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Old 27-05-15, 08:26 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - May 30th, '15

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"Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others." – Verizon


"States should avoid all measures that weaken the security that individuals may enjoy online, such as backdoors, weak encryption standards and key escrows." – U.N. Report






































May 30th, 2015




Charter Communications Nears $55 Billion Deal for Time Warner Cable – Sources
Liana B. Baker and Greg Roumeliotis

Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N) is nearing an agreement to be acquired by smaller peer Charter Communications Inc (CHTR.O) for about $55 billion, combining the second and third largest U.S. cable operators, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

A deal would create a major rival to Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O), the biggest operator in the U.S. cable and broadband market, and marks a triumph for Charter, which was rejected by Time Warner Cable just last year.

News of another potential merger comes as the traditional pay television industry faces stagnating growth and new competition from over-the-web rivals offering individual services, like Netflix (NFLX.O), or packages of channels, such as Sony (6758.T). A larger company in this sector could achieve greater economies of scale, including in negotiations with programmers.

The cash-and-stock deal values Time Warner Cable at $195 per share, according to sources, and comes just one month after Comcast dropped its $45.2 billion merger agreement with Time Warner Cable, clinched in February 2014, over antitrust concerns.

Time Warner Cable shares closed at $171.18 on Friday. That is up substantially from the day before the original Comcast deal was announced last year, when the shares closed at $135.31.

A merger of Charter and Time Warner Cable, with other related deals, would eliminate one of the country's top Internet providers and control more than 20 percent of the broadband market, according to data from MoffettNathanson.

The Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal rejected by regulators would have created a provider with roughly 40 percent of the U.S. high-speed Internet market.

Charter hopes its deal for Time Warner Cable will be viewed more favourably by regulators. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler reached out to the chief executives of the two companies last week to convey that the agency is not opposed to any and all cable deals, The Wall Street Journal reported. Any deal would be considered on its own merits, the paper quoted Wheeler as saying.

One of the chief areas of concern for regulators in a merging industry is competition in Internet broadband.

The deal is expected to be announced on Tuesday.

Charter will also acquire Bright House Networks, the sixth-largest U.S. cable operator, for $10.4 billion, the sources added. The combined companies could have as many as 23 million total customers, just behind Comcast's 27.2 million customers.

Charter and Bright House had extended their merger talks after Comcast's deal with Time Warner Cable fell through. Charter's previous agreement with Bright House was contingent on Comcast's completion of the buyout of Time Warner Cable.

Media mogul John Malone, whose Liberty Broadband Corp (LBRDA.O) is Charter's largest shareholder, has advocated strongly for the deal, and Liberty is supporting the deal by acquiring $5 billion in new Charter stock, one of the people said.

Charter Chief Executive Tom Rutledge is expected to be CEO of the combined entity.

Charter was competing for Time Warner Cable against French telecommunications group Altice SA (ATCE.AS), which last week agreed to buy U.S. regional cable company Suddenlink Communications for $9.1 billion from private equity investors, making its first move across the Atlantic.

The sources asked not to be identified ahead of any official announcement. Time Warner Cable declined to comment, while Charter, Bright House and Altice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

BREAK-UP FEE

Time Warner Cable shareholders will have an option on the amount of the $195 per share acquisition price to be paid in cash - able to take either $100 or $115 in cash and the balance in Charter stock, one of the people said.

Charter asked for deal negotiations with Time Warner Cable to be speeded up after Altice expressed interest, one of the people said. Altice did not have enough time to address all of Time Warner Cable's concerns over a merger between the two of them, that person added.

Altice will not seek to outbid Charter for Time Warner Cable and may now consider other possibilities for acquisitions in the United States, two people said.

Bloomberg first reported on the deal.

Charter has agreed to pay Time Warner Cable a $2 billion break-up fee should their deal fall through, one of the sources said. Comcast did not have to pay a breakup fee when it ended its agreement to acquire Time Warner Cable last month.

Matthew Harrigan, an analyst with Wunderlich Securities, said he believes a Charter-Time Warner tie-up would have "a very high likelihood of passing muster with regulators" because the size of the combined company would not create the same anti-trust concerns regulators had about Comcast buying its smaller rival.

The questions, said Harrigan, were whether other bidders would emerge and how Charter shareholders will react to the offer price on Monday.

"You never know with these deals," he said. "This could morph into something different by (Tuesday) morning."

(Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; additional reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra in New York and Leila Abboud in Paris; editing by Leslie Adler, G Crosse and Peter Henderson)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/0...0OA15J20150525





AT&T Will Try To Make First Amendment Case Against Net Neutrality
Chris Morran

When you think of the Internet and First Amendment issues, your mind probably conjures up images of people being able to freely express themselves online through websites, videos, and social media. But if you’re AT&T, the First Amendment was created to give Internet service providers the authority to have some sort of editorial control over the data they carry.

AT&T is one of the many plaintiffs suing the FCC in the hope of gutting net neutrality a second time. And in a document filed with the court last week, the company outlines the issues to be raised in its lawsuit.

And right there under item #1 is: “Whether the FCC’s reclassification of broadband Internet access service as a telecommunications service subject to common carrier regulation under Title II violates the terms of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, and the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

AT&T also plans to raise First and Fifth Amendment issues with regard to interconnectivity (i.e., the connection of ISP networks to the backbone of the Internet) and whether wireless smartphone data should be classified as broadband.

The document sheds little light on AT&T’s actual arguments in these matters, but as Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin points out, Verizon tried something similar in its lawsuit that ultimately neutered the original net neutrality rules.

In 2012, Verizon argued that the 2010 Open Internet Order “infringes broadband network owners’ constitutional rights. It violates the First Amendment by stripping them of control over the transmission of speech on their networks.”

The company contended that “Broadband networks are the modern-day microphone by which their owners engage in First Amendment speech.” Note that this is not a statement about broadband users exercising their First Amendment rights on the Internet; it’s about the owners of broadband networks.

Verizon likened the operation of a broadband network to running a news organization on which it has “editorial discretion.”

“Just as a newspaper is entitled to decide which content to publish and where, broadband providers may feature some content over others,” wrote the company, making the case for why ISPs should be able to decide which content gets a higher priority over the rest of the Internet traffic. “Broadband providers could also give differential pricing or priority access to their over-the-top video services or other applications they provide, or otherwise feature that content.”

Of course, this sort of paid prioritization is exactly why the net neutrality rules were put into place, so that an ISP can’t simply decide that the company that pays it the most will reach customers faster. That puts the choice of available content in the hands of a company that you pay to do nothing more than act as a neutral conduit for your Internet access.

Without net neutrality, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast & others could not only prioritize those media outlets that pay them for the best access, but which are willing to put their companies in the best light. Sites like Consumerist and countless others that depend on a neutral Internet to be able to reach as many people as possible could be hamstrung in favor of deep-pocketed content providers who are not critical of the ISPs controlling the pipes of the Internet.
http://consumerist.com/2015/05/22/at...et-neutrality/





AT&T Wants to Choose Which Online Video Services Count Against Data Caps

AT&T fights proposed ban on data cap exemptions in DirecTV merger.
Jon Brodkin

AT&T doesn't want any rules preventing it from choosing which online video services count against its customers' data caps.

AT&T's "Sponsored Data" program already charges businesses, often in the ad industry, for the right to deliver services without counting against customers' mobile data caps. AT&T could potentially charge online video streaming services for exemptions from the caps imposed on AT&T home broadband subscribers as well or exempt its own online services from caps.

Though AT&T doesn't appear to have done this yet, the company this week asked the FCC to make sure it's allowed to do so. AT&T's request came after a group of companies and consumer advocacy organizations asked the Federal Communications Commission to prevent AT&T from granting data cap exemptions.

"To the extent that AT&T uses usage-based tracking, metering, or billing on its Broadband Internet Access Service, it shall not exempt any video service offered over broadband from such tracking, metering, or billing," said a May 12 filing by Cogent, Dish, Free Press, New America's Open Technology Institute, and Public Knowledge. The groups proposed that the FCC add that text as a condition on AT&T's proposed acquisition of satellite TV provider DirecTV. Separately, Netflix has argued that AT&T could use data caps and usage-based pricing methods to "advantage its own services" and "slow the development" of online video providers that compete against traditional pay-TV.

AT&T urged the FCC to reject the proposed condition in a filing on Tuesday. The company pointed out that the FCC's net neutrality rules don't specifically bar such data cap exemptions; instead, the FCC reserved the right to review specific practices to determine whether data caps are being used to harm competitors and consumers.

"The record does not support Opponents’ request that AT&T be barred from exempting any online video service from any usage-based tracking, metering, or billing in its broadband services," AT&T wrote. "Opponents offer no reason for the Commission to reverse these very recent conclusions and issue a blanket, abstract prohibition that would apply only to AT&T. Doing so would deprive AT&T customers of service offerings tailored to fit their usage and their budget. It would also distort competition by hindering AT&T’s efforts to close the gap and compete with cable’s higher-speed broadband products."

AT&T wrote that its broadband data limits are high enough to "accommodate the great majority of customers." Broadband providers with caps "that significantly impinge on the ability of customers to enjoy OVD [online video distribution] products will not be able to attract new customers or even to retain existing ones," AT&T wrote.

AT&T's caps are 150GB per month for DSL subscribers, 250GB per month for U-verse, 500GB or 1TB for GigaPower, with overage fees of $10 per additional 50GB.

The data caps and overage charges encourage "more efficient use of the network and ensures that lighter users of broadband services are not forced to subsidize the very heaviest users," AT&T wrote.

AT&T did not reveal any specific plans to exempt video services from caps, but noted that it is striking deals with certain online video providers to make it easier for customers to access the services. "The record contains evidence of agreements between AT&T and OVD providers that make it easier for AT&T broadband customers to use OVD services, and AT&T’s recently announced deal with Hulu is further evidence of that continued commitment," AT&T wrote. "To that end, AT&T will continue to have a strong incentive to implement any usage-based data policies in a way that accommodates its customers’ usage of OVD services."

AT&T announced its deal with Hulu earlier this month, saying an integrated offering will be available to customers later this year. AT&T did not say whether Hulu will be exempt from AT&T data caps. We asked AT&T today whether Hulu or any other video services will be exempt from AT&T data caps but have not heard back yet.

AT&T also offers its own online streaming video service to U-verse customers, but notes on the product page that "data charges may apply." Using this service does count against AT&T's caps, both on mobile and home broadband.

While AT&T's Sponsored Data program for mobile requires payment to be exempt from data caps, T-Mobile US has been exempting a variety of streaming music services from its LTE data limits without requiring payment.

AT&T's latest filing also urges the FCC to reject Netflix's proposal to prevent AT&T from charging online content providers for network interconnection.
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...nst-data-caps/





Netflix, HBO Streaming Video Traffic Increases As BitTorrent Declines
Sarah Perez

A new report released today shows the continued domination Netflix has on North American Internet traffic patterns. According to broadband networking company Sandvine, which periodically releases its findings on web usage, Netflix now accounts for 36.5 percent of downstream traffic on fixed networks during peak evening hours, which is up from the 34.9 percent reported in the second half of 2014 . In addition, the study found that HBO is also seeing some growth, thanks in part to the launch of its new, over-the-top streaming service HBO NOW and the popularity of its “Game of Thrones” program in particular.

During the season five premiere of “Game of Thrones,” HBO’s two streaming properties, HBO GO and HBO NOW, accounted for 4.1 percent of traffic on one U.S. fixed network – an increase of over 300 percent of their average levels. (HBO GO is the streaming service offered to pay TV subscribers, while HBO NOW is the recently launched standalone service designed to appeal to cord cutters.)

Before the launch of HBO NOW, HBO GO only accounted for 1 percent of downstream traffic in the North American region, an earlier report stated. But as of today’s report, HBO GO accounts for 3.7 percent of HBO’s traffic share while HBO NOW only accounts for 0.7 percent of peak downstream traffic. Sandvine says this doesn’t mean that HBO NOW’s impact is minimal, but is rather related to the recency of its launch and its still-limited access. (It’s only available via Apple products and select cable providers, like Cablevision).

It’s important to note, however, that Sandvine is measuring HBO traffic only on one network during a Sunday broadcast, which is a bigger traffic day for HBO. In other words, the data on HBO’s traffic growth is preliminary – Sandvine says a full report on HBO is expected later this year.

Of course, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” has made headlines for being one of the most pirated television shows ever, even breaking records further into its fifth season this year as the sixth episode saw as many has 3.5 million users downloading the show on peer-to-peer file sharing sites.

However, Sandvine notes that overall BitTorrent (file-sharing) traffic is declining, and today only accounts for 6.3 percent of total traffic in North America and 8.5 percent of Latin American traffic.

Other streaming video services are also seeing more modest increases. For example, Amazon Instant Video still only holds a fraction of the bandwidth when compared with Netflix, but its traffic is growing. A year ago, the service had 1.90 percent of peak downstream traffic – now it’s at 1.97 percent.

Elsewhere, YouTube still has a sizable traffic share with 15.56 percent of peak downstream traffic. Hulu accounts for 1.91 percent of peak downstream traffic, and newly launched over-the-top cable service Sling TV accounts for less than 1 percent. However, Sandvine notes that Sling’s service launched only a month before data was collected, so it may be too soon to truly understand its potential impact.

Mobile

On mobile networks, Sandvine found that Latin America’s mobile traffic is now increasingly controlled by just two companies: Facebook and Google. Combined, these two companies’ various properties, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Google Play, and more, account for more than 60 percent of mobile traffic.

Across North America, real-time entertainment is the most popular mobile traffic category with social networking apps coming in second. YouTube is also popular on mobile, with 21.2 percent of peak downstream traffic up from 17.7 percent in the first half of 2104.

Facebook’s traffic share has been increasing over the past 18 months as well, thanks to the addition of auto-playing videos which caused an average of 60 percent more Facebook consumption per user.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/net...rent-declines/





How Netflix Keeps Finding Itself on the Same Side as Regulators
James B. Stewart

Whatever the outcome of the latest proposed mergers and acquisitions in the media industry, a clear winner has already emerged, and it’s not even a party to any of the deals: Netflix, the streaming television pioneer.

To many in the cable and broadband businesses, the invisible hand of Netflix has been apparent in the failed Comcast-Time Warner Cable combination; in likely restrictions on the merger between AT&T and DirecTV; and in the Obama administration’s embrace of net neutrality, to cite just three prominent examples.

Indeed, the corporate philosophy of Netflix, which was once thought to be outgunned in Washington by the East Coast media conglomerates and their vast lobbying forces, now seems so pervasive that the Federal Communications Commission, or F.C.C., is being referred to by some media executives — half-jokingly and half-enviously — as the “N.C.C.”

But Netflix is hardly the only corporate beneficiary. To varying degrees, an array of Silicon Valley powerhouses — including Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple — gain from an open Internet and net neutrality, the notion that broadband service providers should treat all data equally, no matter its content, source or volume. That these views have prevailed over long-entrenched telecommunication and cable interests is yet further evidence of the technology industry’s growing political clout inside the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Netflix hasn’t yet taken a position on Charter Communications’ $67.1 billion purchases of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, which were announced this week. But if Charter’s chief executive, Thomas M. Rutledge, wants to avoid the fate of Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chairman, he’d better get on the phone with Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, before it’s too late.

“Netflix has raised some very legitimate issues, and they’ve done an excellent job of presenting their vision of the market,” said Gene Kimmelman, who dealt with Netflix while he was chief counsel at the antitrust division and now runs Public Knowledge, which supports an open Internet.

At the same time, he said, the influence of any one voice shouldn’t be exaggerated. “Their story just happened to fit perfectly into a broader narrative of the potential for harm to consumers,” Mr. Kimmelman said. But “Netflix’s role is definitely an important piece of the puzzle.”

From Netflix’s point of view, the fact that its views have gained traction with regulators is merely a recognition that its corporate philosophy, which it says has always been to put consumer interests first, coincides with sound public policy. It has opposed mergers like Comcast-Time Warner Cable and sought conditions in others that it feels pose a threat to broadband competition and innovation and to an open Internet.

“These broadband issues galvanized many — more than four million Americans, various companies and consumers groups — who all stressed the importance of a free and open Internet,” Corie Wright, director of public policy at Netflix, which is based in Los Gatos, Calif., told me this week. “To the extent the F.C.C. and Justice Department’s decisions reflect a strong focus on Internet consumers, that’s an encouraging sign of good policy-making.”

Netflix points out that its competitors also benefit from an unfettered Internet. So do other streaming services like Hulu and Amazon, as well as industry stalwarts like HBO and CBS that have started their own so-called over-the-top offerings. Verizon, which this month struck a deal to buy AOL, is also poised to introduce its own Internet television offering.

But Netflix, for better or worse, has become the symbol for net neutrality, which has become a key issue in how regulators analyze proposed cable and telecom mergers.

Of course, government antitrust and communications policy is supposed to benefit consumers, not any individual company or group of companies. “It’s fair to say Netflix has gotten something of a free pass,” said Scott Hemphill, visiting professor of antitrust and intellectual property at New York University School of Law. “This open Internet principle that’s in ascendance is certainly good for Netflix. It’s harder to say it’s good for consumers.”

A pivotal moment in the net neutrality struggle came last year when Netflix agreed to pay Comcast so-called interconnection fees, a deal that Netflix’s Mr. Hastings last month called a “deal with the devil.” (While Comcast has drawn the brunt of Mr. Hastings’s ire, Netflix also reached similar interconnection deals with every other major Internet service provider.)

But securing payment from Netflix for fast and more reliable access may have been a Pyrrhic victory for Comcast and the other the broadband providers. Until then the notion of net neutrality had been something of an abstraction. But when Netflix subscribers found their programs constantly interrupted for “buffering” (an interruption to download more data), the ability of Internet providers to play favorites seemed all too real. Once Netflix started paying fees to Comcast, its customers suddenly found their service improved substantially.

A Comcast spokeswoman declined to comment. But Comcast has offered a different narrative, asserting that Cogent Communications, an intermediary that lacked adequate data capacity, caused Netflix’s problems. Once Netflix paid Comcast’s interconnection fee and connected directly to Comcast’s network, the bottleneck largely vanished.

Still, Netflix’s experience with Comcast became Exhibit A with the F.C.C. when Netflix opposed the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. “The combined company would possess even more anti-competitive leverage to charge arbitrary interconnection tolls for access to their customers,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders opposing the merger.

It probably didn’t hurt Netflix’s case that just about everyone in Washington watches the hit Netflix series “House of Cards,” and Comcast is the dominant Internet provider there. Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, said he, too, had suffered buffering problems, which he called “exasperating.”

Mr. Wheeler didn’t mention Netflix in his statement last month praising Comcast’s decision to abandon its bid for Time Warner Cable, which he called “in the best interests of consumers.” But he echoed Netflix’s position in calling the merger an “unacceptable risk to competition and innovation” given ”the growing importance of high-speed broadband to online video and innovative new services.”

Despite Netflix’s arguments that it shouldn’t have to pay fees to a broadband provider, that proposition is hardly self-evident. The fees Netflix so fiercely opposes are analogous to those found in many industries, such as credit cards, where both consumers and merchants pay the credit card companies. “It’s hard to say if these fees are good or bad for consumers,” Professor Hemphill said.

But Netflix has aggressively pushed the argument that interconnection fees are different because the gatekeepers have too much power and an incentive to abuse it. If regulators continue to sympathize with Netflix’s position, AT&T may have to make at least some of the concessions in its proposed $48 billion takeover of DirecTV. Netflix isn’t opposing the merger outright, but in a letter this month, and in meetings with F.C.C. officials, it has raised concerns similar to those in the Comcast merger: that a combined AT&T-DirecTV has an incentive to protect its existing cable program bundles by imposing data caps or usage fees that disadvantage Netflix and other streaming services using its broadband network.

And now there’s Charter’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Even if Netflix doesn’t come out as forcefully against the merger as it did with the Comcast deal, its position will surely reverberate during the government’s review.

This week, Charter seemed already to be anticipating Netflix’s likely objections and pledged fealty to the notion of net neutrality. “We have no plans to block, throttle or engage in paid prioritization because our customers demand an open Internet,” Mr. Rutledge said in a conference call announcing the deal.

But if regulators apply the same reasoning they appeared to have used in analyzing the Comcast bid, that may not be enough.

It’s true that a combined Charter-Time Warner Cable wouldn’t be nearly as large, giving it about 30 percent of the high-speed broadband market, nor does it own a content provider like NBCUniversal. But viewed as a national market, Internet service is already highly concentrated, with only a few major competitors. Arguing the proposition that combining three of them into one is in consumers’ interest may be tough given that the Obama administration has publicly complained about the lack of broadband competition.

Senator Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat who strongly opposed the Comcast deal, has already sent letters to the Justice Department and F.C.C. saying, “Any deal of this size and scope warrants scrutiny.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/bu...egulators.html





F.C.C. Chief Seeks Broadband Plan to Aid the Poor
Rebecca R. Ruiz

For 30 years, the federal government has helped millions of low-income Americans pay their phone bills, saying that telephone service is critical to summoning medical help, seeking work and, ultimately, climbing out of poverty. Now, the nation’s top communications regulator will propose offering those same people subsidized access to broadband Internet.

On Thursday, that regulator, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will circulate a plan to his fellow commissioners suggesting sweeping changes to a $1.7 billion subsidy program charged with ensuring that all Americans have affordable access to advanced telecommunications services, according to senior agency officials.

The effort is the F.C.C.’s strongest recognition yet that high-speed Internet access is as essential to economic well-being as good transportation and telephone service. Mr. Wheeler will propose potentially giving recipients a choice of phone service, Internet service or a mix of both, the officials said. He will also suggest new measures to curb fraud, a source of criticism in recent years.

While the plan is likely to secure the support of the F.C.C.’s Democratic majority in a vote next month, it is almost certain to also set off fierce debate in Washington. The subsidy program, Lifeline, has faced extensive scrutiny. And many of Mr. Wheeler’s previous actions, including his successful push to regulate broadband Internet as a public utility, have drawn indignation from opponents.

More than 12 million households now participate in Lifeline, which was created in 1985 by the Reagan administration to subsidize landline telephone service. In 2008, the program was extended to cover the cost of mobile phones. Enrollment rose sharply — as did abuse, with some households receiving more than their single allowed subsidy. To qualify, a household must have an income at or below 135 percent of the federal poverty line, or must participate in a program like Medicaid or food stamps.

Gene Kimmelman, who lobbied as a consumer advocate to create Lifeline, said the program was meant to keep people from having to choose between essentials like food, electricity and phone service. Now, he said, Internet access needed to be added to the list.

“Broadband is every bit as important today as plain old phone service was 30 years ago,” said Mr. Kimmelman, a former Justice Department official who is now chief executive of Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group.

Mr. Wheeler’s proposal is an effort to bridge the so-called digital divide, the ever-widening economic and social inequalities of those with access to technology and those without it. In 2000, 3 percent of Americans had broadband at home, according to Pew Research. In 2013, 70 percent did. But the adoption of broadband in low-income and minority households has not kept pace.

According to Pew data from 2013, the most recent year for which numbers are available, 54 percent of those making less than $30,000 a year have broadband, compared with 88 percent of those making more than $75,000. The same survey found that 53 percent of Hispanics and 64 percent of blacks in the United States have high-speed Internet at home, compared with 74 percent of whites.

For recipients like Sharell Harmon, a 23-year-old single mother from Elkins, W.Va., the Lifeline program has made a big difference.

“Without a phone, I couldn’t connect with my job, my kids’ doctors or their schools,” said Ms. Harmon, who works full time in construction while pursuing a college degree. “You don’t realize how many people you have to talk to until you can’t.”

Under her plan, she is entitled to 250 minutes of talk time and 1,000 text messages a month, limits she says she never comes close to crossing. But, Ms. Harmon said, she also needs high-speed Internet to feel fully connected and has struggled to pay her broadband bill.

“Everything is online these days,” said Ms. Harmon, who said she supported any effort to allow the subsidy to be applied to broadband. “I take classes online, do my schoolwork. My kids play math and phonics games.”

A vote on Mr. Wheeler’s proposal is expected on June 18, according to the senior agency officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing a plan that had not yet been circulated among all five commissioners. If the plan wins majority approval, as expected, the antifraud measures would take effect soon after. The commission would then discuss the specifics of incorporating broadband into the program, and write rules to govern it. A final vote on the plan could come before the end of the year.

The Lifeline program offers each household a $9.25 monthly subsidy toward the cost of service; it was not until 2008, when the benefit was extended to prepaid mobile phones, which cost less than landlines, that some phone connections became fully free for Lifeline recipients. Mr. Wheeler is proposing setting service standards, which could include a specified number of mobile minutes and minimum broadband speed. Debate over just how far a $9.25 credit can go in covering the cost of broadband is sure to arise.

The plan will almost certainly face strong criticism. Some Republicans recently expressed skepticism that the F.C.C. has fully rooted out abuse from the program. In April 2014, the Justice Department indicted three people on charges that they defrauded the agency of $32 million in false Lifeline claims from September 2009 to March 2011.

In 2012, the F.C.C. instituted stricter safeguards, including the establishment of a database that crosschecked that no household received more than one subsidy. In March, the Government Accountability Office issued a report evaluating the effect of those changes. It said that the number of participating households had fallen to about 12 million in 2014 from about 18 million in 2012, suggesting more households were being held to one subsidy.

“The reforms had some impact, but whether they’ve reduced all of the fraud, we can’t tell,” said Michael E. Clements, an acting director at the G.A.O. who helped write the report. Mr. Clements said that of the 11 primary reforms the F.C.C. had said it would make in 2012, four had yet to be completed, according to his office’s recent review.

In response to the report, Michael O’Rielly, a Republican commissioner on the F.C.C., called the Lifeline program “inefficient, costly and in serious need of review.”

Mr. Wheeler’s push for new safeguards may be partly an effort to pre-emptively answer the program’s critics. Service providers currently must verify participants’ eligibility for Lifeline, and under the new plan, they would be required to keep proof of that eligibility and make it available if audited, senior F.C.C. officials said.

There has been speculation in Washington for months about changes to the program. A Senate subcommittee hearing is already scheduled for June 2 to examine its effectiveness and ways to prevent further abuse. The office of the senator who called the hearing, Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“The program has been under attack, and the F.C.C. is currently facing incredible political pressure,” said Michael Scurato, policy director of the National Hispanic Media Coalition. “It wasn’t always this contentious to make sure our neighbors in this country are connected to communications of the day.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/bu...-the-poor.html





Republicans Want to Kill the FCC's Plan to Subsidize Internet for the Poor

The 'Obama phone' debate rages on
Colin Lecher

This week, the FCC proposed offering internet subsidies to poor Americans, and Republicans in Congress are already lining up to slam the idea.

The FCC's proposal is an overhaul of the agency's "Lifeline" program, which provides subsidies on phone service to poor Americans — a program that's been widely criticized by Republicans as an "Obama phone" hand-out. (This is erroneous: the program was actually created under Ronald Reagan.) Republicans have already moved to crack down on the Lifeline phone program in some parts of the country, claiming that it's rife with fraud. But while the FCC has indeed moved to mollify those concerns, the crackdown in some parts of the country has been detrimental to poor Americans relying on the program.

With that backdrop, it may not be too surprising that Republicans were ready to criticize the move, as National Journal reports. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune has already called the program an example of "waste, fraud, abuse, and a pervasive lack of accountability," according to the Journal, while Sen. David Vitter said the "FCC has failed to manage Lifeline efficiently in its current form, and I cannot support any expansion of a program that has so few safeguards in place to protect the legitimacy of the program and the American taxpayers who pay into it."

That's surely a disappointment to the FCC, which was hoping to get Republicans on board with the plan by only allowing people to put the existing phone credit toward broadband service instead of directly expanding the program, while providing checks to prevent abuse. The FCC will likely vote on whether to move ahead with the proposal at a June 18th meeting.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/29/8...ternet-subsidy





A Gigabit Fiber Startup Will Compete With Comcast in Detroit
Jason Koebler

Detroit is in better shape today than it was during the height of the recession, when it was unclear whether American car manufacturers would ever recover. But a startup internet service provider thinks that, in order to secure the long-term economic future of the city, it's going to need to attract a new set of tech businesses with ultra high speed internet.

At the moment, Detroit's residents and many of its businesses are served by Comcast, whose fastest internet speeds in the city max out at 105 Mb/s. Rocket Fiber, which is set to start serving businesses and residents this fall, is planning on offering gigabit internet speeds similar to those of Google Fiber for $70 per month (for home service), which is $45 cheaper than what Comcast charges for its fastest residential service. Business-class service pricing varies.

The hope is that fiber internet service will attract new companies as it has in places like Kansas City, which is served by Google Fiber, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, which has built out its own fiber internet service.

"We saw Google was doing it in Kansas, and then we visited Kansas City and saw the entrepreneurs moving there, the new technology startups happening there," Edi Demaj, one of Rocket Fiber's cofounders, told me. "We want to put the city on the map from a technology standpoint, we want to see Detroit come back."

"If we do something similar to what they are doing in Kansas, we thought it'd be huge for Detroit," he added. "A lot of companies moved to Kansas that would have never moved to Kansas. We want to make sure Detroit is one of a handful of cities to have gigabit service to the residence."

The startup is backed by Rock Ventures, an umbrella company owned by Dan Gilbert that has heavily invested in (and owns) many companies in and around Detroit (Gilbert also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers and is chairman of Quicken Loans). So far, the company has laid a 5.5 mile fiber "backbone" around the city's downtown area, and it will begin lighting up residences and businesses later this year.

As with other cities that have built new fiber networks, the city's poorest areas will not be served immediately. The thinking in other cities has been that there is simply not the demand or population density (read: people who can afford the service) necessary to offer the fastest internet speeds and remain profitable if the service is built out to every corner of a city from the get-go. It’s a point that raised contention in Kansas City and it’s a problem that has been seen again and again all over the country, in areas both urban and rural.

Rocket Fiber says it plans to expand to the city's midtown area in 2016 and the rest of the city and suburbs by 2017.

Overall, it's taken roughly two years to get to this point, where the company is about ready to actually start providing internet service. About 2,000 people have formally expressed interest so far.

"We're laying our own physical infrastructure, which is a capital-intensive operation," Christina Mathes, the company's vice president of client experience, told me. "The plan is to cover as much of the city as we can and then look into the suburbs."

As I reported Tuesday, Rocket Fiber is one of a handful of internet startups around the country that see an opening created by consumers' dissatisfaction with massive telecom companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable. The company, like others in this space, emphasizes customers' ability to call a phone number and speak to a real human, and its founders are saying the right things about wanting to help the community they're serving. The company says that if things go well in Detroit it will expand to other cities in other states toward the end of the decade.

"The broadband situation here is bad, and we're all extremely passionate about Detroit—we've been here for years now" Demaj said. "We think that money follows money. We need to build the things we know make a great city if we actually want to have a great city."
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-g...ast-in-detroit





If You Are Using Hola VPN, You Need To Know This (Hint: Botnet And Bandwidth)
Anu Passary

There are no free meals in this world and Hola users could discover the bitter truth the hard way.

Are you using the free Hola virtual private network (VPN)? Then you're in trouble as you've made yourself susceptible to botnets and while on the subject, your bandwidth is also being sold for use by Hola.

Before you think of taking legal action hold on to your horses as you inadvertently agreed to this when you signed up for the popular VPN—it's part of the agreement.

Israel-based Hola is subtly selling the "idle resources" of a user via a separate brand, Luminati. This basically enables any individual to purchase bulk traffic and readdress the same to the targeted site to wage a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. And there bad news is you cannot opt out of it.

"When a user installs Hola, he becomes a VPN endpoint, and other users of the Hola network may exit through his internet connection and take on his IP. This is what makes it free: Hola does not pay for the bandwidth that its VPN uses at all, and there is no user opt out for this," reveals Frederick Brennan, the moderator of the 8chan forum who brought the issue to light.

So if you installed the Hola Better Internet Chrome plug-in or the Hola Unblocker add-on for Firefox, you're unwittingly participating in botnets.

For the unfamiliar, Hola helps in masking a user's location and, therefore, since the VPN uses different countries to route the traffic it is popular with users as they can bypass regional restrictions.

Brennan also divulged that the 8chan site had also been a victim of several DoS attacks from the network, including one waged from a hacker who went by the handle BUI.

"An attacker used the Luminati network to send thousands of legitimate-looking [requests to 8chan] in 30 seconds, representing a 100x spike over peak traffic," revealed Brennan

Brennan revealed that Hola which boasts several million users has also started selling the bandwidth access via Luminati.

"They recently ... realized that they basically have a 9 million IP strong botnet on their hands, and they began selling access to this botnet," he said.

Hola's founder Ofer Vilenski does not deny any of the claims and says that the company has this information available in its FAQs. However, Hola did not make any mention of Luminati on its site prior to Wednesday and seems to have updated its FAQs to include Luminati brand's activities recently.

"Hola generates revenue by selling a commercial version of the Hola VPN service to businesses (through our Luminati brand). This is what allows us to keep Hola free for our users. Users who want to enjoy the Hola network without contributing their idle resources can do so by joining the Hola premium service for $5 per month (or $45 per year)," notes the company's FAQs.

Vilenski is also aware how the Luminati VPN network was used to hack 8chan and how the hacker opted to hack 8chan via their network even though he have waged the attack via any other commercial VPN network.

Hola terminated the hacker's account and communicated the same to Brennan. The company says that even though it screens users of its commercial network, BUI somehow slipped past. However, the company has now made "adjustments."

With the incident bringing to light the loops lurking while using VPNs, users are advised to read the fine print carefully before they fall for the free trap.
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/56...-bandwidth.htm





Ross Ulbricht, Creator of Silk Road Website, Is Sentenced to Life in Prison
Benjamin Weiser

Ross W. Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a notorious online marketplace for the sale of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other illegal drugs, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Ulbricht, 31, was sentenced by the judge, Katherine B. Forrest, for his role as what prosecutors described as “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise.”

Mr. Ulbricht had faced a minimum of 20 years in prison on one of the counts for which he was convicted. But in handing down a much longer sentence, Judge Forrest told Mr. Ulbricht that “what you did in connection with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.”

Mr. Ulbricht’s novel high-tech drug bazaar operated in a hidden part of the Internet sometimes known as the dark web, which allowed deals to be made anonymously and out of the reach of law enforcement. In Silk Road’s nearly three years of operation, over 1.5 million transactions were carried out involving several thousand seller accounts and more than 100,000 buyer accounts, the authorities have said.

Transactions were made using the virtual currency Bitcoin, and Mr. Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, took in millions of dollars in commissions, prosecutors have said. They said Mr. Ulbricht had “developed a blueprint for a new way to use the Internet to undermine the law and facilitate criminal transactions,” and that his conviction was “the first of its kind, and his sentencing is being closely watched.”

Judge Forrest echoed that message. “What you did was unprecedented,” she told Mr. Ulbricht, “and in breaking that ground as the first person,” he had to pay the consequences. Anyone who might consider doing something similar, the judge added, needed to understand clearly “and without equivocation that if you break the law this way, there will be very serious consequences.”

Mr. Ulbricht was convicted in February on charges that included engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and distributing narcotics on the Internet, each of which carried potential life terms. The government had also alleged that he had solicited the murders of people he saw as threats to his operation, and that at least six deaths were attributable to drugs bought on the site.

“Make no mistake, Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

At the hearing, the mother of one such victim and the father of another each delivered emotional statements to the judge. The father, identified as Richard, whose 25-year-old son had died after using heroin that prosecutors said was purchased on Silk Road, accused Mr. Ulbricht of being driven by greed in making drugs easily available to vulnerable people.

“I strongly believe that my son would be here today if Ross Ulbricht had not created Silk Road,” he said, adding, “All Ross Ulbricht cared about was his growing pile of bitcoins.”

Mr. Ulbricht, wearing dark blue jail garb, sat quietly between two of his lawyers, Joshua L. Dratel and Lindsay A. Lewis, during the proceeding, and later addressed the judge.

Standing with his hands clasped before him, he spoke without notes for about 10 minutes, sniffling and appearing to choke back tears.

“I remember clearly why I created the Silk Road,” Mr. Ulbricht said. “I wanted to empower people to be able to make choices in their lives, for themselves and to have privacy and anonymity.

“I’m not saying that because I want to justify anything that’s happened. I just want to set the record straight, because from my point of view, I’m not a self-centered sociopathic person that was trying to express some kind of inner badness. I just made some very serious mistakes.”

Mr. Ulbricht, who obtained a B.S. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2006 and a master’s in materials science and engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 2009, drew at one point on his background.

He said that he realized that “the laws of nature are much like the laws of man.”

“Gravity doesn’t care if you agree with it — if you jump off a cliff you are still going to get hurt. And even though I didn’t agree with the law, I still have been convicted of a crime and must be punished. I understand that now and I respect the law and authority now.”

Judge Forrest acknowledged that Mr. Ulbricht did not fit a “typical criminal profile.”

But, the judge added: “There must be no doubt that no one is above the law, no matter the education or the privileges. All stand equal before the law. There must be no doubt that you cannot run a massive criminal enterprise and, because it occurred over the Internet, minimize the crime committed on that basis.” She also ordered Mr. Ulbricht to forfeit $184 million. He showed no emotion as the life sentence was imposed.

After the proceeding, Mr. Dratel said the case would be appealed. “We have issues with the prejudice of uncharged unproven conduct that drove this sentence dramatically. It was not about the crime that he was convicted of. This was about appeals to emotion.” He added, “I’m disappointed tremendously.”

Mr. Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn, said her son was “looking at his life being destroyed.”

“I know that if Ross walked out of that prison tomorrow law enforcement would never hear from him again,” Ms. Ulbricht said, adding, “Ross is no more a threat to society than I am.”

During his trial, Mr. Ulbricht’s defense maintained that he had created the website but had turned it over to others before being lured back in and set up to take the fall. (The site was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after Mr. Ulbricht was arrested in 2013.) Mr. Dratel had denied that his client was the mysterious Dread Pirate Roberts, a character drawn from the book and movie “The Princess Bride.”

But Judge Forrest left no doubt that she believed he was behind the enterprise, planning it carefully and intending to flout the law. “You were captain of the ship as Dread Pirate Roberts and you made your own law,” she said.

She dismissed the defense’s argument that because Silk Road had operated online, it was safer than traditional street-level drug dealing. She described how Silk Road had expanded the market for drugs and the demand by users, and cited collateral damage, from the violence associated with drug production overseas to addiction, crime and the destruction of families. Silk Road, she said, was just “a step in the chain.”

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/ny...in-prison.html





Here’s How Much Corporations Paid US Senators to Fast-Track the TPP Bill

Critics of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle

A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed.

“We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate.

That vote, to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress, comes as the president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech online.

Those critics are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the sudden flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle.

Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. The US Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – the fast-tracking bill – by a 65-33 margin on 14 May. Last Thursday, the Senate voted 62-38 to bring the debate on TPA to a close.

Those impressive majorities follow months of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing by the world’s most well-heeled multinational corporations with just a handful of holdouts.

Using data from the Federal Election Commission, this chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate:

• Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes.

• The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.

• The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.

The amounts given rise dramatically when looking at how much each senator running for re-election received.

Two days before the fast-track vote, Obama was a few votes shy of having the filibuster-proof majority he needed. Ron Wyden and seven other Senate Democrats announced they were on the fence on 12 May, distinguishing themselves from the Senate’s 54 Republicans and handful of Democrats as the votes to sway.

• In just 24 hours, Wyden and five of those Democratic holdouts – Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, and Bill Nelson of Florida – caved and voted for fast-track.

• Bennet, Murray, and Wyden – all running for re-election in 2016 – received $105,900 between the three of them. Bennet, who comes from the more purple state of Colorado, got $53,700 in corporate campaign donations between January and March 2015, according to Channing’s research.

• Almost 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate voted for fast-track – the only two non-votes on TPA were a Republican from Louisiana and a Republican from Alaska.

• Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who is the former US trade representative, has been one of the loudest proponents of the TPP. He received $119,700 from 14 different corporations between January and March, most of which comes from donations from Goldman Sachs ($70,600), Pfizer ($15,700), and Procter & Gamble ($12,900). Portman is expected to run against former Ohio governor Ted Strickland in 2016 in one of the most politically competitive states in the country.

• Seven Republicans who voted “yea” to fast-track and are also running for re-election next year cleaned up between January and March. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia received $102,500 in corporate contributions. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, best known for proposing a Monsanto-written bill in 2013 that became known as the Monsanto Protection Act, received $77,900 – $13,500 of which came from Monsanto.

• Arizona senator and former presidential candidate John McCain received $51,700 in the first quarter of 2015. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina received $60,000 in corporate donations. Eighty-one-year-old senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is running for his seventh Senate term, received $35,000. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who will be running for his first full six-year term in 2016, received $67,500 from pro-TPP corporations.

“It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days,” said Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us. “They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist.

“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”
http://www.theguardian.com/business/...fast-track-tpp





Stop Calling the TPP a Trade Agreement – It Isn’t.
Dave Johnson

This is a message to activists trying to fight the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Stop calling the TPP a “trade” agreement. TPP is a corporate/investor rights agreement, not a trade agreement. Trade is a good thing; TPP is not. Every time you use the word trade in association with the TPP, you are helping the other side.

Trade is a propaganda word. It short-circuits thinking. People hear trade and the brain stops working. People think, “Of course, trade is good.” And that ends the discussion.

Calling TPP a trade agreement lets the pro-TPP people argue that TPP is about trade instead of what it is really about. It diverts attention from the real problem. It enables advocates to say things like, “95 percent of the world lives outside the US” as if that has anything to do with TPP. It lets them say, “We know that exports support American jobs” to sell a corporate rights agreement. It enables them to say nonsense like this about a corporate rights agreement designed to send American jobs to Vietnam so a few “investors” can pocket the wage difference: “Exports of US goods and services supported an estimated 9.8 million American jobs, including 25 percent of all manufacturing jobs … and those export-supported jobs pay 13 to 18 percent higher than the national average wage.”

Trade is good. Opening up the border so you can get bananas and they can get fertilizer is trade because they have a climate that lets them grow bananas and you already have a fertilizer plant. Enabling companies to move $30/hour jobs to countries with $.60/hour wages so a few billionaires can pocket the difference is not trade.

Calling TPP a trade agreement lets TPP supporters say people opposed to TPP are “anti-trade.”

TPP Is a Corporate/Investor Rights Agreement

TPP is a corporate/investor rights agreement, and that is the problem.

TPP extends patents, copyrights and other monopolies so investors can collect “rents.”

TPP elevates corporations and corporate profits to and above the level of governments. TPP lets corporations sue governments for laws and regulations that cause them to be less profitable. Enabling tobacco companies to sue governments because anti-smoking campaigns limit profits has nothing to do with trade. Enabling corporations to sue states that try to regulate fracking has nothing to do with trade.

While giving corporations a special channel to sue governments, labor, environmental, consumer and other “stakeholder” organizations do not get a channel for enforcement. This helps enable corporations to break unions, force wages down and pollute without cost. This increases the power of corporations over governments – and us.

Who Says?

Paul Krugman, “This Is Not A Trade Agreement”:

One thing that should be totally obvious, however, is that it’s off-point and insulting to offer an off-the-shelf lecture on how trade is good because of comparative advantage, and protectionists are dumb. For this is not a trade agreement. It’s about intellectual property and dispute settlement; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharmaceutical companies and firms that want to sue governments.

Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in “No, the TPP Won’t Be Good for the Middle Class”:

…TPP (like nearly all trade agreements the US signs) is not a ‘free trade agreement’ — instead it’s a treaty that will specify just who will be protected from international competition and who will not. And the strongest and most comprehensive protections offered are by far those for US corporate interests. Finally, there are international economic agreements that the United States could be negotiating to help the American middle class. They would look nothing like the TPP.

Jim Hightower, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It’s a corporate coup d’etat – against us!”:

TPP is a ‘trade deal’ that mostly does not deal with trade. In fact, of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters!

The other two dozen chapters amount to a devilish ‘partnership’ for corporate protectionism. They create sweeping new ‘rights’ and escape hatches to protect multinational corporations from accountability to our governments… and to us.

On OurFuture.org, “Economist Jeffrey Sachs Says NO to the TPP and the TAFTA Trade Treaties”:

Without touching on the unpopular Fast-Track mechanism necessary to pass these two treaties, Sachs laid out five reasons why, on the substance, they should not be passed or ratified:

1. They are not trade treaties, but agreements aimed at protecting investors.

Josh Barro, “But What Does the Trade Deal Mean if You’re Not a Cheesemaker?”:

Much of the controversy is because the TPP isn’t really (just) a trade agreement. (There’s a reason I called it an ‘economic agreement’ at the top.) A lot of it is about labor, environmental standards, intellectual property and access to markets for services like banking and accounting. And in contrast with the tariff cuts, there’s a lot more reason to worry that some of the agreement’s non-trade provisions would hurt the world economy even as they benefited specific industries.

Techdirt, “If You Really Think TPP Is About ‘Trade’ Then Your Analysis Is Already Wrong”:

Instead, trade agreements have become a sort of secret playground for big corporations to abuse the process and force favorable regulations to be put in place around the globe.

… If you make the facile assumption that the TPP is actually about free trade, then you might be confused about all the hubbub about it. If you actually take the time to understand that much of what’s in there has nothing to do with free trade and, in fact, may be the opposite of free trade, you realize why there’s so much concern.

Timothy B. Lee at Vox, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is great for elites. Is it good for anyone else?”:

In the past, debates about trade deals have mostly been about trade. … In contrast, debates over the TPP mostly haven’t focused on its trade provisions.

[. . .] As the opportunities for trade liberalization have dwindled, the nature of trade agreements has shifted. They’re no longer just about removing barriers to trade. They’ve become a mechanism for setting global economic rules more generally.

… We expect the laws that govern our economic lives will be made in a transparent, representative, and accountable fashion. The TPP negotiation process is none of these — it’s secretive, it’s dominated by powerful insiders, and it provides little opportunity for public input.

Former IMF chief economist [Simon Johnson] on the problems with TPP:

The Trans Pacific Partnership is a notorious, secretly negotiated trade deal; from leaks we know that it continues ‘Investor State Resolution’ clauses that allow foreign companies to sue to overturn national labor and environmental laws. Johnson’s analysis stresses that trade agreements can be good for countries, but they aren’t necessarily good — and when they’re negotiated in secret, they rarely go well.

Stop calling TPP a trade agreement. It is a corporate/investor rights agreement.
http://billmoyers.com/2015/05/27/sto...greement-isnt/





AdBlock Plus Secures Another Court Victory in Germany
Leo Kelion

AdBlock Plus has successfully defended itself in court for the second time in five weeks.

The service prevents ads from appearing on websites unless it has given them permission to be displayed.

German broadcasters RTL and ProSiebenSat.1 had argued that browser plug-in was anti-competitive and threatened their ability to offer users content for "free".

However, a court in Munich ruled in favour of AdBlock's owner Eyeo.

Ben Williams, a spokesman for the German company, told the BBC the dispute had been the biggest one it had faced to date "just by nature of the people involved and the amount of claims that they had".

"This is the fourth time that massive publishers have brought legal proceedings against our start-up," he added in a follow-up email.

"Thankfully, the court sided with users and with compromise. So, we're pleased to say that Adblock Plus will continue to provide users with a tool that helps them control their internet experience.

"At the same time we will endeavour to work with publishers, advertisers and content creators to encourage non-intrusive ads, discover new ways to make ads better and press forward to a more sustainable internet ecosystem."

A spokeswoman for RTL responded: "We are weighing a possible course of action against the ruling and assessing the prospects of an appeal."

Last month Eyeo successfully defended itself against similar claims by two other German publishers - Die Zeit and Handelsblatt - at a court in Hamburg.

It still faces a further case brought by another local publisher, Axel Springer, in Cologne.

White list

Eyeo offers its Adblock software to the public without charge, but makes money by operating a "white list" of adverts that it allows to get through its filters.

Such ads must meet certain criteria. For instance they must not include animations or sounds and cannot be pop-ups that cover other content.

Website operators that want ads on their site added to the white list must seek permission.

Although Eyeo states that "no one can buy their way" onto Adblock Plus' list, it does charge fees for what it terms "support services", the details of which are not made public.

The firm says its PC browser plug-in has been downloaded about 400 million times.

It also recently released a version for Android-powered devices that it says has been downloaded more than 220,000 times, and it promises an iOS version soon.

However, as part of its ruling the court in Munich said that too few people were using Eyeo's products for it to be judged to have a "dominant" position that might justify an antitrust intervention.

Tracking protection

Adblock Plus is not the only tool threatening the business model of sites that provide free content and make money from selling their readers' "eyeballs" to advertisers.

Mozilla is also promoting the optional Tracking Protection feature for its Firefox browser, which stops many internet cookies from being downloaded.

This limits the ability of affected sites to show personalised adverts, which are worth more money to them.

Earlier this week, one of the organisation's former employees published a paper suggesting that use of the tool sped up page load times by about 44%. She called on the organisation to switch the setting on by default.

"The internet's principal revenue model leads to misaligned incentives between users, advertisers, and content providers, essentially creating a race to the bottom," Monica Chew wrote.

"Industry wields the most political and economic power, so it is up to users and user agents to advocate for the interests of people."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32903235





Leaked Document Shows Europe Would Fight UK Plans to Block Porn
Mark Wilson

Before the UK elections earlier in the month, David Cameron spoke about his desire to clean up the internet. Pulling -- as he is wont to do -- on parental heartstrings, he suggested that access to porn on computers and mobiles should be blocked by default unless users specifically requested access to it. This opt-in system was mentioned again in the run-up to the election as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Sajid Javid assured peopled that the party "will age restrict online porn".

But it's not quite that simple. There is the small problem of Europe. A leaked EU Council document shows that plans are afoot to stop Cameron's plans in its tracks -- and with the UK on the verge of trying to debate a better deal for itself within Europe, the Prime Minister is not in a particularly strong position for negotiating on the issue.

Cameron has a fight on his hands, it seems, if he wants to deliver on his promise that "we need to protect our children from hardcore pornography". Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that the EU could make it illegal for ISPs and mobile companies to automatically block access to obscene material. Rather than implementing a default block on pornography, the Council of the European Union believes that users should opt in to web filtering and be able to opt out again at any time; this is precisely the opposite to the way Cameron would like things to work.

The subject is written about in a document on the topic on net neutrality. It suggests that users would have to explicitly ask their providers to block access to content, and they should retain the ability to "withdraw this consent at any time". As reported by The Independent, David Carr from the advisory board of the UK council on Child Internet Safety reacted to the document by saying: "The risk is that a major plank of the UK’s approach to online child protection will be destroyed at a stroke".

I, like the EU, have a problem with restricting access to the internet. Any sort of content management system is going to be flawed, that's just the nature of the beast. There is simply no way to ensure that all hardcore pornography websites would be blocked, nor is there any way to guarantee that perfectly inoffensive sites would not be inadvertently blocked. As is so often the case when the emotive issue of 'protecting children' crops up, there seems to have been very little thought put into how such a system could work.

The sheer number of websites that pop up each day means that swatting one site you take exception to is like cutting a head off the Hydra: kill one and two, or more, will spring up in its place. Just as the fight against torrent sites has shown, while it is certainly possible to make access more difficult, it is absolutely impossible to stop people from accessing the content they want to access -- and if teenagers want to access porn, then they will… there are no two ways about it.

To think that the web can be controlled like this is naive to say the least.
http://betanews.com/2015/05/25/leake...to-block-porn/





Queen's Speech: New Monitoring Powers 'to Tackle Terrorism'
BBC

New laws to give police and spies greater powers to monitor internet and phone use are in the Queen's Speech.

Downing Street said that measures in the Investigatory Powers Bill would provide the authorities "with the tools to keep you and your family safe".

It will "address gaps" in intelligence gathering and access to communications data which is putting "lives at risk".

But civil liberties campaigners claim it will pave the way for mass surveillance of UK citizens.

Home Secretary Theresa May's efforts to introduce a similar bill in 2012, dubbed the "snooper's charter" by critics, were blocked by the Liberal Democrats.

British jihadists

The new bill is designed to "maintain the ability of intelligence agencies and law enforcement to target the online communications of terrorists, paedophiles and other serious criminals".

Details of how it will work will be published in the next few days.

It is thought likely to require internet service providers and mobile operators to log much more data about what their customers are doing, including data on who people call, text, tweet and instant message, what games they play, when they post on social networks and who they send webmails.

The government has come under growing pressure to do more to respond to the fallout from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria and, specifically, the threat posed by British jihadists returning to the UK after fighting in the two countries.

The police have long argued that their ability to track the online communications of potential suspects is heavily circumscribed and the the law is not keeping pace with advances in technology.

But civil liberties campaigners fear it will lead to mass surveillance.

Analysis by BBC Home Affairs Correspondent Daniel Sandford

Essentially the government wants to upgrade the law so that is can do all the things it used to do with the post and telephones with all the plethora of online communications that now exist.

A review by the "Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation" David Anderson QC will feed into this.

The Bill will be very controversial. It is strongly opposed by many Liberals, and civil liberties groups, and the idea became even more controversial after the Edward Snowden revelations.

Jim Killock, executive director of The Open Rights Group, said: "The government is signalling that it wants to press ahead with increased powers of data collection and retention for the police and GCHQ, spying on everyone, whether suspected of a crime or not.

"This is the return of the 'snooper's charter', even as the ability to collect and retain data gets less and less workable.

"We should expect attacks on encryption, which protects all our security. Data collection will create vast and unnecessary expense."

Renate Samson, chief executive of Big Brother Watch, said: "Whilst the title may have changed from a Communications Data Bill to an Investigatory Powers Bill it will be interesting to see whether the content has radically changed.

"We have yet to see real evidence that there is a gap in the capability of law enforcement or the agencies' ability to gain access to our communications data."

The Investigatory Powers Bill is one of 26 proposed laws included in the first all-Conservative Queen's Speech since 1996.

The Conservatives are also proposing new steps to tackle extremism, including giving the home secretary new powers to ban extremist groups and allowing the authorities to close down premises being used to "support extremism".

It will also include more powers for watchdog Ofcom to take action against TV channels that "broadcast extremist content".

Downing Street said there would be "appropriate safeguards and oversight arrangements" and it would take into account a yet unpublished review of existing counter-terrorism legislation undertaken by the independent reviewer David Anderson.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32896921





U.K. Wants to Force Internet Companies to Decrypt Messages
Chris Smith

The U.K. government has not given up on the idea that its secret services must be given access to communications between individuals who are suspects in an ongoing investigation, even if said communications are protected by encryption.

Google, Apple and Facebook will be required to hand over encrypted messages from suspects, The Telegraph says, via a new Investigatory Powers Bill.

Under the proposed new law, intelligence agencies including MI5, MI6 and GCHQ will be able to obtain a warrant from the Home Secretary that will force an Internet company to “break down its encryption protection” for a suspect’s communication. The publication says that security and intelligence agencies claim encryption features on modern devices can prevent them from seeing what suspects are planning.

If asked, services including WhatsApp, Snapchat and others will have to share messages sent and received by a suspect, regardless of what privacy-enhancing features they might have in place, such as chat or call encryption.

Interestingly, one Reddit user points out that Google and WhatsApp need to enable end-to-end encryption “sooner rather than later” to prevent anyone from snooping on chats. Google has recently confirmed that Hangouts doesn’t have end-to-end encryption, meaning the company would be able to decrypt messages.

The Telegraph does mention Apple as one of the companies that will have to decrypt communications under the new law, likely referring to its iMessage and FaceTime apps, but these services are already protected by end-to-end encryption, so Apple wouldn’t actually be able to do it.
https://bgr.com/2015/05/28/imessage-...ts-encryption/





US Govt Proposes to Classify Cybersecurity or Hacking Tools as Weapons of War
Manish Singh

Until now only when someone possessed a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon, it was considered to be a weapon of mass destruction in the eyes of the law. But we could have an interesting — and equally controversial — addition to this list soon. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that deals with issues involving national security and high technology has proposed tighter export rules for computer security tools — first brought up in the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA) at the Plenary meeting in December 2013. This proposal could potentially revise an international agreement aimed at controlling weapons technology as well as hinder the work of security researchers.

At the meeting, a group of 41 like-minded states discussed ways to bring cybersecurity tools under the umbrella of law, just as any other global arms trade. This includes guidelines on export rules for licensing technology and software as it crosses an international border. Currently, these tools are controlled based on their cryptographic functionality. While BIS is yet to clarify things, the new proposed rule could disallow encryption license exceptions.

The new proposal is irking security researchers, who find exporting controls on vulnerability research a regulation of the flow of information. You see, these folks need to use tools and scripts that intrude into a protected system. If the proposal becomes a law, it will force these researchers to find a new mechanism to beat the bad guys.

As per the agreement, the new definition of ‘intrusion software’ refers to a tool which is capable of extraction or/and modification of data or information from a computer or network-enabled device. The modification also includes tweaking of the standard execution path of a program. In addition, the tool could also be designed to avoid detection by “monitoring tools” (software or hardware devices such as antivirus products that monitor system behaviors or processes running on a device). Tools including hypervisors, debuggers and others that are used for reverse engineering software won’t be considered as “intrusion software”.

Security items being exported to government users in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the UK — or the “Five Eyes” nations — would get some leeway and looser restrictions. This is because the intelligence agencies in these five nations collaborate closely. BIS is seeking comments on the proposed rule — available to all in the Federal Register — with a deadline of July 20, 2015.
http://betanews.com/2015/05/23/us-go...eapons-of-war/





U.N. Report: Encryption is Important to Human Rights — and Backdoors Undermine It
Andrea Peterson

A new report from the United Nation's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says digital security and privacy are essential to maintaining freedom of opinion and expression around the world -- and warns that efforts to weaken security tools in some countries may undermine it everywhere.

The report written by special rapporteur David Kaye says that encryption -- the process of digitally scrambling information so that only authorized persons can access it -- and anonymity tools "provide the privacy and security necessary for the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression in the digital age." The report will be presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council next month.

It comes amid a growing debate in the U.S. about how to best balance personal privacy rights and national security. Since former government contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about National Security Agency surveillance programs, tech companies have scrambled to encrypt more of their products.

Now, some U.S. law enforcement officials are pushing to have tech companies build ways for the government to access secure content passing through their products -- so-called "backdoors."

FBI Director James Comey and NSA chief Adm. Michael Rogers have said that the growth in encryption use could make it harder to track criminals -- and argued that the government should require companies to build ways for law enforcement to access encrypted content.

Earlier this year, Rogers floated the idea of a having companies split up the digital "key" used to decode encrypted content into multiple parts so that no one person or agency alone could decide to use it. The proposal appeared to be an attempt to win over security experts, who have been skeptical that such "backdoors" could be deployed securely.

The report recommends against backdoors, saying "[s]tates should avoid all measures that weaken the security that individuals may enjoy online, such as backdoors, weak encryption standards and key escrows."

The problem with all of those approaches is that they inject a basic vulnerability into secure systems, Kaye said in an interview with the Post. "It results in insecurity for everyone even if intended to be for criminal law enforcement purposes," he said.

The public debate on the issue in the U.S., which has focused on terrorism and crime, isn't taking into account how vital encryption is to protecting journalists, activists, and everyday people around the world, according to Kaye.

"There are many millions of people who depend on tools like encryption or [the anonymous browsing tool] Tor to ensure as much as they can against disclosure of their communications and to seek out information," he said.

If the United States goes through with policies that mandate backdoors for law enforcement, it could encourage other nations with poor human rights records to push for similar concessions, he said. "It's pretty clear that when well established democracies do things that are inconsistent with human rights law, others around the world who aren't necessarily in the democratic camp take that as an example of something that's permitted," said Kaye.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-undermine-it/





Philip Zimmermann: King of Encryption Reveals His Fears for Privacy

The creator of PGP has moved his mobile-encryption firm Silent Circle to Switzerland to be free of US mass surveillance. Here he explains why
Juliette Garside

When Philip Zimmermann was campaigning for nuclear disarmament in the 1980s, he kept an escape plan in his back pocket. The inventor of the world’s most widely used email encryption system, Pretty Good Privacy – more commonly known as PGP – was ready to move his family from Colorado to New Zealand at a moment’s notice.

The button was never pressed and the Zimmermanns stayed put. Until this year, that is. At 61, the Internet Hall of Fame inductee and founder of three-year-old mobile encryption startup Silent Circle has just left the US for Switzerland. In the end, it was not the nuclear threat that convinced him to leave his homeland, but the surveillance arms race.

“Every dystopian society has excessive surveillance, but now we see even western democracies like the US and England moving that way,” he warns. “We have to roll this back. People who are not suspected of committing crimes should not have information collected and stored in a database. We don’t want to become like North Korea.”

Zimmermann stopped in London to host a reception at the Victoria & Albert Museum where his cryptographic handset, the Blackphone, is currently on display, alongside the remains of a laptop destroyed on government orders by Guardian editors wielding angle grinders, because it contained a trove of secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

Zimmermann and Snowden are 30 years apart in age, but their actions have framed the privacy debate. Zimmermann switched his focus from campaigning against nuclear weapons to pushing back on state snooping in 1991, when he released PGP for free over the internet in an act of political defiance. His protest helped prevent legislation which would have forced software companies to insert “backdoors” in their products, allowing the government to read encrypted messages.

The user manual for PGP, written by Zimmermann in 1991 and updated seven years later, is a startling prediction of the mass surveillance methods that were eventually adopted by the NSA after 9/11. It warns:

Today, email can be routinely and automatically scanned for interesting keywords, on a vast scale, without detection. This is like driftnet fishing.”

It would take a further 20 years before Snowden’s revelations brought these concerns to the attention of the wider world. But when the former NSA contractor reached out to the journalists who would help him blow the whistle, he did so using PGP.

No customer numbers have been released, but the chatter among well-placed venture capitalists is that Silent Circle is expanding fast – earlier this year it raised $50m (£32m) in a second round of outside funding. Its backers includes Ross Perot Jr, son of the 1992 US presidential candidate.

The second generation Blackphone 2, costing around $700, is on its way this year, and will be followed by a first attempt at a tablet computer. Zimmermann started the company with former US navy seal sniper Mike Janke and the pair have been successfully selling their technology to special operations forces in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. The Silent Phone and Silent Text apps, which allow secure voice calls and text messages over Android and Apple handsets, are even more popular, particularly with journalists working in dangerous places and businesses handling sensitive information.

Despite the Silent Circle pin in his jacket lapel, Zimmermann is less interested in talking about his products than discussing the need to push back against what he calls the “golden age of surveillance” being enjoyed by western governments.

Silent Circle’s move to Switzerland was prompted by the Lavabit affair. Lavabit provided an email service for 410,000 people, including Edward Snowden. In the summer of 2013, its founder, Ladar Levison, was served with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment. Despite protests, he decided to close his service.

Silent Circle took fright. Along with voice and text it offered email. The content was encrypted, but the who, where and when of messages was there to be hacked or extracted by court order. So the email tool was shut down and its database wiped. The next step was relocation to Geneva. “We are less likely to encounter legal pressures there than in the US,” says Zimmermann.

To the average law-abiding citizen, campaigners such as Zimmermann might seem a little paranoid. Public support for Snowden in the UK was tepid compared to Germany, where the realities of living under a police state require no leap of imagination.

British society is “too accepting of surveillance”, Zimmermann believes. “Here people have a comfortable relationship with their own government and maybe that’s why they don’t raise objection to it. Future governments that come to power might not be so nice, and if they inherit a surveillance infrastructure then they could use this to create an incumbency that cannot be changed.”

He warns of point-and-click prosecutions, with traffic cameras and facial recognition detecting journalists lunching with whistleblowers, politicians meeting mistresses, or private citizens getting behind the wheel of a car after one too many pints.

Of course, Silent Circle’s commercial interests are clearly served by talking up the privacy threat. Other internet pioneers have become billionaires and Zimmermann is prospecting for his own share of the digital goldrush. “If I made some money from this it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing,” he admits. “I’m getting older now so I have to think about such things.”

The secret life of PGP

Philip Zimmermann’s own life is a lesson in what can happen to those who challenge the US’s ability to gather information.

Born in New Jersey and brought up in Florida, his father was a cement truck driver. There was no expectation he would go to university. But the boy wanted to be an astronomer. “My family was poor, sometimes we didn’t have a place to live, so I went to many schools, and then when I went away to college my life settled down.”

Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton did not have a mainframe computer. Its terminals, some with punchcards instead of screens, were connected by phone lines to Miami. Zimmermann wrote his first program, teaching the computer to learn his name. “There was something really cool about the ghost in the machine. The computer was a machine that could react to a human.”

By the 1980s he had moved to Boulder, Colorado, and was working as an IT consultant, but spending 40 hours a week as a peace activist. In 1984, he met the celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan, the actor Martin Sheen and the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg – in a police jail. They had been arrested after breaking into the Nevada nuclear test site.

In April 1991, the coding community was alerted to a clause in the post-Gulf war anti-terrorism Senate bill 266, that allowed the government to obtain “the plain text contents” of voice, data, and other communications “when appropriately authorised by law”.

Zimmermann had by then designed PGP in his free time and agreed to the release of his source code in June of that year. The hope was that if enough Americans began protecting their electronic mail, just as postal mail is protected by envelopes, the legislation would become pointless.

PGP works by assigning each user a pair of keys – one public and one private. The user shares their public key – but any messages sent to them using it can only be decrypted by their private key. There is no central database of private keys to facilitate snooping.

An engineer called Kelly Goen began seeding copies of PGP to host computers. Fearing a government injunction, he took every precaution. Instead of working from home, he drove around the San Francisco bay area with a laptop, acoustic coupler and a mobile phone. He would stop at a payphone, upload copies for a few minutes, then disconnect and head for the next phone.

Goen’s upload had been restricted to US sites, but eventually PGP began circulating elsewhere. The offending clause was dropped from bill 266, but in February 1993 Zimmermann was visited by two customs agents. The government, it seemed, was bent on prosecuting him for the illegal export of “munitions”. Strong cryptography was at the time considered a weapon under US law and Zimmermann was the subject of a three-year criminal investigation before the charges were dropped.

Today, his biggest worry is not software backdoors, but the petabytes (1m gigabytes) of information being hoarded by the likes of Google and Facebook. “If you collect all that data, it becomes an attractive nuisance. It’s kind of a siren calling out inviting someone to come and try to get it. Governments say that if private industry can have it, why can’t our intelligence agencies have it?”

At the end of the interview, Zimmermann answers the question in a short video. “A certain amount of elbow grease has to be expended when the police do their work. If it becomes too frictionless, you can slide more easily into a police state. I think we should restore a little bit of that friction.”

Before recording the message, he has removed his corporate lapel pin. Zimmermann hopes to make money, but for the father of email cryptography, the political still trumps the commercial.
http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...-fears-privacy





White House Presses for Deal on Phone Data Bill
Julie Hirschfeld Davis

Obama administration officials on Wednesday intensified pressure on Congress to strike a deal before a Sunday deadline over legislation governing the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone records, arguing that failing to do so would suspend crucial domestic surveillance authority at a time of mounting terrorism threats.

“What you’re doing, essentially, is you’re playing national security Russian roulette,” one senior administration official said of allowing the powers to lapse. That prospect appears increasingly likely with the measure, the USA Freedom Act, stalled and lawmakers in their home states and districts during a congressional recess.

“We’re in uncharted waters,” another senior member of the administration said at a briefing organized by the White House, where three officials spoke with reporters about the consequences of inaction by Congress. “We have not had to confront addressing the terrorist threat without these authorities, and it’s going to be fraught with unnecessary risk.”

Senators left the measure in limbo on Saturday when they began their Memorial Day break after falling three votes short of the 60 needed to advance it to the Senate floor. Lawmakers are holding a rare round of recess negotiations aimed at reviving the legislation. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has called a Sunday session, but with time running out, there was no sign of a breakthrough.

The measure would overhaul the N.S.A.’s use of a section of the Patriot Act, which was passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to justify collecting reams of telephone metadata — information about phone numbers called and the times of the calls. The phone companies, not the government, would hold those records, which would be accessible to the N.S.A. through a search warrant.

The program engendered intense controversy after Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, exposed the extent of the government’s surveillance efforts. It has been complicated by a federal appeals court ruling this month that the telephone records program is illegal.

“Identify a way to get this done,” President Obama urged senators on Tuesday in remarks to reporters at the White House. Congress is on recess as a deadline nears for reauthorization of bulk telephone data collection.

But administration officials emphasized that there was more at stake as the nation faces serious threats from the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. The same authority that has been used to collect the bulk telephone data allows national security investigators to obtain court orders for records — from hotels and banks, for instance — that pertain to an individual.

Also scheduled to expire on Sunday is the government’s ability to obtain a multiuse order known as a roving wiretap to track a terrorist or spy known to be switching telephones frequently to avoid detection. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation would lose a tool, never before used, to wiretap a so-called lone wolf terrorism suspect, one believed to be linked to terrorist activity but not to any particular group.

Preventing existing surveillance authority from lapsing would take the unanimous consent of the Senate, even if the USA Freedom Act musters 60 votes on Sunday night. That is because Sunday’s vote is merely to cut off debate on a motion to take up the House bill. If a senator objected, the actual vote just to begin debating the bill would come 30 hours later, after the authority had lapsed.

With the power set to expire at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, a senior administration official said, the N.S.A. has a team on “hot standby” and has contacted telecommunications companies with an action plan. Eight hours before the deadline, at 3:59 p.m., the agency would begin shutting off the servers that run the program and revoking access to its databases. Rebooting would take about a day, the official said, and would entail going back to the telecommunications providers and obtaining a court order.

Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/us...data-bill.html





iPhone Bug Lets Anyone Crash Your Phone with a Text Message

Glitch in Apple’s iOS chokes when certain non-Latin script is sent in a text message, causing the device to crash
Samuel Gibbs

A bug in Apple’s iOS means that anyone can crash an iPhone by simply sending it a certain string of characters in a message.

The bug – discovered by several Reddit users – means that when the message is received it instantly crashes the iPhone and causes it to reboot, as long as the recipient is not viewing their message history at the time.

The attack appears to be caused by a glitch in the way Apple’s iOS mobile operating system, which runs on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, renders Arabic text.

When the text message is displayed by a banner alert or notification on the lockscreen, the system attempts to abbreviate the text with an ellipsis. If the ellipsis is placed in the middle of a set of non-Latin script characters, including Arabic, Marathi and Chinese, it causes the system to crash and the phone to reboot.

The bug requires a very specific string of text to be sent within an iMessage or SMS. In attempting to confirm the bug the Guardian went through 50 variations of the text string before replicating the crash.

The text string is very specific and is therefore highly unlikely to be replicated by accident. Those worried about being attacked can protect their iPhone from the bug by disabling notification banners. Getting notifications on an Apple Watch also protects the iPhone from the bug.

Some users falling victim to the attack have reported that they can no longer access messages.

Others have reported that sending a photo to the contact via the Photos app can allow them to access the message history and delete the conversation, clearing the source of the crash.

The bug is being used as a prank, with users taking to Twitter to vent their frustration after crashes. As with any glitch like this, it is that possible hackers could turn the bug into a method of attack beyond simple pranks.

This is not the first bug causing similar issues on Apple devices, including apps on Macs, to be exposed.

Bugs within third-party apps have also caused similar problems for iPhone users, including Snapchat, which allowed attackers to flood devices with information causing them to crash.

Apple has not replied to a request for comment.
http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...t-imessage-ios





NoW News Editor 'Used Hand Signal' to Tell Andy Coulson of Phone Hacking

Former news editor of defunct tabloid tells court that hacking was ‘systematic’ at paper and Coulson knew about it when he was editor
Lisa O'Carroll

A former News of the World news editor has told a criminal trial in Scotland that phone hacking was “systematic” at the paper and Andy Coulson knew about it when he was editor of the Sunday tabloid.

When James Weatherup was accused of lying he said he was “100% sure” of his evidence. He said he had not wanted to give evidence and he that felt sorry for Coulson and his family. Weatherup said it was a “gross slur” on his character to suggest he was lying.

Weatherup said he would use a hand signal to indicate to Coulson if stories had come from phone hacking when his editor asked him about the source of certain stories.

He told the high court in Edinburgh, where Coulson is standing trial on perjury charges, that he went to Coulson shortly after he arrived on the paper as news editor in 2004. He was under pressure to cut the newsdesk budget and wanted to cut the £92,000-a-year contract with Glenn Mulcaire’s firm Nine Consultancy.

“Did Mr Coulson appear to be aware or not that Mr Mulcaire was hacking phones?” prosecutor Richard Goddard asked.

“Hacking phones was systematic at the News of the World,” said Weatherup. “Andy would have known that Mulcaire was hacking phones,” he added.

He said he used Mulcaire’s services 137 times and some of those occasions, which he put at “less than a majority”, were for phone hacking. He said he had a system of indicating phone hacking was involved when Coulson, who was editor from 2003 to 2007, queried the source of a story.

Making a gesture with his hand in the shape of a phone, he said: “I would have used a signal at least two or three times when Andy asked me where did that story come from.” Asked what the gesture was indicating, he replied: “As indicating he was involved in phone hacking activities.”

Coulson is accused of lying under oath about his knowledge of phone hacking at the perjury trial of the Scottish politician Tommy Sheridan in 2010. He denies the charge.

Weatherup said executives on the NoW knew hacking was taking place at the paper and that it was discussed in news meetings.

“There was one time when Andy asked where the story had come from and another executive piped up: it’s the dark arts, boss.”

“Did Andy say what on earth are you talking about?”

“No.”

“He actually said not to use that language any more? Was he seriously counselling people not to use that language in conference?”

After a pause, Weatherup replied: “No, he wasn’t joking.”

In cross-examination by Murdo MacLeod, Coulson’s QC, Weatherup was accused of lying about the meeting in which he claimed he told him he wanted to cut Mulcaire’s contract.

“I have to suggest to you that no such conversation took place, is that correct?”

“No, it’s not,” replied Weatherup, adding that he was 100% sure of his evidence. He also said he was 100% sure that he held a hand up to his ear as if it was a telephone to indicate to Coulson that hacking was involved in a story.

“Can I suggest to you that this is just nonsense on your behalf? You’re making this up,” said MacLeod.

“Well I’ve got no reason to lie. I feel sorry for Andy, I feel sorry for his wife, I feel sorry for his children. I have no reason to lie,” he replied.

Asked by Goddard how he felt about the suggestion he was not telling the truth in his evidence, Weatherup said he had just one thing to say. “That is a gross slur on my character and it’s not true. I’ve not come here to lie.

“I’ve just come here to tell the truth, reluctantly. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be giving evidence. I want to get over all of this, but it keeps coming back to haunt me.”

Weatherup, who told jurors he was sacked from the NoW in 2011, said he was still in dispute with the paper’s publishers and was taking them to an employment tribunal. He said he had an agreed redundancy of £186,000 but was fighting to get “whatever I’m entitled to”.

“Executives knew that phone hacking was going on and knew it was part and parcel of life at the News of the World and it was unfair to sack me when they knew it was going on,” he said.

Jurors heard that Weatherup had pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to hack phones and received a four-month suspended sentence last year along with 200 hours’ community work.

Coulson is on trial for allegedly lying under oath at the perjury trial of Scottish politician Tommy Sheridan in 2010. He denies the charge.

The trial continues.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...-phone-hacking





Hugh Grant, Liz Hurley and Jemima Khan Among 98 Confirmed Legal Claims Against Mirror Titles in Wake of Hacking Scandal
William Turvill

Mirror Group Newspapers has now been sued by nearly 100 actors, sports stars and other individuals in the High Court in the wake of the hacking scandal at the titles.

Press Gazette previously reported the names of 50 claimants, mainly celebrities, in January.

Since then, 48 more people have filed claims against MGN in the Chancery Division of the High Court.

Of these, 39 claims were filed on 5 and 6 March, during the course of a two-week High Court trial to decide on appropriate damages for eight claimants.

Last week, Mr Justice Mann ruled that the eight should receive a combined £1.2m in damages, with the biggest payout - £260,250 - going to actress Sadie Frost.

Previously, the biggest reported Mirror hacking payout went to stuntman Bobby Holland Hanton, who received £75,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

Among the latest claimants to sue in the High Court are celebrities Hugh Grant, Elizabeth Hurley, Jemima Khan, Rhys Ifans and Nigel Havers.

The 98 claims are divided into two tranches, with the first made up of 28 and the second of 70.

The first tranche of claimants include the eight who were awarded privacy payouts at the High Court last week.

They are:

Footballer Paul Gascoigne: £188,250
Actress Sadie Frost: £260,250.
BBC executive Alen Yentob: £85,000
Actress Shobna Gulati: £117,500
Actress Lucy Taggart: £157,250
Actor Shane Ritche: £155,000
TV producer Robert Ashworth: £201,250
Flight attendant Lauren Acorn: £72,500.

Following last week's court ruling, Trinity Mirror has increased its estimated costs for dealing with phone-hacking from £12m to £28m.

These 65 people have filed claims against MGN for phone-hacking in the second tranche:

1. Meg Matthews
2. George Calil
3. Sarah Lancashire
4. Peter Salmon
5. Denise Van Outen
6. Pearl Lowe
7. Danny Goffey
8. Chris Hughes
9. John Leslie
10. Amanda Holden
11. Patricia Lake-Smith
12. Michael Foster
13. Hugh Grant
14. Hilary Perrin
15. Rhys Ifans
16. Clair Dobbs
17. Caroline Chikezie
18. Tina Hobley
19. Jeff Brazier
20. Kelly Hoppen MBE
21. Samantha Thomson
22. Leslie Heseltine
23. Stephen Murray
24. Denise Welch
25. William Kenwright
26. Suzanne Shaw
27. Elizabeth Hurley
28. Jemima Khan
29. Nigel Havers
30. Alison Griffin
31. Angus Deayton
32. Daniel Taylor
33. Timothy Horlick
34. Jayne Claire Walton
35. Tamzin Outhwaite
36. Sam Rush
37. Steve McFadden
38. Kym Marsh
39. Michael Ambrose
40. Louisa Lytton
41. Neil Ruddock
42. Stephen Rider
43. Lisa Moorish
44. Ian Cotton
45. Sir Clive Woodward
46. James Mullord
47. Ben Freeman
48. Phil Tufnell
49. Dawn Tufnell
50. Neil Morrissey
51. Emma Killick
52. Natasha Kaplinsky
53. Polly Ravenscroft
54. Caroline Aherne
55. Patrick Aherne
56. Christopher Parker
57. Simon Clegg
58. Danny Young
59. Sarah Manners
60. Samia Ghadie
61. Kate Ford
62. Alan Halsall
63. Lucy-Jo Hudson
64. Ambi Sitham
65. Sarah Parish

These five individuals have also filed claims against MGN in the High Court in recent months, but Press Gazette does not have confirmation that these relate to phone-hacking:

66. Allan Forrest
67. Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen
68. Jackie Llewelyn-Bowen
69. Sarah Davison
70. Jim Threapleton

The 28 people below are those who made up the first tranche of claims against MGN, with the majority understood to have agreed settlements in or out of court.

71. Alan Yentob
72. Sadie Frost
73. Paul Gascoigne
74. Lucy Taggart
75. Shane Richie
76. Shobna Gulati
77. Lauren Alcorn
78. Robert Ashworth
79. Nicola Horlick
80. Emma Noble
81. Bobby Holland Hanton
82. Cilla Black
83. Robert Willis
84. Peter Andre
85. Jessie Wallace
86. Darren Day
87. Sven-Goran Eriksson
88. Christopher Eccleston
89. Abbie Gibson
90. Christie Roche
91. Phil Dale
92. Garry Flitcroft
93. Ben Jackson
94. Davina McCall
95. Sheryl Gascoigne
96. John Thomson
97. Edmund Jordan
98. Holly Davidson

According to analysis by the Media Standards Trust, some 591 individuals have successfully claimed compensation from News Group Newspapers for phone-hacking at the News of the World. News Corp claims that the cost so far of the hacking scandal at the News of the World is $512m (£332m).
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/hugh-g...or-titles-wake

















Until next week,

- js.



















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