don't face them today.

Comcast has support for its acquisition of Time Warner Cable, much of it from politicians and organizations that benefit from its political and charitable donations.

A number of elected officials and charities have urged the Federal Communications Commission to think favorably of Comcast during its merger review.

Comcast fans also come from political organizations. Comcast is a prolific donor, giving money even to politicians and organizations who criticize the company.

The National Football League’s campaign to preserve Federal Communications Commission rules that allow local TV blackouts when games aren’t sold out has descended into astroturfing, with thousands of form letters signed by “football fans” arguing on behalf of keeping rules that can prevent fans from watching home games on TV.

Former NFL player Lynn Swann submitted 3,300 letters to the FCC urging the commission to maintain its sports blackout rule. In all, “more than 10,500 fans” have petitioned the commission to keep the rule, he wrote.

A Brazilian civil court in Vitória granted a preliminary injunction to a public prosecutor, prohibiting Apple and Google from distributing the anonymous sharing app Secret and Microsoft from distributing Secret's Windows Phone client, Cryptic.

The injunction also said that the three app store proprietors had to remotely delete the app off Brazilian users' devices. Chapter five, article 1 of the Brazilian constitution specifies that “the expression of thought is free, anonymity being forbidden,” and that was the legal justification upon which the Brazilian judge rested his decision, calling Secret's promises of anonymity unconstitutional.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft have 10 days to comply, or they'll be fined 20,000 reals a day (or $8,870).

Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer explained the company’s PrivateCore deal as an investment in Facebook’s future -- especially when viewed within the context of the company’s Internet.org effort to bring affordable Internet access (and Facebook) to the still-unwired parts of the planet.

The technology PrivateCore is developing, vCage, is a virtual “cage” in the telecom industry’s usage of the word. It is software that is intended to continuously assure that the servers it protects have not had their software tampered with or been exploited by malware. It also prevents physical access to the data running on the server, just as a locked cage in a colocation facility would.

The shift from copper landlines to fiber-based voice networks is continuing apace, and no one wants it to happen faster than Verizon.

Public interest groups and consumers have accused Verizon of letting copper networks deteriorate and using their degraded status to push fiber upgrades.

Verizon cut investment in its wireline business -- it had 80,600 wireline employees as of June 30, 2014, down from 84,700 in 2013, 88,600 in 2012, and 93,200 in 2011. Verizon also reduced capital expenditures from $2.95 billion in the six months ending June 30, 2013 to $2.73 billion in the six months ending June 30, 2014.

The Federal Communications Commission investigation of how network interconnection problems affect the quality of Internet service began when the FCC obtained the paid peering deals Netflix signed with Comcast and Verizon. The FCC has asked another six Internet service providers and content providers for copies of similar agreements, a commission official said.

The FCC will likely announce more details of its probe in the fall, but the public probably won't see any specific details of the contracts.

The FCC official would not say which companies other than Netflix, Comcast, and Verizon got the requests, although Wheeler said in June that he would try to get information from the Google-owned YouTube. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and other companies have direct connections with ISPs, the financial details of which have not been disclosed.