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![]() ![]() "This is a platform that’s owned by artists." – Jay Z April 4th, 2015 ![]() Judge Orders Blocking The Pirate Bay in Spain The Central Administrative Litigation Court No. 5 of the Madrid has ordered internet providers in Spain that block access to the page torrents. Dario Prieto Google Translate: The Pirate Bay, the Swedish site access torrents, has been locked in Spain since Friday, according to a court ruling. The Central Administrative Litigation Court No. 5 of the Madrid has urged service providers Internet access suspension and locking in Spain within 72 hours of such services to all domains identified group. The popular service was unavailable last December after a police raid , but was revived earlier this year . According to a statement released by Promusicae, the Association of Music Producers Spain, the instance comes two and a half years after the Association of Intellectual Rights Management (Agedi) submit a complaint to the Second Section of the Commission on Intellectual Property against society Neij LMT Holdings, owners of the group and its various pages, operating under the www.thepiratebay.org, www.thepiratebay.net, www.thepiratebay.se and www.thepiratebay.com extensions. In June last year the case against The Pirate Bay was started by setting a deadline of 48 hours for the removal of content subject to copyright or disabling access to them. Given the failure of The Pirate Bay, the Second Division issued a final decision, which stated that ISPs suspend access to the domains of the group, as it also affected the search engines. According to the press Promusicae, "It is the first blocking a website dedicated to pirating music and other content that takes place in Spain under the so-called Sinde Law ''. This lock has already occurred in 13 other countries, including the UK, Ireland, Holland, France, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Portugal, Italy, Argentina, Malaysia and Indonesia. Although the scope of the court decision will certainly limited, due to the proliferation of servers 'mirror' to 'bounce' access to content that makes The Pirate Bay, the Spanish cultural industries have welcomed the measure. In the statement, the president of Promusicae, Antonio Guisasola says they have received this resolution "with joy, especially knowing that this standard of piracy has also fallen, finally in Spain". For him, "was a long way from the first sentence blockade against The Pirate Bay issued in 2009 by the Swedish Supreme Court, to achieve the same in many countries. And today our country is put in time with the states that have decided challenged this page created to profit from other people's work and harm creators around the world. " "Now there is no turning back and this must be the way to go," said Guisasola. "We hope that the new Copyright Act, along with the reform of the Penal Code adopted yesterday, constitute a strong and effective measures to combat piracy weapons. We hope that this block is not the last and that will be taking the necessary steps to protect the rights of artists and record producers flatly discouraging the creation of these pages. " Original article https://translate.google.com/transla...-text=&act=url ![]() Copyright Crackdown: Australian Government Introduces Website-Blocking Bill Rohan Pearce The government has introduced a bill that will allow copyright holders to apply for court orders forcing ISPs to block access to pirate websites. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull today introduced the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015. "Existing copyright law is not adequate to deter a specific type of infringing activity, which is the facilitation of the online infringement of copyright owners' content... by online operators," the minister said, introducing the bill into the lower house. "There are a number of foreign-based online locations that disseminate large amounts of infringing content to Australian Internet users." If the bill becomes law rights holders will be able to apply to the Federal Court for an injunction that will force an ISP to block a site. The new measure would apply only to sites hosted outside of Australia. Turnbull said that there are existing remedy for rights holders in the case of sites hosted in Australia. An injunction can be granted where the "online location infringes, or facilitates an infringement of" a party's copyright. The site's "primary purpose" must be "to infringe, or to facilitate the infringement of, copyright". "That is a significant threshold test which will ensure that the provision can not be used to target online locations that are mainly devoted to a legitimate purpose," Turnbull said. The bill's wording is likely to capture sites that don't host infringing content themselves but provide links to such content, such as BitTorrent sites. If the injunction is granted a telco will have to "take reasonable steps to disable access to the online location". In determining whether to grant the injunction, the court must consider a number of issues including the "flagrancy of the infringement or its facilitation", whether "the owner or operator of the online location demonstrates a disregard for copyright generally", if blocking access is a proportionate response, and the public interest. The court can limit the duration of the site block or rescind or vary the injunction. ISPs won't be liable for any costs unless they challenge the block. However, the bill's explanatory memorandum says implementing the law's requirements will incur an annual estimated cost of $130,825. The site-blocking scheme forms a central pillar of the government's crackdown on online copyright infringement. Critics of the proposal have argued that it could be open to abuse and ineffective. However telco industry body Communications Alliance has previously said such a scheme could play an important role in reducing copyright infringement. The Comms Alliance has been working on developing a code that implements a warning notice scheme for ISP customers. That scheme has been another key pillar of the government's copyright enforcement agenda. The Comms Alliance has been conducting a public consultation on its draft scheme. http://www.computerworld.com.au/arti...blocking-bill/ ![]() Rules Tightened for Foreign Content on China’s Online Video Platforms Patrick Frater Unlicensed foreign films and TV series are to be removed from China’s powerful online video platforms from today. Under new regulations drafted by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), which were announced in September last year and took effect from today April 1), all films and TV shows must be get permits before being screened. The order means Chinese websites will have to obtain an online audio and visual program distribution license to provide general video streaming services, and then obtain publication licenses for foreign films and TV series on a case-by-case basis, Chinese news agency Xinhua explains. The regulations bring the online video sector more in line with content regulations in cinemas and on TV. But they pose a significant change in the way that series can be shown. The regulations appear to require that the entirety of a series, rather than individual episodes, be approved before broadcast. That may mean that day-and-date co-ordination with U.S. broadcasts is no longer possible. http://variety.com/2015/digital/asia...ms-1201464221/ ![]() Prince Sued for Allegedly Poaching ‘Voice’ Contestant Judith Hill, Releasing Stolen Tracks Matt Donnelly Music producer Jolene Cherry, whose credits include Lady Gaga’s “The Fame,” alleges that music icon re-recorded and released tracks she owned with Sony Music in breach of Hill’s contract Music icon Prince has been slapped with a lawsuit by producer Jolene Cherry, who claims his interference disrupted her and label Sony Music’s planned release of a debut album from singer Judith Hill. Hill signed with Sony via Cherry’s imprint The Cherry Party following a 2013 run on NBC’s “The Voice,” working with the producer who is credited on Lady Gaga’s smash debut “The Fame.” In the court documents obtained by TheWrap, Cherry says she caught wind of Hill and Prince holding recording sessions and warned against distracting from Cherry’s efforts and potentially breaching contract. The suit, filed in Los Angeles County on Friday, goes on to allege that Hill asked directly for permission to record a joint album with Prince and was denied. The pair continued working together, however, resulting in last week’s digital release of the record “Back in Time” — which was offered as a free download, even carrying an introductory note from Prince. “Judith Hill’s first album — ’Back in Time’ — is now out, but rather than cheering along with her, the people who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop her career and album and worked to position Hill for her first release (as well as those who co-wrote many of the songs) are sitting dumb-founded on the sidelines while Prince gives away their investment for free,” Cherry’s suit said. Representatives for Prince and Hill have not yet returned TheWrap’s request for comment. Cherry, whose company is no longer attached to Sony, is looking to recoup her financial investment and wants punitive damages from Prince for making it “economically unfeasible for them to ever release Hill’s first album.” Cherry isn’t the only one pressing charges in this contentious case. Earlier this week, Hill filed suit in New York Superior Court against the producer claiming she tried to smear the artist in national press. In Hill’s documents, she claims Cherry quickly lost the faith of Sony Music, calling her “incompetent, erratic, unstable and wholly unable to perform the obligations that Ms. Hill had been promised both orally and in writing.” As the company’s film division, Sony Pictures Entertainment, was preparing to release what would become the controversial “The Interview,” Hill claims she was toying with the idea of a parody song for the Seth Rogen comedy’s soundtrack. The lawsuit said Cherry took this knowledge and spun it as Hill writing a love song to dictator Kim Jong-un and planted it in the press once the movie came under fire from the North Korean government, and later hackers allegedly acting on its behalf. Hill wants damages for defamation, fraud and breach of contract. Pamela Chelin contributed to this report. http://www.thewrap.com/prince-sued-f...stolen-tracks/ ![]() Jay Z Reveals Plans for Tidal, a Streaming Music Service Ben Sisario As Jay Z sees it, there is a clear solution to the problems facing musicians in the streaming age. They should band together — behind him, of course. On Monday, Jay Z, the rap star and entertainment mogul, announced his plans for Tidal, a subscription streaming service he recently bought for $56 million. Facing competition from Spotify, Google and other companies that will soon include Apple, Tidal will be fashioned as a home for high-fidelity audio and exclusive content. But perhaps the most notable part of Jay Z’s strategy is that a majority of the company will be owned by artists. The move may bring financial benefits for those involved, but it is also powerfully symbolic in a business where musicians have seldom had direct control over how their work is consumed. “This is a platform that’s owned by artists,” Jay Z said in an interview last week as he prepared for the news conference announcing the service. “We are treating these people that really care about the music with the utmost respect.” The plan was unveiled on Monday at a brief but highly choreographed news conference in Manhattan, where Jay Z stood alongside more than a dozen musicians identified as Tidal’s owners. They included Rihanna, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, Alicia Keys, the country singer Jason Aldean, the French dance duo Daft Punk (in signature robot costumes), members of Arcade Fire, and Beyoncé, Jay Z’s wife. The stars stood side-by-side and signed an unspecified “declaration.” Jay Z did not speak, but Ms. Keys read a statement expressing the musicians’ wish “to forever change the course of music history.” Jay Z’s plan is the latest entry in an escalating battle over streaming music, which has become the industry’s fastest-growing revenue source but has also drawn criticism for its economic model. Major record labels, as well as artists like Taylor Swift, have also openly challenged the so-called freemium model advocated by Spotify, which offers free access to music as a way to lure customers to paying subscriptions. Tidal, which makes millions of songs and thousands of high-definition videos available in 31 countries, will have no free version. Instead, it will have two subscription tiers defined by audio quality: $10 a month for a compressed format (the standard on most digital outlets) and $20 for CD-quality streams. “The challenge is to get everyone to respect music again, to recognize its value,” said Jay Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter. “Water is free. Music is $6 but no one wants to pay for music. You should drink free water from the tap — it’s a beautiful thing. And if you want to hear the most beautiful song, then support the artist.” As a superstar artist and influential executive through his company Roc Nation, Jay Z has unusual power in the music industry. He is said to be courting new artists aggressively to join the service and offer Tidal special material and “windows,” or limited periods of exclusive availability. Yet Jay Z is entering the streaming fray as a boutique competitor against some of the most powerful companies in the business. Spotify has 60 million users around the world, 15 million of whom pay; Apple is expected to introduce a subscription streaming service this year. Last fall, Tidal’s parent company, the Swedish technology firm Aspiro, said it had 512,000 paying users. In addition, the broader market for streaming music includes YouTube and the Internet radio giant Pandora. Tidal faces other hurdles, like whether Jay Z can attract artists from beyond his inner circle. And while Tidal may have the support of individual artists, in many cases the distribution rights to their music are controlled by record companies. Lucian Grainge, the chairman of the Universal Music Group, said he welcomed Tidal’s arrival. “We like lots of services and we like lots of competition,” Mr. Grainge said. “Jay is an artist as well as an entrepreneur. He’s a winner, and we like winners.” Speaking by phone from Los Angeles — where he was periodically interrupted by parenting duties for his 3-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy — Jay Z described his vision for Tidal as an outlet where musicians and fans “can all just camp out and listen to music,” and where artists would “always be on album cycle,” meaning in constant promotion mode. Music executives briefed on his plans were more prosaic, calling it a hub for entertainment content and social media. Other ideas, like links for concert tickets and merchandise sales, have been discussed as possibilities. Vania Schlogel, a Tidal executive, said that a majority of the shares in the service would be set aside for artists. She and Jay Z declined to reveal specifics about the equity deals. But one executive involved in the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deals were private, said that participating artists were being granted shares in exchange for their good-faith efforts to supply exclusive content — a sign, perhaps, of the confidence that the artists and their managers have in Jay Z’s ability to get things done. In describing the service, Jay Z emphasized the question of fair play for musicians, calling the current system “criminal.” “Everyone knows that the pay system is unfair to artists,” he said. “Everywhere else, everyone gets compensated for their work. Music is everywhere — you consume it every day, everywhere you go. The content creator should be compensated. It’s only fair.” Like other streaming services, Tidal pays a small royalty each time a song is listened to. Ms. Schlogel declined to comment on the company’s rates other than that they would be higher than services that have free tiers supported by advertising. Last fall, Ms. Swift sent shock waves through the music business when she withdrew her music from Spotify, apparently because she did not want it offered free. About a month later, Jay Z approached the board of Aspiro, according to an Aspiro disclosure. Jay Z dismissed a suggestion that his interest had been prompted by Ms. Swift’s move, saying that his plans “have been in the works for a year.” Jonathan Prince, a spokesman for Spotify, said in response to a question about competition from Tidal, that “we think it’s good for artists and labels to be on Spotify, because that’s where the music fans are, and we are confident that’s where artists and labels will want to be.” Early Monday, artists associated with Tidal began promoting the service on social media through the tag #TIDALforALL. That stirred excitement among fans, although some in the music business and the technology world remain skeptical about Tidal’s chances against players like Apple and Spotify. “I think Jay Z is about to find out the limits of his celebrity,” said David Pakman, a venture capitalist and former digital music executive. “I am sure he will lure exclusive content onto the service but that will reach a limited audience.” Jay Z said he was not concerned about the competition as long as he was able to put forth the service that he has envisioned. “I just want to be an alternative,” Jay Z said. “They don’t have to lose for me to win.” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/bu...c-service.html ![]() Infinit’s New Mobile Apps Might Be The Best Way To Transfer Those Pesky HD Videos Romain Dillet French startup Infinit just released its mobile app for both iOS and Android. In addition to providing a simple way to send files to your friends and colleagues, it is now a full-fledged AirDrop replacement as well. As a reminder, Infinit is a file-sharing service that differs from WeTransfer or CloudApp as it uses peer-to-peer technology to boost file sharing between two users. And there isn’t any file size restriction. Until now, many video game developers or post production specialists were using Infinit to send big files to their colleagues. For instance, Infinit can handle a huge uncompressed 100GB video file without breaking a sweat. You don’t need to leave your computer open as Infinit can pause and resume your uploads. Behind the scene, when two persons are in the same office, Infinit uses the local network to send those files as quickly as possible. But if you are at home, Infinit seamlessly switches to a secure peer-to-peer connection. Finally, if your recipient is offline, Infinit also starts uploading right away by sending the file to its servers. At first, the company didn’t see how a mobile app would be useful for these particular use cases. But chances are that your phone is now your primary camera. You might want to send a few HD videos from your last vacation. Right now, it is very complicated to send those files to your friends, or even to your computer. Infinit makes this a little easier. When you open the app, you are presented with a big paper plane button at the bottom. If you press it, you can select a few photos and videos, and then send them. If your friend uses Infinit, they will receive a push notification to accept the transfer. Otherwise, they will get a link to download the files from Infinit’s servers. The app doesn’t create a web gallery to showcase your photos, it sends your photos without compressing them or altering them in any way — this is where Infinit stands out from messaging apps that all compress your photos and videos. On mobile, the company uses the exact same technology as on desktop, meaning that you can send your files and forget about them. It takes advantage of your local Wi-Fi, creates a peer-to-peer connection if you are not on the same network or uploads to Infinit’s servers. Finally, Infinit is a great way to share files between your own devices. Maybe you are using a Windows PC, an Android phone and an iPad — Infinit now runs on all these platforms. And I find the user experience much more effective than using AirDrop, uploading a file to Dropbox or sending an email to myself. Infinit raised $1.8 million from Alven Capital and 360 Capital Partners and is a Techstars NY alumnus. The company plans to roll out a premium offering soon. http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/31/inf...sky-hd-videos/ ![]() FCC Plans a Vote on New Airwaves Sharing Plan Amy Schatz Federal regulators are set to vote next month on a plan to allow wireless carriers and companies including Google to share airwaves with the government, in an effort to make more airwaves available for future wireless devices. It’s a novel new effort by the Federal Communications Commission, which has spent the last several years trying to free up more airwaves for wireless carriers trying to stay ahead of consumer demand, as well as setting aside some frequencies for new Wi-Fi networks. It would open up airwaves now used mostly by military radar systems. It could be several years before consumers see any changes, but the move could make much more spectrum available for smartphones and future Internet of Things devices. While the airwaves aren’t really suitable for creating new long-range networks, they could be used to create smaller city-wide wireless broadband networks. The proposal “provides an opportunity to try new innovations in spectrum licensing and access schemes to meet the needs of a multiplicity of users, simultaneously,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote in a blog post Friday. Essentially, the government has developed an airwaves-sharing plan that would protect radar systems near military bases and the coastline while auctioning off access to the airwaves in other parts of the country. A portion of the airwaves would also be reserved for free use by anyone with an FCC-certified device that doesn’t create interference. The agency proposed the airwaves-sharing plan last spring, and the wireless industry and some tech companies have been arguing about the details ever since. Mostly, Google and others have been sparring over technical rules, including the size of protected zones around military bases. Another issue involves which sorts of technologies can use the shared airwaves. Some wireless carriers are interested in using an “LTE-U” standard, allowing them to use 4G LTE equipment on unlicensed airwaves, which can be used by anyone. Other parties are more interested in using Wi-Fi technologies on unlicensed airwaves. The think tank New America Foundation and public interest groups have raised concerns about the LTE-U standard and have asked the agency to create clear rules to prevent a possible “Wi-Fi blocking controversy” in the future. Last Friday, CTIA, the wireless association trade group, told FCC staffers that the agency should adopt technology-neutral rules and set a framework “for allowing different technologies to work together.” The FCC is expected to approve the proposal at a meeting next month. http://recode.net/2015/03/27/fcc-pla...-sharing-plan/ ![]() Chairman Wheeler Predicts FCC Will Beat Legal Challenge To Net Neutrality Alex Wilhelm Now that the FCC is the subject of several lawsuits, and its leader, Chairman Tom Wheeler, was dragged in front of Congress repeatedly to answer the same battery of inanity, it’s worth checking in to see how the agency is feeling. Is it confident that its recent vote to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Telecommunications Act will hold? Yes, unsurprisingly. Recently, Wheeler gave a speech at Ohio State University, laying out his larger philosophy regarding the open Internet. His second to last paragraph is worth reading: One final prediction: the FCC’s new rules will be upheld by the courts. The DC Circuit sent the previous Open Internet Order back to us and basically said, “You’re trying to impose common carrier-like regulation without stepping up and saying, ‘these are common carriers.’” We have addressed that issue, which is the underlying issue in all of the debates we’ve had so far. That gives me great confidence going forward that we will prevail. That confidence isn’t itself too newsworthy — why would the FCC pass something that it can’t defend? But at the same time, Wheeler echoes one of his top lawyers, Gigi Sohn, who first extolled the use of Title II in the agency’s plan, among other legal tools, in an interview with TechCrunch: We like to say it’s the belt, the belt and the suspenders. The critical thing is we are reclassifying broadband Internet access as a Title II service. That is the biggest thing, and that allows us to move forward with the strongest possible authority. We also have authority through Section 706 and Title III for mobile. So basically we’re using all of our authority. We’re not letting any of it languish. And here’s Sohn saying that the FCC is going to win: It’s been over a ten-year slog to get these rules right. We really feel confident that we are on the strongest possible grounds. We will win the inevitable legal challenge. If the FCC loses in court, and the issue heads to the Hill, who wants to wager a sizable sum of money that absolutely nothing would get done. Place dogecoin on your mark in the comments. http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/29/cha...et-neutrality/ ![]() Judge Rejects AT&T Claim that FTC Can’t Stop Unlimited Data Throttling AT&T can't escape the FTC's jurisdiction, despite "common carrier" status. Jon Brodkin A federal judge has rejected AT&T's claim that it can't be sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which is trying to put a stop to the carrier's throttling of unlimited data plans. The FTC sued AT&T in October 2014, saying the company deceived customers by offering unlimited data plans and then throttling data speeds once customers hit certain usage thresholds, such as 3GB or 5GB in a month. AT&T claimed in January that because it is a common carrier, it isn't subject to FTC jurisdiction. In a decision out of US District Court in Northern California yesterday, Judge Edward Chen refused to dismiss the lawsuit. It's true that the FTC Act exempts common carriers from the commission's oversight. But while AT&T is a common carrier for landline telephone and mobile voice service, the mobile data services at issue were not classified as common carriage at the time the lawsuit was filed. AT&T argued that it is exempt from FTC oversight "even when it is providing services other than common carriage services," Chen wrote. "Contrary to what AT&T argues, the common carrier exception applies only where the entity has the status of common carrier and is actually engaging in common carrier activity," Chen wrote. The Federal Communications Commission ultimately did reclassify mobile data as a common carrier service in February, a decision that takes effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, which hasn't happened yet. AT&T argued that this decision also strips the FTC of jurisdiction over AT&T, even for violations that occurred before the reclassification, an argument Chen rejected. "When this suit was filed, AT&T’s mobile data service was not regulated as common carrier activity by the Federal Communications Commission," Chen wrote. "Once the Reclassification Order of the Federal Communications Commission (which now treats mobile data serve as common carrier activity) goes into effect, that will not deprive the FTC of any jurisdiction over past alleged misconduct as asserted in this pending action." AT&T also mischaracterized the purpose of the common carrier exemption in the FTC Act, according to Chen. "Although AT&T argues the purpose of the common carrier exception is to ensure that there is no agency overlap in terms of regulation, it appears that the more precise purpose was to prevent overlap between common carrier regulations," he wrote, citing a previous case involving the FTC. "AT&T points to nothing in the legislative history suggesting that Congress intended to prevent any and all regulatory overlap (as opposed to focusing on the Interstate Commerce Commission’s regulation of common carriers as such). Indeed, it is not uncommon for any particular activity of a business to be subject to multiple sets of regulations." For more than 100 years, going back to regulations applied to the railroad industry, an entity "deemed a common carrier [has been] regulated as such under the common law only where it was actually engaged in common carriage services," the judge wrote. FTC seeks refunds for millions of consumers Chen's decision allows the FTC to continue making its case against AT&T. FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez praised the decision and said she looks forward to getting refunds to consumers. “We are gratified that the court concluded that the common carrier exemption does not insulate AT&T's conduct from FTC enforcement action," Ramirez said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. "We look forward to proving that AT&T's marketing of its ‘unlimited’ data plans was unfair and deceptive and returning money to the millions of consumers who were harmed by AT&T's action.” AT&T will appeal Chen's ruling. “We’re obviously disappointed in, and disagree with, the decision and will seek to appeal it as soon as possible," the company told Ars. At the same time that AT&T was arguing that its mobile data service was exempt from FTC oversight because of the common carrier exemption, it claimed that the FCC can't reclassify mobile data as a common carrier service. The FCC disagreed and reclassified mobile data anyway, raising the possibility that it too could penalize AT&T. The FCC's new rules ban throttling except in cases of "reasonable network management." AT&T could argue that the throttling is necessary to keep its network running smoothly, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has objected to throttling of plans that are supposed to be unlimited and forced Verizon Wireless to back down from a throttling plan last year. AT&T stopped offering unlimited data plans to new customers in 2010 but allowed existing customers to keep the plans, "in essence, to ensure that they would not switch mobile data providers," Chen wrote. All the major carriers throttle to some extent, but AT&T's throttling is especially harmful to consumers because the speed reductions are applied to LTE users even when they're not connected to congested cell towers. AT&T promises that it will change this policy sometime in 2015 but hasn't said exactly when. Whether the FTC can continue to take actions against data providers after the common carrier reclassification takes effect depends on Congress, which could remove the exemption for common carriers from the FTC Act. Such a move could help consumers; the FTC noted in a court filing that "[t]he FCC is not authorized to seek refunds for injured consumers, and its enforcement authority is limited to conduct going back one year. AT&T’s throttling program has been in effect for more than three years, and has, over the course of that time, inflicted economic harm on millions of customers." In either case, the FCC is taking a greater role in regulating Internet providers. Besides the rule against throttling, the FCC plans to issue broadband-specific privacy rules that Internet providers will have to follow. AT&T, which is monitoring its home broadband customers' Web browsing habits in order to serve personalized ads, may have to read those forthcoming rules carefully as well. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ta-throttling/ ![]() AT&T’s Newest Fiber Customers to Pay $40 More than Google Fiber Users There's no $70 Google Fiber in Cupertino, so AT&T can charge what it wants to. Jon Brodkin AT&T today launched its gigabit fiber Internet service in parts of Cupertino, California, but the price isn't as good as it is in cities where AT&T faces competition from Google Fiber. Google Fiber and AT&T's U-verse with GigaPower compete head-to-head in Kansas City and Austin. In those cities, AT&T matches Google's $70-per-month price for gigabit service, as long as you opt in to a program that lets AT&T watch your Web browsing and serve up personalized ads. Want to opt out? It could cost up to $744 extra per year. But AT&T charges more when it doesn't have to compete against Google. In Cupertino, AT&T said today it will offer "Internet speeds up to 1Gbps starting as low as $110 a month, or speeds at 300Mbps as low as $80 a month, with a one-year price guarantee." Despite being $40 more than AT&T's price for the same gigabit service in Kansas City and Austin, the Cupertino offer still requires opting in to the Internet usage monitoring. Google has tentative plans for fiber service in nearby San Jose but hasn't announced a decision yet. In Dallas, another city where AT&T doesn't have to compete against Google, it charges $120 a month for gigabit service. (Correction: AT&T recently changed the price from $120 to $110 a month.) In North Carolina, AT&T reportedly dropped pricing from $120 to $70 after Google announced plans to expand into that state. AT&T's GigaPower is now available in seven metro areas nationwide; AT&T says it plans to bring the fiber service to another 10 metro areas and is exploring an additional eight for possible deployments. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson last year claimed the company would "pause" its fiber investments because of the Federal Communications Commission decision to regulate broadband service more forcefully. AT&T quickly backtracked and today said it is still "considering expanding its all-fiber network to up to 100 cities and municipalities across 25 markets." AT&T also claims it needs federal approval of its purchase of DirecTV to further expand its fiber plans. CenturyLink is expanding its gigabit fiber deployments with new plans for 505 multi-unit housing developments in Utah. Meanwhile, Google announced last week that it will bring its fiber service to Salt Lake City. Google Fiber also just filed a business registration in Colorado, though the company says it has no concrete plans for that state. Verizon has more extensive fiber deployments than Google, AT&T, or CenturyLink but is done expanding. http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...e-fiber-users/ ![]() Comcast Takes On Google With 2Gbps Internet Service The goal is to make the 2Gbps Comcast Gigabit Pro available to about 18 million homes by the end of the year. Chloe Albanesius There's been a lot of talk about Google's 1Gbps "gigabit" Internet service, but Comcast said today that it is planning a 2Gbps service, beginning in Atlanta. Comcast Gigabit Pro is a fiber-to-the-home service that "will be offered broadly across the Atlanta metro area" starting next month, the cable giant said today. The goal, Comcast said, is to make it available to about 18 million homes by the end of the year. Pricing details were not released; Google Fiber will set you back about $70 per month for gigabit Internet service alone. As Ars Technica noted, Comcast's existing 505Mbps residential speed tier costs $399.95 per month, but Comcast told Ars that Gigabit Pro will not be that pricey and 505 customers will get a bump to 2Gbps. "Our approach is to offer the most comprehensive rollout of multi-gigabit service to the most homes as quickly as possible, not just to certain neighborhoods," said Doug Guthrie, senior vice president of Comcast Cable's South Region, a dig at Google's city-by-city rollout. "We already provide the fastest speeds to the most homes and businesses in Atlanta, and access to Gigabit Pro will give our customers all the broadband capacity they need to stay ahead of future technologies and innovations." Comcast already has a fiber infrastructure for its business-level Internet service (145,000 route miles), which promises up to 10Gbps for its 1.5 million customers. As a result, Gigabit Pro "will be available to any home within close proximity of Comcast's fiber network," provided they pay an installation fee. That includes SunTrust Park, home of the Atlanta Braves. Last month, Comcast inked a deal with the team to provide Internet access there in exchange for a Comcast-branded office tower that will house an innovation lab. Comcast will wire up buildings in the vicinity, which includes residential units. Google, meanwhile, recently announced plans to launch Google Fiber in Salt Lake City, while AT&T is expanding its gigabit Internet offering into Apple's hometown of Cupertino. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2479953,00.asp ![]() Messaging Apps Shouldn't Make Money David Rowan Four days after Facebook announced its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp on February 19 last year, an unadvertised six-month-old free messaging app called Telegram was downloaded 4.95 million times. WhatsApp, to be fair, had experienced a four-hour outage that weekend, but even after service resumed, its little-known competitor continued to grow like wildfire -- reportedly becoming the top free App Store download in 46 countries from Argentina to Austria, a de facto alternative for anyone concerned about Facebook's new ownership of the world's most popular messaging app. By March 24, Telegram was reporting 35 million monthly users and 15 million daily actives; and on December 8, it said it was delivering more than a billion daily messages for what were now 50 million active users, still growing at around a million a week. At first glance, the newcomer is not radically different from WhatsApp -- which, at Facebook's acquisition, seemed unassailable in its viral growth, with 450 million active monthly users and rising at around a million a day. Telegram, too, offers individual and group messaging, and lets you and your contacts share photos, videos and other files; and like WhatsApp, has neither advertising nor clutter to detract from the simple user experience. But Telegram's advocates were quick to promote some fundamental differences: unlike a Facebook-owned product, Telegram was, as its home page declares, about "taking back our right to privacy", built around hardcore encryption. Second, unlike subscription-funded WhatsApp, it was robustly anticommercial, with a promise of "no ads, no subscription fees, forever". And third, rather than having a profit-seeking corporate parent, it was run and funded by an outspoken and now exiled Russian opponent of Vladimir Putin's regime, Pavel Durov, who had built and lost control of the country's biggest social network, VKontakte (VK). Bloomberg News once called Durov "the Zuckerberg of Russia"; in April 2014, after posting on his VKontakte wall that he had been "fired" and the network placed under "the complete control" of Putin allies Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov, he promptly left his homeland to begin a continuing period of multi-country exile. His dismissal occurred five days after he publicly refused an order to give the security services access to information about Ukrainian protestors using the network, and to block the page of opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Durov, 30, has just reached London from San Francisco, before heading for Helsinki. It has been a restless few months: WIRED last met him in Paris in June, where he and his brother Nikolai, 34, had recently arrived from central Europe. At the time, he was uncertain of his next steps beyond a certainty that returning to Russia would be a high-risk option. As he had posted on Facebook itself a few weeks earlier, he and his team of 12 engineers (led by Nikolai, a multi-time gold-medal winner at the International Mathematical Olympiad) were in search of "a country that will allow us to develop our projects with privacy and freedom of speech in mind. To give you an idea of our preferences," he wrote, "we dislike bureaucracy, police states, big governments, wars, socialism and excessive regulation. We like freedoms, strong judicial systems, small governments, free markets, neutrality and civil rights." Durov, dressed in black, remains homeless -- his base, he says, is "everywhere -- I feel comfortable in San Francisco, London, Berlin. I don't want to be dependent on any place or government." He can't see himself moving back to Russia. "The rules of the game are unclear in Russia," he says quietly as we walk on Hampstead Heath -- and in his case, that means uncertainty about his personal safety. "I'm not afraid of anything," he says. "I'm not afraid to die, if I have to. There was this Greek philosopher who said that death has nothing to do with you, because either you exist or death exists. In my past, it looked like I could get into trouble in Russia -- but I was not afraid then, and I'm not afraid now. Fear paralyses you and doesn't let you go forward." Still, didn't he leave last April because he felt threatened? "You could call it a business decision," he says with a smile. "This was the point at which I was fired from my own company. Telegram was the only project I was involved with, and Telegram is a global project. It made perfect sense to operate it outside Russia." Still, he knew he had made powerful enemies. "Some people advised me to leave," he says. "I could have stayed, made some compromises on the way, maybe regained control of the company. But that was not something I wanted to do. Compromises lead you nowhere. You can't be happy doing something you don't believe in." He was simply a tech guy who had unwittingly waded into politics. "Obviously I do have political views -- I'm a believer in the free-market economy; I also believe that without competition and respect for human rights there will be no progress because nobody will feel safe and free. But what I've been trying to do is create value for our users and be honest with them. I chose to try to do the right thing. It doesn't make sense to keep going forward without strong principles. I don't think money is the thing that can make you go forward -- it's ideas that you believe in." With Telegram, Durov has a renewed sense of mission. "We're trying to create a new type of IT company, one that never focuses on maximising profits, but instead provides value to society," he says. "We are raising the bar of human communication." And that means turning down the constant offers of VC funding that he receives, because "it is imperative for this goal that we remain independent". Instead, he is funding the project personally: he announced last January that he had sold his 12 per cent in VKontakte, at a time when the network was reportedly valued at $3bn (Ł1.9bn) to $4bn. There is, he says, a wider purpose behind Telegram: "Secure messaging should be free for everyone. Displaying ads alongside your private communication seems out of place, even immoral." Besides, other messaging apps on the market are not, he says, up to par. "We're aiming to set a higher standard for messaging technologies, to raise the bar of communication in terms of speed, security and versatility." He has long sparred with WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum, originally from Ukraine. When Telegram launched in August 2013, Koum was quoted in a Russian magazine as accusing him of plagiarism: "Pavel Durov only knows how to copy great products like Facebook and WhatsApp," Koum was quoted as saying. Last November, Durov responded in a post on Medium titled "How To Predict WhatsApp Features": "A great thing about building Telegram is that you can force bigger apps to improve their products, and also predict their actions," he wrote, before listing features he suggested the incumbent had copied from his more innovative app. "They still didn't catch up with us." Now he is keen to specify the differences -- not least the open-source security protocol, MTProto, created by Nikolai. "Telegram is unique in three regards: security, speed and cross-device sync," he says in an email. "It is the only mass-market messenger that is open-source. You and I don't have to trust Telegram that it is secure -- the apps are verifiable." The company offers a $300,000 bounty, so far unpaid, to anyone who can hack its encryption. Speed is a big focus. "According to benchmarks, Telegram is the fastest messenger in terms of delivery speed," Durov says. "And like other apps, it can seamlessly sync your message history across several devices, including laptops and tablets. Combined with group chats and the ability to share files of any type, this brings many small teams and businesses to Telegram." What of user privacy? "Since the day we launched we have disclosed exactly zero bytes of private data to governments and third-parties," he says. "How is this possible? Firstly, end-to-end encryption, self-destructing messages and self-destructing user accounts allow us to know as little sensitive info about our users as possible. Secondly, Telegram is spread legally and physically across several jurisdictions, which allows it to avoid being an easy target for data requests and regulators. Thirdly, we don't do deals with governments that threaten to block us. We are not here for market share and revenues anyway, so we can ignore these threats." Will he continue to bankroll the business -- or does he see revenue opportunities? "We will become financially sustainable at some point," he says. "It will most likely involve third-party paid apps built on the Telegram platform." At VKontakte, Durov earned a reputation as an unconventional CEO. In December 2011, when the Kremlin demanded that he block the pages of opposition politicians, he responded by tweeting a photo of a dog wearing a hoodie. The following May, he prompted fury by tweeting on Russia's Victory Day that "67 years ago, Stalin defended Hitler's right to punish the population of the Soviet Union". A short time later, he and colleagues threw 5,000-rouble notes out of their Moscow office window, prompting fights in the street. Was his reputation for controversy justified? "Unlike Telegram, VK had shareholders and advertisers, and was dependent on bureaucrats from a specific jurisdiction," he reflects. "Every time their interests clashed with the interests of our users, I stood by the users. This may have created controversies, but I am proud we have lasted for seven years that way." And his lack of respect for the Kremlin? "I regard most big governments as outdated centralised structures, with a lot of legacy from medieval times. The difference between the Kremlin, the White House and the Palace of Westminster lies mostly in their PR. In Russia I followed my common sense and the country's constitution. That's why I refused to block opposition communities and that's why I declined to hand over Ukrainian users' private data during the protests." Didn't that cost him control of the company? "Yes, but power and money mean nothing if you betray what you stand for. If you stick to your principles, you can rebuild what you once had. "I did make mistakes while building VK -- like taking outside investment, or depending on a single jurisdiction. I will not make these mistakes again." And his August 2013 offer of a job to Edward Snowden -- was that genuine? "I will always be grateful to Edward," he says. "In a way, he is the reason why Telegram exists. He showed that the surveillance problems I was experiencing were not specific to one country." For now, Durov seems contented living an itinerant life, booking rooms on Airbnb for each destination. But what would he advise those wanting to follow an independent path in Russia today? "My advice would work for any country -- don't be bound by the opinions of others," he replies. "The majority is almost certainly wrong. If you can, try contributing to the global market, not the local one. If you face excessive regulation or over-taxation, move to another country." http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/arch...messaging-apps ![]() Facebook 'Tracks All Visitors, Breaching EU Law' Exclusive: People without Facebook accounts, logged out users, and EU users who have explicitly opted out of tracking are all being tracked, report says Samuel Gibbs Facebook tracks the web browsing of everyone who visits a page on its site even if the user does not have an account or has explicitly opted out of tracking in the EU, extensive research commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency has revealed. The report, from researchers at the Centre of Interdisciplinary Law and ICT (ICRI) and the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography department (Cosic) at the University of Leuven, and the media, information and telecommunication department (Smit) at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, was commissioned after an original draft report revealed Facebook’s privacy policy breaches European law. The researchers now claim that Facebook tracks computers of users without their consent, whether they are logged in to Facebook or not, and even if they are not registered users of the site or explicitly opt out in Europe. Facebook tracks users in order to target advertising. The issue revolves around Facebook’s use of its social plugins such as the “Like” button, which has been placed on more than 13m sites including health and government sites. Facebook places tracking cookies on users’ computers if they visit any page on the facebook.com domain, including fan pages or other pages that do not require a Facebook account to visit. When a user visits a third-party site that carries one of Facebook’s social plug-ins, it detects and sends the tracking cookies back to Facebook - even if the user does not interact with the Like button, Facebook Login or other extension of the social media site. EU privacy law states that prior consent must be given before issuing a cookie or performing tracking, unless it is necessary for either the networking required to connect to the service (“criterion A”) or to deliver a service specifically requested by the user (“criterion B”). The same law requires websites to notify users on their first visit to a site that it uses cookies, requesting consent to do so. A cookie is a small file placed on a user’s computer by a website that stores settings, previous activities and other small amounts of information needed by the site. They are sent to the site on each visit and can therefore be used to identify a user’s computer and track their movements across the web. cookie monster “We collect information when you visit or use third-party websites and apps that use our services. This includes information about the websites and apps you visit, your use of our services on those websites and apps, as well as information the developer or publisher of the app or website provides to you or us,” states Facebook’s data usage policy, which was updated this year. Facebook’s tracking practices have ‘no legal basis’ An opinion published by Article 29, the pan-European data regulator working party, in 2012 stated that unless delivering a service specifically requested by the user, social plug-ins must have consent before placing a cookie. “Since by definition social plug-ins are destined to members of a particular social network, they are not of any use for non-members, and therefore do not match ‘criterion B’ for those users.” The same applies for users of Facebook who are logged out at the time, while logged-in users should only be served a “session cookie” that expires when the user logs out or closes their browser, according to Article 29. The Article 29 working party has also said that cookies set for “security purposes” can only fall under the consent exemptions if they are essential for a service explicitly requested by the user - not general security of the service. Facebook’s cookie policy updated this year states that the company still uses cookies if users do not have a Facebook account, or are logged out, to “enable us to deliver, select, evaluate, measure and understand the ads we serve on and off Facebook”. The social network tracks its users for advertising purposes across non-Facebook sites by default. Users can opt out of ad tracking, but an opt-out mechanism “is not an adequate mechanism to obtain average users informed consent”, according to Article 29. “European legislation is really quite clear on this point. To be legally valid, an individual’s consent towards online behavioural advertising must be opt-in,” explained Brendan Van Alsenoy, a researcher at ICRI and one of the report’s author. Facebook’s privacy policy breaches European law, report finds “Facebook cannot rely on users’ inaction (ie not opting out through a third-party website) to infer consent. As far as non-users are concerned, Facebook really has no legal basis whatsoever to justify its current tracking practices.” Opt-out mechanism actually enables tracking for the non-tracked The researchers also analysed the opt-out mechanism used by Facebook and many other internet companies including Google and Microsoft. Users wanting to opt out of behavioural tracking are directed to sites run by the Digital Advertising Alliance in the US, Digital Advertising Alliance of Canada in Canada or the European Digital Advertising Alliance in the EU, each of which allow bulk opting-out from 100 companies. But the researchers discovered that far from opting out of tracking, Facebook places a new cookie on the computers of users who have not been tracked before. “If people who are not being tracked by Facebook use the ‘opt out’ mechanism proposed for the EU, Facebook places a long-term, uniquely identifying cookie, which can be used to track them for the next two years,” explained Günes Acar from Cosic, who also co-wrote the report. “What’s more, we found that Facebook does not place any long-term identifying cookie on the opt-out sites suggested by Facebook for US and Canadian users.” The finding was confirmed by Steven Englehardt, a researcher at Princeton University’s department of computer science who was not involved in the report: “I started with a fresh browsing session and received an additional ‘datr’ cookie that appears capable of uniquely identifying users on the UK version of the European opt-out site. This cookie was not present during repeat tests with a fresh session on the US or Canadian version.” Facebook sets an opt-out cookie on all the opt-out sites, but this cookie cannot be used for tracking individuals since it does not contain a unique identifier. Why Facebook places the “datr” cookie on computers of EU users who opt out is unknown. ‘Privacy-friendly’ design For users worried about tracking, third-party browser add-ons that block tracking are available, says Acar: “Examples include Privacy Badger, Ghostery and Disconnect. Privacy Badger replaces social plug-ins with privacy preserving counterparts so that users can still use social plug-ins, but not be tracked until they actually click on them. “We argue that it is the legal duty of Facebook to design its services and components in a privacy-friendly way,” Van Alsenoy added. “This means designing social plug-ins in such a way that information about individual’s personal browsing activities outside of Facebook are not unnecessarily exposed.” Facebook is being investigated by the Dutch data protection authority, which asked the social network to delay rollout of its new privacy policy, and is being probed by the Article 29 working party. A Facebook spokesperson said: “This report contains factual inaccuracies. The authors have never contacted us, nor sought to clarify any assumptions upon which their report is based. Neither did they invite our comment on the report before making it public. We have explained in detail the inaccuracies in the earlier draft report (after it was published) directly to the Belgian DPA, who we understand commissioned it, and have offered to meet with them to explain why it is incorrect, but they have declined to meet or engage with us. However, we remain willing to engage with them and hope they will be prepared to update their work in due course.” “Earlier this year we updated our terms and policies to make them more clear and concise, to reflect new product features and to highlight how we’re expanding people’s control over advertising. We’re confident the updates comply with applicable laws including EU law.” Van Alsenoy and Acar, authors of the study, told the Guardian: “We welcome comments via the contact email address listed within the report. Several people have already reached out to provide suggestions and ideas, which we really appreciate.” “To date, we have not been contacted by Facebook directly nor have we received any meeting request. We’re not surprised that Facebook holds a different opinion as to what European data protection laws require. But if Facebook feels today’s releases contain factual errors, we’re happy to receive any specific remarks it would like to make.” http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...-eu-law-report ![]() It's OK to Leak Government Secrets - as Long as it Benefits Politicians It is hypocritical that some leaks will land you in jail, while others just lead to a slap on the wrist Trevor Timm When it comes to classified information, some leaks are more equal than others. If you are a whistleblower like Edward Snowden, who tells the press about illegal, immoral or embarrassing government actions, you will face jail time. But it’s often another story for US government officials leaking information for their own political benefit. Two stories this week perfectly illustrate this hypocrisy and how, despite their unprecedented crackdown on sources and whistleblowers, the Obama administration - like every administration before it - loves to use leaks, if and when it suits them. Consider a government leak that ran in the New York Times on Monday. The article was about 300 of Hillary Clinton’s now notorious State Department emails, which had been hidden away on her private server for years and were turned over to Congress as part of the never-ending Benghazi investigation. “Four senior government officials” described the content of her emails to New York Times journalists in minute detail “on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize their access to secret information”. Surely the Obama administration will promptly root out and prosecute those leakers, right? After all, the emails haven’t gone through a security review and the chances of them discussing classified information are extremely high. (Even if they don’t, the Espionage Act doesn’t require the information to be classified anyways, only that information leaked be “related to national defense”.) But those emails supposedly clear Clinton of any wrongdoing in the Benghazi affair, which likely makes the leak in the administration’s interest. But that disclosure was nothing compared to what appeared in the Wall Street Journal a day later, in the wake of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s underhanded attempts to derail a nuclear deal with Iran. The Journal reported on Tuesday that not only did Israel spy on Americans negotiating with Iran, but they gave that information to Republicans in Congress, in an attempt to scuttle the deal. Petraeus leaks: Obama's leniency reveals 'profound double standard', lawyer says How does the US know this? Well, according to the Journal and its government sources, the US itself intercepted communications between Israeli officials that discussed information that could have only come from the US-Iran talks. The disclosure of this fact sounds exactly like the vaunted “sources and methods” - i.e. how the US conducts surveillance and gets intelligence - that the government continually claims is the most sensitive information they have. It’s why they claim Edward Snowden belongs in jail for decades. So while it’s apparently unacceptable to leak details about surveillance that affects ordinary citizens’ privacy, its OK for officials to do so for their own political benefit - and no one raises an eyebrow. We can be quite certain that no one will be prosecuted for the leaks given that they benefitted the administration’s powerful former Secretary of State, and bolsters its position in its public dust-up with Israel. When it comes to leaks, the powerful play by different rules than everyone else - despite the fact that they’ve violated the same law they’ve accused so many other leakers of breaking. That’s why David Petraeus was given a sweetheart plea deal with no jail time after leaking highly classified information to his biographer and lover. (He’s apparently already back advising the White House, despite leaking and then lying to the FBI about the identities of countless covert officers). It’s also the same reason why investigations into a leak suspected to have involved General Cartwright, once known as “Obama’s favorite general”, have stalled. As the Washington Post reported: the defense “might try to put the White House’s relationship with reporters and the use of authorized leaks on display, creating a potentially embarrassing distraction for the administration”. Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling faces sentencing next month after being found guilty of leaking information to New York Times reporter James Risen. Sterling’s problem is that he leaked information showing a spectacular and embarrassing failure on the CIA’s part - which did not help a powerful politician score points. He is also not a general. As a result, he faces decades in jail. http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...ts-politicians ![]() Petraeus Leaks: Obama's Leniency Reveals 'Profound Double Standard', Lawyer Says State Department contractor jailed for passing classified information to Fox News demands release and says leniency shown to retired general is hypocritical Spencer Ackerman The leniency shown to retired general David Petraeus for passing secrets to his lover shows the “profound double standard” of the Obama administration when it comes to leakers, a lawyer for a State Department contractor convicted of providing Fox News with classified information has said. Abbe Lowell, who represents Stephen J Kim, has written to the Justice Department urging his client’s immediate release – and denouncing the administration’s hypocrisy. “The decision to permit General Petraeus to plead guilty to a misdemeanor demonstrates more clearly than ever the profound double standard that applies when prosecuting so-called ‘leakers’ and those accused of disclosing classified information for their own purposes,” Lowell wrote. “As we said at the time of Mr Kim’s sentencing, lower-level employees like Mr Kim are prosecuted under the Espionage Act because they are easy targets and lack the resources and political connections to fight back. High-level officials (such as General Petraeus and, earlier, Leon Panetta) leak classified information to forward their own agendas (or to impress their mistresses) with virtual impunity,” Lowell wrote in the letter, dated 5 March. Kim pleaded guilty in February 2014 to discussing a classified analysis of North Korea with Fox reporter James Rosen, was sentenced to 13 months, and is scheduled to be released from federal prison in Cumberland, Maryland, on 15 June. Kim argued that he was attempting to advance a policy debate and ran up against unreasonable and inconsistently enforced classification restrictions. Lowell said in his letter, first reported by the New York Times and the Intercept, that the Justice Department rejected “out of hand” his offer of a misdemeanor charge for mishandling classified information. Yet earlier this month, Petraeus, the former CIA director and a man whose name has become synonymous with the 2007-08 troop surge in Iraq, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of providing his biographer and lover Paula Broadwell with notebooks containing classified information, including the names of covert operatives and war strategy, research for a biography. Like Kim, Petraeus, by a mutually agreed statement of facts, lied to his FBI interviewers. “We know that you can come up with any number of factors (as lawyers are trained to do) to distinguish the two cases. However, that is just an exercise in lawyering. At the bottom line, the activities are the same,” Lowell wrote. Under Obama and attorney general Eric Holder, the Justice Department has pursued leakers of classified information with greater vigor than all its predecessors combined: eight Espionage Act cases under Obama, compared to three since the law’s 1917 passage. But its targets are previously unknown men like Thomas Drake, a National Security Agency whistleblower whose finances were ruined in a case resulting in a misdemeanor conviction; Jeffrey Sterling, a CIA officer who told Times reporter James Risen about a botched espionage operation that may have aided the Iranian nuclear program; and John Kiriakou, another CIA officer who confirmed agency torture policies but also passed along the name of an undercover agent. Left unprosecuted is Panetta, the former CIA director and defense secretary who allowed a producer for the film Zero Dark Thirty into a classified speech that discussed details of the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. Another investigation into the leak of a highly classified US-Israeli cyber operation to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program – ahead of the 2012 election, which permitted Obama to shore up his national security bona fides – has stalled, although retired General James “Hoss” Cartwright, a former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is said to be the target. Among the reasons that investigation has stalled, the Washington Post reported last week, is that Cartwright’s lawyer “might try to put the White House’s relationship with reporters and the use of authorized leaks on display, creating a potentially embarrassing distraction for the administration”. By freeing Kim, Lowell wrote to the Justice Department, “this uneven and disparate treatment can, in at least one case, be somewhat rectified”. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...petraeus-leaks ![]() Before Edward Snowden Leaks, NSA Mulled Ending Phone Program Ken Dilanian The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits. After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate. The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it. Still, the behind-the-scenes NSA concerns, which have not been reported previously, could be relevant as Congress decides whether to renew or modify the phone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June. The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the "to and from" information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed. After the program was disclosed, civil liberties advocates attacked it, saying the records could give a secret intelligence agency a road map to Americans' private activities. NSA officials presented a forceful rebuttal that helped shaped public opinion. Responding to widespread criticism, President Barack Obama in January 2014 proposed that the NSA stop collecting the records, but instead request them when needed in terrorism investigations from telephone companies, which tend to keep them for 18 months. Yet the president has insisted that legislation is required to adopt his proposal, and Congress has not acted. So the NSA continues to collect and store records of private U.S. phone calls for use in terrorism investigations under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Many lawmakers want the program to continue as is. Alexander argued that the program was an essential tool because it allows the FBI and the NSA to hunt for domestic plots by searching American calling records against phone numbers associated with international terrorists. He and other NSA officials support Obama's plan to let the phone companies keep the data, as long as the government quickly can search it. Civil liberties activists say it was never a good idea to allow a secret intelligence agency to store records of Americans' private phone calls, and some are not sure the government should search them in bulk. They say government can point to only a single domestic terrorism defendant who was implicated by a phone records search under the program, a San Diego taxi driver who was convicted of raising $15,000 for a Somali terrorist group. Some fault NSA for failing to disclose the internal debate about the program. "This is consistent with our experience with the intelligence community," said Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. "Even when we have classified briefings, it's like a game of 20 questions and we can't get to the bottom of anything." The proposal to halt phone records collection that was circulating in 2013 was separate from a 2009 examination of the program by NSA, sparked by objections from a senior NSA official, reported in November by The Associated Press. In that case, a senior NSA code breaker learned about the program and concluded it was wrong for the agency to collect and store American records. The NSA enlisted the Justice Department in an examination of whether the search function could be preserved with the records stores by the phone companies. That would not work without a change in the law, the review concluded. Alexander, who retired in March 2014, opted to continue the program as is. But the internal debate continued, current and former officials say, and critics within the NSA pressed their case against the program. To them, the program had become an expensive insurance policy with an increasing number of loopholes, given the lack of mobile data. They also knew it would be deeply controversial if made public. By 2013, some NSA officials were ready to stop the bulk collection even though they knew they would lose the ability to search a database of U.S. calling records. As always, the FBI still would be able to obtain the phone records of suspects through a court order. There was a precedent for ending collection cold turkey. Two years earlier, the NSA cited similar cost-benefit calculations when it stopped another secret program under which it was collecting Americans' email metadata — information showing who was communicating with whom, but not the content of the messages. That decision was made public via the Snowden leaks. Alexander believed that the FBI and the NSA were still getting crucial value out of the phone records program, in contrast to the email records program, former NSA officials say. After the Snowden leaks, independent experts who looked at the program didn't agree. A presidential task force examined NSA surveillance and recommended ending the phone records collection, saying it posed unacceptable privacy risks while doing little if anything to stop terrorism. The task force included Michael Morell, a former deputy CIA director, and Richard Clarke, a former White House counter terrorism adviser. "We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking," the report said. Times, dates and numbers called can provide a window into a person's activities and connections. A separate inquiry by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded the same thing. David Medine, chairman of that board, said the concerns raised internally by NSA officials were the same as theirs, yet when NSA officials came before the privacy board, they "put on a pretty strong defense for the program. Except their success stories didn't pan out," he said. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...n_6963804.html ![]() A Court Case So Secret, US Govt Says it Can't Go On Noah Feldman Imagine that someone has wronged you, and you sue them. Then the Government magically appears in court and asks that your suit be dismissed because, for reasons it won't tell you, state secrets might be dredged up in the course of the litigation. You have no idea what they're talking about. But after secret discussions with the judge from which both you and the defendant are excluded, the court dismisses your suit. This Kafkaesque scenario couldn't happen in the U.S., right? Not until Monday, it couldn't. That's when a federal judge in the Southern District of New York did exactly that, dismissing a defamation suit by Greek shipping magnate Victor Restis against a shady advocacy group called United Against Nuclear Iran. This is the first time a US court has dismissed a lawsuit on the basis of state secrets when the case didn't involve either the Government or a defence contractor deeply enmeshed with classified government contracts. It's also a marvellous example of how secrecy fundamentally distorts the legal process and subverts the rule of law. When I write about a case, I usually begin by describing the facts. Here the facts are so secret I can barely say anything. United Against was founded in 2008 by a former CIA director and a group of retired diplomats to advocate against the nuclear Iran. Its board includes former directors of foreign intelligence services including the U.K.'s MI-6, Germany's BND - and Israel's Mossad. One of the strategies pursued by United Against is a campaign to "name and shame" entities that trade with Iran. The organization named Restis, who in turn sued United Against for falsely claiming his companies were "front men for the illicit activities of the Iranian regime." The Department of Justice intervened in September, asserting the state secrets privilege. That so-called privilege doesn't come from the Constitution or from statute. It's an unwritten judicial rule that allows the Government to block discovery of information through ordinary litigation "when disclosure would be inimical to national security," as the district court described it. What followed would be comical if it weren't so serious. The government asserted privilege "by submitting classified declaration by the head of the department which has control over the matter." But even the identity of that official is itself a secret that the court declined to reveal. The Government said that "disclosing even the identity of the agency involved creates an unwarranted risk of exposing the information it seeks to protect." The court accepted that argument. In addition to reading the Government submission, the court held two meetings with government lawyers, from which plaintiffs and defendants were excluded. The court then decided that, because it owed "utmost deference" to the executive's concern about the effects of disclosure on national security, it would shut down discovery in the case. So far, so bad. By denying the attorneys the opportunity to know anything at all about what material was supposed to be suppressed, and even what government agency was seeking its suppression, the judicial branch made itself into a wing of the executive. Judicial independence under Article III of the Constitution is out the window if the court exercises "utmost deference" and doesn't allow any adversarial process. Inevitably, the Government will get what it wants. There was worse to come. Having barred access to information, the court went on to dismiss the case altogether. Even if Restis could prove his case without the excluded evidence, the court said, it was "convinced that further litigation of this action would impose an unjustifiable risk of disclosing state secrets." That is, even if the court were to block discovery of any actual state secret, the mere fact of the lawsuit would have a tendency to endanger national security - even if the trial took place entirely in secret. The court thus came perilously close to saying that the case should be dismissed because it might be embarrassing to the Government. The trial judge, Edgardo Ramos, admitted that the outcome was "harsh." As he put it, "plaintiffs not only do not get their day in court, but cannot be told why". This formulation captures exactly why the case violates the rule of law. Dismissing a lawsuit between private parties without giving a reason is the very opposite of the judicial function, which relies fundamentally on reason-giving. Where no reasons are given, we aren't in the realm of legal decision-making. We're in the universe of absolutism or autocracy. What makes matters worse is the lingering possibility, indeed probability, that what the Government fears is not a true threat to national security, but a severe case of embarrassment. It's difficult to escape the conclusion that United Against is a front organization for U.S. intelligence, possibly acting in conjunction with other foreign intelligence services. The allegation that Restis was doing business in Iran seems almost certain to have come from one of these intelligence services. Would acknowledging cooperation between, say, the Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad regarding Iran really upend national security? True, it's a delicate time in the Iran nuclear negotiations. But no one, least of all the Iranians, doubts that U.S. and Israeli intelligence collaborate. When only the Government gets to speak, and does all its talking in secret, there's no check over its actions. Who is a district judge to stand up to the anonymous director of some anonymous intelligence agency? The result is not just bad for the rule of law. It's an embarrassment to the entire judiciary. Here's hoping Restis appeals, and that the appellate court, and maybe even the Supreme Court, has a chance to revisit the issue - and maybe save the dignity of the judiciary and the majesty of the rule of law. http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/new...ectid=11424037 ![]() Feds Demand Reddit Identify Users of a Dark-Web Drug Forum Andy Greenberg Over the last year, Reddit’s “dark net markets” discussion forum has grown into one of the central fixtures of the online drug scene. At any given moment, hundreds of redditors are browsing reddit.com/r/darknetmarkets, many brazenly discussing anonymous online sales on the open internet. Now the feds have noticed. And they’re telling Reddit to cough up a few of those users’ real-world identities. Earlier this month, a Baltimore Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent sent a subpoena to Reddit demanding that the site turn over a collection of personal data about five users of the r/darknetmarkets forum. The subpoena appears to be the first hint of a federal investigation of the recently defunct massive online market known as Evolution, which sold drugs, weapons, and stolen financial details. All five targets of the subpoena were involved, to varying degrees, in the Reddit discussion of that black market’s abrupt disappearance two weeks ago, in which two top administrators apparently absconded with millions of dollars worth of bitcoin belonging to Evolution’s buyers and sellers. According to a copy of the subpoena shared with WIRED by one of the forum’s moderators who was named in the document, the DHS seeks information that includes the names, IP addresses, dates and times of site visits as well as other data that Reddit likely doesn’t possess, including the users’ phone numbers and financial data. (Reddit doesn’t even require an email address to sign up.) The subpoena’s five targets are NSWGreat, a user who had claimed to be an Evolution staffer; three other users named z-l, Deepthroat and Evosmith who boasted on Reddit that they were tracking Evolution’s administrators or identifying details about them; and Gwern Branwen, a well-known security researcher, writer and moderator of the darknetmarkets forum. It’s Branwen who has now publicly revealed the subpoena’s existence to WIRED. He says the DHS’s interest in him may be in part because Z-l had recently publicly promised to send proof of findings about Evolution’s administrators to him, though Branwen says he never received any such information. Reddit's r/darknetmarkets community has become central to the dark web's drug economy in recent months. Branwen says he sees z-l, Deepthroat, Evosmith and himself as likely red herrings for law enforcement, but that NSWGreat might be an actually important target of the government’s investigation into Evolution. The apparently Australian NSWGreat went so far as to host an “ask me anything” session on Reddit as an internet drug trafficker and public relations staffer for Evolution’s black market. “Given the date and the affected accounts, it doesn’t take Holmes to deduce the reason for this subpoena,” writes Gwern in a statement he sent to WIRED. “Just one naked connection revealing [NSWGreat’s] home IP would be enough, and if he’s like past market employees, a raid will turn up all the damning evidence one could hope for.” Branwen adds that he himself has never sold illegal products on a dark web market or worked for any such site. He’s nonetheless troubled by DHS’s probe into his personal data. “How can I continue as a [Reddit] moderator,” he writes, “knowing that all my non-[encrypted] communications have been laid bare, there may be followup subpoenas for my Gmail account, and I may be under further investigation myself?” When WIRED reached out to Reddit, a spokesperson pointed to the site’s privacy policy, which states that Reddit does collect IP addresses and other potentially identifying data from users, which it deletes after 90 days. The policy adds that it may disclose that data to law enforcement—or hold it longer than 90 days—if legally required to do so. Reddit’s spokesperson wouldn’t comment on whether or when the company might comply with the DHS subpoena. The DHS didn’t respond to WIRED’s request for comment, but it’s no surprise that Evolution has become the target of a federal investigation. The site, which was online for just over a year, was by some measures the largest-ever drug market on the dark web, with 34,000 total drug listings at its peak. A week before the site’s disappearance, German police arrested the leaders of one drug ring that operated on the site and seized 700 pounds of narcotics from that single bust alone. The two pseudonymous administrators of Evolution, Verto and Kimble, are believed to have taken as much as $12 million from the site’s users at the time of its shutdown, after a year of collecting commissions on every sale. Evolution’s shutdown helped to highlight just how central Reddit’s r/darknetmarkets community has become to the dark web’s drug economy in recent months. After the Evolution incident—along with market disruptions like the takedown of several top sites by law enforcement last November—buyers and sellers have congregated on r/darknetmarkets to regroup and reconnect. The forum has nearly 50,000 subscribers. That’s less than other reddit drug forums like r/drugs and the marijuana-focused r/trees, but those larger groups don’t so explicitly discuss drug sales. Though r/darknetmarket’s rules ban any direct dealing on Reddit, the site maintains a directory of links to the most popular dark web drug markets and comprehensive tutorials on using them. Buyers frequently post reviews of dealers’ products, and weekly threads like What to Buy Wednesday and Sell Your Shit Sunday let vendors advertise their wares. The DHS’s subpoena will no doubt serve as a jarring reminder to Reddit’s dark web drug forum that those discussions are nakedly public and potentially vulnerable to law enforcement. Though the drug sales themselves are generally hosted on sites that require users to run the anonymity software Tor to hide their identities, Reddit offers no such protection. Branwen says he expects his revelation of the subpoena to drive many of r/darknetmarket’s conversations to Tor-protected forums like the drug-market discussion site called the Hub. “Riskier discussions will move onto the Hub, and as long as the Reddit admins don’t get spooked and shut it down similar to /r/jailbait, [r/darknetmarkets] will remain a useful discussion place,” he says. Branwen’s reference to r/jailbait, a forum banned in 2011 where users posted scantily clad pictures of underage girls, highlights that Reddit has, in fact, been cleaning up some of its more controversial underground communities. More recently Reddit shut down other groups like r/creepshots and r/thefappening, which hosted links to stolen or surreptitiously taken nudes or revealing images or women. Drug-dealing discussions, for now, remain fair game for Redditors. But it’s apparent they’re fair game for law enforcement investigators, too. http://www.wired.com/2015/03/dhs-red...eb-drug-forum/ ![]() Silk Road Investigators Charged with Stealing Bitcoin Grant Gross Two former U.S. government agents face charges related to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin while assisting with an investigation of the Silk Road underground online marketplace, with one accused of using a fake online persona to extort money from operators of the site. Facing charges of wire fraud and money laundering are Carl Force, 46, of Baltimore, a former special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, and Shaun Bridges, 32, of Laurel, Maryland, a former special agent with the U.S. Secret Service. Both served on the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, which investigated illegal activity on the Silk Road website, the Department of Justice said Monday in a press release. Force served as an undercover agent with the task force and worked to establish contact with a main target of the investigation, Ross Ulbricht, also known as Dread Pirate Roberts, who was convicted in February of criminal charges related to running Silk Road. In addition to wire fraud and money laundering, Force is charged with theft of government property and conflict of interest. A complaint unsealed Monday alleges that Force created several online personas and engaged in a range of illegal activities as a way to make money. He used the fake online personas to engage in complex bitcoin transactions to steal both from the government and the targets of the investigation, the complaint alleged. Force allegedly used a fake persona to ask Ulbricht for a US$250,000 payment in exchange for not passing information to government investigators, according to the criminal complaint. He allegedly used another persona to sell Ulbricht information about the government investigation in exchange for about $100,000 in bitcoin. Force also stole a “sizeable amount” of bitcoin that Ulbricht sent to him in his official undercover capacity, according to the complaint. Force, working at the CoinMKT digital currency exchange at the same time he was with the DEA, also directed the company to freeze a customer’s account, worth about $297,000, then seized those funds and transferred them to his personal account, the complaint alleged. Bridges served as a computer forensics expert with the task force. He allegedly diverted to his personal account more than $800,000 in digital currency that he gained control of during the Silk Road investigation. Bridges placed the assets into an account at Mt. Gox, the now-defunct digital currency exchange in Japan, according to the complaint. He then allegedly wired funds into a personal investment account in the U.S. just days before he sought a $2.1 million seizure warrant for Mt. Gox’s accounts. Both men were scheduled to appear in court Monday. http://www.itworld.com/article/29038...g-bitcoin.html ![]() California Legislators Pushing Warrant Requirement For All Access To Electronic Information, Including That Obtained By Stingrays Tim Cushing Good news from California: a bill requiring warrants for Stingray device usage (among other things) has passed out of a Senate committee and is headed for an assembly vote. Among other sweeping new requirements to enhance digital privacy, the bill notably imposes a warrant requirement before police can access nearly any type of digital data produced by or contained within a device or service. In other words, that would include any use of a stingray, also known as a cell-site simulator, which can not only used to determine a phone’s location, but can also intercept calls and text messages. During the act of locating a phone, stingrays also sweep up information about nearby phones—not just the target phone. Despite similar bills being killed by governor vetoes in 2012 and 2013, California legislators are still looking to reform the state's privacy laws. For one thing, this new bill would put the state's Electronic Communication Privacy Act in compliance with the Supreme Court's recent Riley v. California decision (warrant requirement for cell phone searches incident to arrest), as Cyrus Farivar points out. The committee passed it with a 6-1 vote, suggesting there's broader support for privacy and Fourth Amendment protections now than there were in the pre-Snowden days. Of course, the usual opposition was on hand to portray those pushing for a warrant requirement as being in favor of sexually abusing children. [Marty] Vranicar [California District Attorneys Association] told the committee that the bill would "undermine efforts to find child exploitation," specifically child pornography. "SB 178 threatens law enforcement’s ability to conduct undercover child porn investigation. the so-called peer-to-peer investigations," he said. "Officers, after creating online profiles—these e-mails provide metadata that is the key to providing information. This would effectively end online undercover investigations in California." Vranicar failed to explain how an officer conducting an ongoing investigation would be unable to obtain a warrant for PTP user data… unless, of course, the "investigation" was nothing more than unfocused trolling or a sting running dangerously low on probable cause. Nothing in the bill forbids officers from using other methods -- Fourth Amendment-respecting methods -- to pursue those suspected of child exploitation. What it does do is make it more difficult to run stings and honeypots, both of which are already on shaky ground in terms of legality. Additionally, the bill demands extensive reporting requirements pertaining to government requests for data, and makes an effort to strip away the secrecy surrounding search warrants. 1546.2 (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, any government entity that executes a warrant or wiretap order or issues an emergency request pursuant to Section 1546.1 shall contemporaneously serve upon, or deliver by registered or first-class mail, electronic mail, or other means reasonably calculated to be effective, the identified targets of the warrant, order, or emergency request, a notice that informs the recipient that information about the recipient has been compelled or requested, and states with reasonable specificity the nature of the government investigation under which the information is sought. The notice shall include a copy of the warrant or order, or a written statement setting forth facts giving rise to the emergency. (b) If there is no identified target of a warrant, wiretap order, or emergency request at the time of its issuance, the government entity shall take reasonable steps to provide the notice, within three days of the execution of the warrant, to all individuals about whom information was disclosed or obtained. This isn't blanket coverage or without exceptions. Officers can still offer sworn affidavits in support of sealing to the court, which may then seal warrants on a rolling 90-day basis at its discretion. Law enforcement will continue to fight this bill, but its opposition seemingly had no effect on the Public Safety Committee. This bill brings the government into a much tighter alignment with the wording and the intent of the Fourth Amendment. The arguments against it demonstrate that the law enforcement community continues to prize efficient policing over the public's (supposedly) guaranteed rights. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...tingrays.shtml ![]() Europol Chief Warns on Computer Encryption Encrypted communications are the biggest problem for police, says European police chief A European police chief says the sophisticated online communications are the biggest problem for security agencies tackling terrorism. Hidden areas of the internet and encrypted communications make it harder to monitor terror suspects, warns Europol's Rob Wainwright. Tech firms should consider the impact sophisticated encryption software has on law enforcement, he said. Mr Wainwright was talking to 5 Live Investigates. A spokesman for TechUK, the UK's technology trade association, said: "With the right resources and cooperation between the security agencies and technology companies, alongside a clear legal framework for that cooperation, we can ensure both national security and economic security are upheld." Mr Wainwright said that in most current investigations the use of encrypted communications was found to be central to the way terrorists operated. "It's become perhaps the biggest problem for the police and the security service authorities in dealing with the threats from terrorism," he explained. "It's changed the very nature of counter-terrorist work from one that has been traditionally reliant on having good monitoring capability of communications to one that essentially doesn't provide that anymore." Mr Wainwright, whose organisation supports police forces in Europe, said terrorists were exploiting the "dark net", where users can go online anonymously, away from the gaze of police and security services. Secret messaging But he is also concerned at moves by companies such as Apple to allow customers to encrypt data on their smartphones. And the development of heavily encrypted instant messaging apps is another cause for concern, he said. This meant people could send text and voice messages which police found very difficult or impossible to access, he said. "We are disappointed by the position taken by these tech firms and it only adds to our problems in getting to the communications of the most dangerous people that are abusing the internet. "[Tech firms] are doing it, I suppose, because of a commercial imperative driven by what they perceive to be consumer demand for greater privacy of their communications." Surveillance Mr Wainwright acknowledged this was a result of the revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who exposed how security services were conducting widespread surveillance of emails and messages. He said security agencies now had to work to rebuild trust between technology firms and the authorities. The TechUK spokesman told the programme: "From huge volumes of financial transactions to personal details held on devices, the security of digital communications fundamentally underpins the UK economy. "Encryption is an essential component of the modern world and ensures the UK retains its position as one of the world's leading economies. "Tech companies take their security responsibilities incredibly seriously, and in the ongoing course of counter-terrorism and other investigations engage with law enforcement and security agencies." The programme also found evidence that supporters of the Islamic State (IS) are using encrypted sites to radicalise or groom new recruits. On one blogging website, a 17-year-old girl who wants to become a "jihadi bride" is told that if she needs to speak securely she should use an encrypted messaging app. The family of 15-year-old Yusra Hussein from Bristol, who went to Syria last year, also believe she was groomed in this way. Twitter terrorism The extent of the challenge faced by security services is shown in the scale of social media use by IS. Mr Wainwright revealed that IS is believed to have up to 50,000 different Twitter accounts tweeting up to 100,000 messages a day. Europol is now setting up a European Internet Referral Unit to identify and remove sites being used by terrorist organisations. Mr Wainwright also says current laws are "deficient" and should be reviewed to ensure security agencies are able to monitor all areas of the online world. "There is a significant capability gap that has to change if we're serious about ensuring the internet isn't abused and effectively enhancing the terrorist threat. "We have to make sure we reach the right balance by ensuring the fundamental principles of privacy are upheld so there's a lot of work for legislators and tech firms to do." http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32087919 ![]() Secrecy on the Set: Hollywood Embraces Digital Security Nicole Perlroth For years, Lulu Zezza has played one of the toughest roles in Hollywood. Ms. Zezza, who has managed physical production on movies like “The Reader” and “Nine,” also oversees the digital security of everything that goes into the making of a film on set, including budgets, casting, shooting schedules and scripts. Not all that long ago, keeping tabs on Hollywood secrets was pretty simple. Executives like Ms. Zezza could confiscate a crew member’s company-issued computer or cellphone once shooting ended. But personal smartphones that receive company emails, and apps that store data on cloud computers? That is not so easy to manage if your co-workers aren’t willing to play along. Enter North Korea, stage left. After hackers believed to be from North Korea revealed embarrassing emails and other personal details at Sony Pictures late last year, Hollywood studios — like so many businesses in other industries before them — realized they had better find a better way to protect their most sensitive files. And people like Ms. Zezza, who were once considered paranoid because they worried about mundane security measures like passwords and encryption, suddenly looked prescient. “Post-Sony, getting people to cooperate with me has been a completely different experience,” Ms. Zezza said. “Everyone gets that life has to change.” Hollywood has turned to a new class of technology companies, with names like WatchDox, IntraLinks and Varonis, that for the last few years have been offering ways to manage the data slipping into employees’ personal smartphones and Internet storage services. They wrap individual files with encryption, passwords and monitoring systems that can track who is doing what with sensitive files. “Hollywood is finally asking itself, ‘What’s our modern strategy for managing our information?’ ” said Aaron Levie, chief executive at Box, an online file storage provider that works with several major Hollywood studios. Venture capitalists have taken notice of the interest. In 2014, eight companies that help manage the security of documents raised $136 million in financing, more than five times the $25 million raised in 2013, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. They are aiming for a slice of the $665 million that American businesses spent on data-loss prevention last year. Gartner, the research company, expects that figure to surpass $1 billion by 2017. Movie studios, of course, have always been a little paranoid. The most sensitive Hollywood scripts were — and, in many cases, still are — etched with watermarks, or printed on colored and even mirrored paper to thwart photocopying. Letter spacing and minor character names were switched from script to script to pinpoint leakers. Plot endings were left out entirely. The most-coveted scripts are still locked in briefcases and accompanied by bodyguards whose sole job is to ensure they don’t end up in the wrong hands. But over the last decade, such measures have begun to feel quaint. Watermarks can be lifted. Color copiers don’t care what color a script is. Even scripts with bodyguards linger on a computer server somewhere. And once crew members started using their personal smartphones on set, “people started leaving with everything they had created for us,” Ms. Zezza said. “We had the movie in our possession, but none of the documents or drawings from the creative process.” Years before the attack on Sony, Ms. Zezza had a memorable encounter with hackers after the studio she was working with announced a deal with Ubisoft, the video game maker, to adapt “Assassin’s Creed” for the big screen. The production company was soon besieged by hacking attempts. “We were no longer worried about an assistant at an agency photocopying our script; we were dealing with sophisticated computer hackers who were extremely serious about finding out how we were turning their favorite game into a script,” recalled Ms. Zezza. It was a call to action. As Ms. Zezza searched for ways to protect sensitive data, she settled on WatchDox. The service gives file creators the ability to manage who can view, edit, share, scan and print a file, and for how long. If hackers steal the file off someone’s computer, all they will see is a bunch of encrypted characters. Her biggest challenge, however, wasn’t hackers. It was co-workers. “Nobody wanted to use it,” Ms. Zezza said. “The first year was unbelievably painful. I was teased mercilessly.” That was, of course, before the hacking at Sony. Now some Hollywood studios are removing their movie editing software from the Internet so hackers cannot get to it, said Ray Rothrock, the chief executive of RedSeal, a security start-up. For years, oil companies have been doing something similar with their pipelines — a process known as “air-gapping”— so that if hackers breach their internal network, they can’t use that access to blow up a pipeline. Now, Mr. Rothrock said, Hollywood is doing the same to combat theft. At WatchDox, demand from Hollywood studios has surged over the last three months, said Adi Ruppin, the chief technology officer. The company, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., has for some time been working with people like Oren Peli, the producer and screenwriter behind the “Paranormal Activity” film franchise. “Beyond a certain level, nothing is 100 percent foolproof, but now we know there are measures that make it 99 percent,” Mr. Peli said. “I’m a little paranoid, but it’s justified.” In 2009, a 43-page outline of Mr. Peli’s coming film, “Area 51,” leaked online. Mr. Peli had relied on traditional techniques, like watermarking, or would even change words or names of minor characters in each version of a script to thwart leakers. But when Mr. Peli started preparing for his next project, the “Chernobyl Diaries,” a 2012 horror film about tourists stranded at the site of the nuclear power plant disaster, he began searching for digital ways to protect the project. He started using WatchDox. “If I decide I actually don’t want someone to read something, I can revoke their access later, or decide after the fact to allow them to print it,” Mr. Peli said. As a bonus, “If I tell someone the script will expire in three days, they are more incentivized to read it.” Some studios are demanding new features to suit their needs. Mr. Levie said Box, which already stores vast amounts of data for businesses, has been investing in new tools that allow owners to control who can view their data and on what devices. It also manages who can edit material and even how long they can do it. Mr. Levie said the company would start adding invisible watermarking to files this spring. One of the quirkier features WatchDox has added is a spotlight view that mimics holding a bright flashlight over a document in the dark. Everything beyond the moving circular spotlight is unreadable. The feature makes it difficult for anyone peering over your shoulder — or a hacker pulling screen shots of your web browser — to read the whole document. Mr. Peli said the feature was a little too paranoid for his taste. Mr. Ruppin said he recently received a complaint from a WatchDox customer with a decidedly different concern. “The customer thought the spotlight radius should be smaller,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/te...-security.html ![]() TrueCrypt Doesn't Contain NSA Backdoors TrueCrypt doesn't contain NSA backdoors concludes security audit Mark Wilson A security audit of TrueCrypt has determined that the disk encryption software does not contain any backdoors that could be used by the NSA or other surveillance agencies. A report prepared by the NCC Group for Open Crypto Audit Project found that the encryption tool is not vulnerable to being compromised. However, the software was found to contain a few other security vulnerabilities, including one relating to the use of the Windows API to generate random numbers for master encryption key material. Despite this, TrueCrypt was given a relatively clean bill of health with none of the detected vulnerabilities considered sever enough to lead "to a complete bypass of confidentiality in common usage scenarios". NCC's report reveals a total of four vulnerabilities in TrueCrypt, with two of them being marked as severe. The most worrying -- although it must be stressed that the report does not suggest that there is real cause for concern -- stems from the fact that random numbers are generated based on values from a Windows API. Should this API fail for any reason, TrueCrypt may continue to generate keys with the possibility of an element of predictability -- clearly not ideal for encryption software. Moving forward, the report stresses the importance of improving error handing in the software: Because TrueCrypt aims to be security-critical software, it is not appropriate to fail silently or attempt to continue execution in unusual program states. More than simply aborting the application, attempt to gather relevant diagnostic information and make it available for submission to developers to diagnose root-causes. This is especially important as it is difficult to fully test code on multiple operating systems and configurations. With an increased interest in the activities of the NSA, and particularly in the suggestion that hardware and software should have backdoors built in by default, the report will comes as good news overall for TrueCrypt users. http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/truec...nsa-backdoors/ ![]() Yik Yak's Secret Advantage: It’s Outside The Silicon Valley Bubble How the college-focused social app (mostly) steers clear of tech hype. Carmel DeAmicis The two 24-year-old founders of the social app Yik Yak carry themselves cautiously. They leaned back in their chairs during their recent SXSW interview, sporting matching green socks adorned with their yak mascot. They remained very still throughout the one hour conversation, as though they wanted to disappear into the background. This was the first big, live interview that Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll had ever done, and it happened in front of an audience of about 500 tech enthusiasts and journalists. (And me, the discussion moderator.) Up to that point, they'd kept themselves out of the public eye, preferring to build their service quietly from their home in Georgia. But Yik Yak is growing so quickly that it's not clear how much longer it can avoid the usual dog-and-pony show the tech industry tends to force upon startups. The App That Twitter Copied Yik Yak is a location-based social networking app that wants to be the next Twitter. It essentially broadcasts your posts to other users in a 10-mile radius, who can upvote or downvote them. In the span of a year, Yik Yak has mushroomed into a social media giant. It’s a staple on every college campus in America; Twitter even paid it the compliment of ripping off its location feature. There are some controversies around the app, including allegations of cyber-bullying, but it also holds the potential of creating another new way for us to communicate with people—strangers and otherwise—who are physically near us. Over the days and weeks prior to the SXSW panel, I had long conversations with the Yik Yak founders in preparation. What emerged from our chats was a picture of two cautious entrepreneurs whose success has come despite—even perhaps because of—their deliberate avoidance of the tech world. Reporters Don't Bite, Right? As Yik Yak saw meteoric adoption on college campuses across America over the last year, Buffington and Droll avoided tech reporters as much as possible. I can personally attest to this; my texts and emails frequently went unanswered even after I interviewed them for a big feature last October. On stage, they laugh nervously and shrug when I ask why they’re reticent to talk to the media. Buffington uncrosses his legs and smiles. “We didn’t grow up in San Francisco, our users are more in college,” Droll explains. “Our time is limited so we want to be focused on moving the brand within our core demographic.” The duo might turn down interview requests from major outlets and tech publications, but they do a lot of college paper interviews. “Those are the real people that are using our app,” Buffington added. The wariness has been mutual. Even as mainstream media outlets like the Today Show and the Washington Post flocked to cover Yik Yak, many in Silicon Valley remained diffident. They had seen too many high profile location networking failures before and grouped Yik Yak in with confessional apps Secret and Whisper. It was dismissed as the last place contestant. A reporter friend of mine ruefully remembered his response when he was first pitched on the concept, “It's an anonymous location-based social network based in Atlanta? Hahaha—good luck, Brooks Buffington!” In the last few months, however, this narrative has reversed itself. Yik Yak raised $62 million in funding from prestigious venture firm Sequoia—a round led by Jim Goetz, known for making an early big bet on WhatsApp. Soon after, Secret redesigned its entire product to look like Yik Yak, and Twitter previewed a location based networking feature that was a blatant Yik Yak rip off. In short order, the tech world started wondering “Is Yik Yak the new WhatsApp?” It's Peachier In Georgia Buffington and Droll observed the melee from their perch in Atlanta. Most social networking apps either come out of the Bay Area, like Snapchat, or move there once they’re successful, like Facebook. Investors often insist on it. But Buffington and Droll held their ground when it came to such a negotiation. They wanted to stay in Georgia. “We’re hometown heroes,” Droll said. “That’s where our families are, and that’s where we want to be. Why do we need to move?” The duo cites nearby universities like Georgia Tech as a source for recruiting engineering talent. “Not every single engineer comes from California,” Buffington said wryly. In past conversations they’ve told me they like saving money on rent, cost of living, and salary expenses. They use their investment backing frugally. Their reluctance to flee to Northern California, court tech press, and become part of the Silicon Valley startup world isn’t just a quirk. It’s Buffington and Droll’s secret weapon. With little knowledge of the high profile location failures that came before, Buffington and Droll lack both blueprints and fear. Dead Apps On The Path To Success The path to location success is littered with dead, dying, or stagnant apps—names like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Highlight. To attempt location networking yet again, and from the distant reaches of Atlanta, takes a certain amount of arrogance. But when I asked the Yik Yak duo why they thought they could succeed where others like Foursquare had failed, Buffington said something to the effect of, “Well, I don’t use Foursquare, so I’m not really sure.” That fresh perspective is clear in their product design. They didn’t bother with check-ins or maps of people nearby. Instead, they applied a Reddit-like feed to the location problem. They focused on socializing and communication first, instead of gamification, which is perhaps what draws college students into the app regularly. People use Yik Yak to connect to people around them, not to collect badges or rewards. Buffington and Droll are building for themselves and their friends, so they don’t spend time on concepts that might be relevant in the Bay Area but nowhere else. For example, when I asked whether they had thought about building for the Apple Watch, they looked at me like I was an idiot. “College students can’t afford the Apple Watch,” Droll said. In that sense, the founders seem to be more in touch with their core audience then if they were building out of Stanford or MIT. And Here Come The Me-Toos None of that has kept Silicon Valley darlings from trying to imitate Yik Yak, of course. Twitter’s upcoming location feed, which it previewed during its analyst call in November, looks almost identical to Yik Yak’s Peek Anywhere function. (That lets you beam into a different location to check up on conversation there, although you can't participate.) With more money, users, and brand recognition, Twitter could theoretically beat Buffington and Droll to other demographics besides college students. Not surprisingly, Yik Yak’s founders say they’re not worried about Twitter. (Do entrepreneurs ever admit if they’re worried?) “It was a nice shoutout from Twitter, but I’m curious to see how it plays out,” Droll said when I asked about it at SXSW. “It’s not core to their experience.” Yik Yak benefits from being known as location first and foremost, but that very aspect of its product also limits its growth. People don’t have any incentive to get their friends in far flung places using it. It has yet to expand beyond college kids, so it’s not clear whether strangers in a ten mile radius outside school environments will have enough in common. Location can unite people in powerful ways—whether you’re looking for a restaurant recommendation, want to sell something you own, or just need information on the weird parade happening outside. In the meantime, Buffington and Droll are in no rush to expand beyond the university crowd. “That’s the most powerful demographic to have, college campuses,” Buffington said. “In a lot of ways, they’re tastemakers for not only America, but the world. Any large social network has to pass the sniff test by college students before it goes anywhere else.” As the SXSW panel drew to a close, audience members stepped up to ask questions at the mike. It was college student after college student, professing their love of Yik Yak and thanking the founders for making the app. Buffington and Droll sat up a little straighter and started smiling. These were their users, the people they build for. The rest of us are clearly just bystanders who don’t quite understand the Yik Yak phenomenon yet. http://readwrite.com/2015/03/30/yik-...-valley-bubble ![]() China Appears to Attack GitHub by Diverting Web Traffic Paul Mozur The Chinese government has long used a sophisticated set of Internet filters known as the Great Firewall as a barrier to prevent its citizens from obtaining access to foreign websites with information it deems threatening. But in a recent series of attacks on websites that try to help Internet users in China circumvent this censorship, the Great Firewall appears to have been used instead as a weapon, diverting a portion of the torrents of Internet traffic that flow through it to overload targeted websites. In doing so, the Chinese government is taking advantage of and damaging one of China’s own Internet companies: Baidu. The attacks appear to hijack advertising and analytics traffic intended for Baidu, China’s largest search company, and then send that traffic to smaller websites in what is known as a distributed denial of service or DDoS attack. The huge flow of traffic has the effect of crashing the sites. The aggressive new strategy shows vividly how Beijing is struggling to balance its desire to control the flow of information online with the aim of encouraging the growth of its tech sector. The main target of the recent barrage is GitHub, a popular website that acts as a library of code for programmers. While it is indispensable for tech companies in China, it also hosts several pages that enable users to view sites blocked in the country. Because GitHub is fully encrypted, China’s domestic web filters cannot distinguish between pages that host code useful to programmers and code that circumvents censorship. In 2013, when the government fully blocked GitHub, it caused an outcry among China’s many computer engineers, leading to the site’s subsequent unblocking. The new attacks take more of a siege approach, hitting the site with a costly and difficult-to-manage barrage of traffic in the hopes it will remove two pages, one with code from GreatFire.org — a nonprofit organization that runs mirrors of blocked sites including Google, the BBC and The New York Times — and another that hosts links to mirror sites of the Chinese version of The Times. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, declined to comment on the attacks. “This is a huge problem for free expression,” said Lokman Tsui, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He added that these attacks could lead sites like GitHub to decide it is too much trouble to host content deemed problematic by China. “This is a message to the people who maintain GitHub: Either you kick out GreatFire and The New York Times, or we’ll keep this up,” said Mikko Hypponen, the chief research officer at the security firm F-Secure. The new attacks come as Beijing has increased censorship in China, and grown more vocal about how the Internet should be governed globally. In a number of recent public appearances, China’s Internet czar, Lu Wei, has called for respect for China’s Internet sovereignty, meaning that China should have the right to manage the Internet within its borders as it wants. But the GreatFire.org material on GitHub, which is based in San Francisco, offers an unusual exception. By offering code that unblocks sites within China, it is assumed to be violating Chinese laws from abroad. James Andrew Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the attack was an attempt to deal with extraterritoriality on the Internet. “China is trying to redefine the rules of the Internet and they’re feeling their way forward as they do it,” he said. “This is one of another set of actions to say China will have a bigger voice in how the Internet works.” He added that the United States had reacted strongly to distributed denial of service attacks by Iran in the past, and in this case the Obama administration could increase pressure and enact stiffer penalties against China if these types of attacks continue. If the style of the most recent wave of attacks is well known, novel elements present major difficulties for those seeking to keep the site up, according to a number of security experts. In particular, because the traffic comes from real users scattered across the globe, instead of a concentrated network of infected computers, it is hard to sort the real traffic from the fake. Experts said they could not be certain who was behind the attacks. But it appears that signals to or from Baidu ads and analytics tools are being redirected toward the targeted sites when users outside China visit a site inside China. Because the signals seem to be diverted at the gateway between China and the rest of the world, analysts suspect the government and the Great Firewall. In a post on a security website run by Insight Labs, an analyst wrote that “a certain device at the border of China’s inner network and the Internet has hijacked” connections going into China. “In other words,” the post continued, “even people outside China are being weaponized to target things the Chinese government does not like, for example, freedom of speech.” Mr. Hypponen said the on-again off-again waves of attack traffic acted similarly to the way the Great Firewall filters, and that the capabilities and motivations also pointed to Beijing. In a statement Friday, GitHub said the attack was the largest of its type to have targeted the site, and that the attack featured “some sophisticated new techniques that use the web browsers of unsuspecting, uninvolved people to flood GitHub.com with high levels of traffic.” “Based on reports we’ve received,” the company said, “we believe the intent of this attack is to convince us to remove a specific class of content.” As of Monday GitHub said services were operating normally, but attack traffic continued. The attacks put Baidu in a difficult position. Calling it the price of doing business in China, Mr. Tsui said the company was “being used” and pointed out that the attack was directly hitting the company’s bottom line by interrupting advertising traffic. In a statement, Kaiser Kuo, a Baidu spokesman, said the company found no security breaches and was working with other organizations to get to the bottom of the attack. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/te...b-traffic.html ![]() 14-Year-Old Windows XP Still Has More Users Than Windows 8.x Paul Lilly Microsoft ended support for Windows XP a year ago, but that hasn't stopped nearly two out of every 10 Windows users from clinging to the legacy operating system, according to data collected by Net Applications. What's even more interesting about Windows XP's 16.94 percent of the desktop PC market is that it once again has eclipsed the number of Windows 8 and 8.1 users combined. Here's the deal -- based on Net Application's numbers, Windows 8.1 ended March with a 10.55 percent share of the desktop PC market while Windows 8 crossed over in April with a 3.52 percent share. Between the to, that works out to a 14.07 percent share of the market, which is 2.87 percent less than Windows XP, a 14-year-old OS. And if you're wondering about Windows 7, it ended the month at a dominating 58.04 percent share. If you go back to November of last year, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combined for an 18.65 share of the market, compared to Windows XP at 13.57 percent (and Windows 7 at 56.41 percent). That was the one and only month where Windows 8/8.1 installs outnumbered Windows XP installs. November also represents the lowest Windows XP's share of the desktop market has been for as far back as Net Applications lets us look. So, what gives? Well, for whatever reason, it was a down month for Windows XP in November. A month prior, Windows XP's share of the market was 3.61 percent higher and going back a month further it was 4.69 percent higher. We're not sure why it dipped so much in November, but that's on reason why Windows 8/8.1 was able to temporarily pull ahead. As for now, it's possible that some Windows 8/8.1 users have jumped ship to Windows 10, which is available free of charge in Technical Preview form. This would help explain why Windows 8/8.1 has stayed flat for the past three months. Whatever the case might be, Windows XP isn't going down easy, especially since businesses can pay Microsoft for extended support, which is sometimes cheaper than trying to upgrade the entire infrastructure. http://hothardware.com/News/14-year-...han-windows-8x ![]() Restoring Lost Data Researchers developing 3-D digital laser microscopy to create visual roadmap Marlene Cimons It can be disheartening to learn that something precious, such as a one-of-a-kind family photo, has disappeared from a scratched or broken CD or DVD. It also can become serious, dangerous and potentially costly if it happens to a disc containing criminal forensic evidence, corporate records or scientific data. But there may be a way in the future to bring the material back. Optical media, that is, CDs and DVDs, have been in widespread use for the past two decades, and burners are in many homes and elsewhere, making it possible for consumers to create any number of their own personal discs. But the products have not turned out to be as durable as originally believed, a situation that can turn tragic if a disc containing the only available copy of important material has become damaged. Although still a work-in-progress, researchers have developed a process with the potential to restore much of what was thought to be lost. "While we haven't solved all of the challenges necessary for efficient data recovery from damaged optical media, we have moved forward in terms of refining what is possible," says Greg Gogolin, a professor of information security and intelligence at Michigan's Ferris State University, stressing that the work of his team at this point was aimed solely at demonstrating "proof of concept." Equally important, the development of new security techniques to ensure that data is unrecoverable, similar to advances that now prevent the retrieval of information on destroyed paper documents. "A common way to destroy a paper document used to be to burn it," Gogolin says. "Forensic techniques, however, were developed that allowed for the recovery of information that was on a burned document. Document destruction techniques were then improved." The National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researcher, in collaboration with colleagues James Jones, associate professor in the computer forensics program at George Mason University; Charles Bacon, a Ferris professor of physical science; Tracey Boncher, a Ferris associate professor of pharmacy; and Derek Brower, a Ferris graduate student at the time of the research, theorized that using three-dimensional digital laser microscopy to capture 3-D image of the disc could provide a visual roadmap of the data. This and a special computer algorithm capable of recognizing its patterns then could aid in recovering the vast majority of it. "If a disc is broken in half, you've still got 99 percent of the data still there," Gogolin says. "The media is quite elastic and the data is pretty much intact up to the cut line. There is, of course, a region that is destroyed near where the disc has been cut. But for most part, you didn't destroy the data, you just made it unreadable because you can't spin the disc." The researchers, funded by a $356,318 grant awarded in 2011 from NSF's Division of Computer and Network Systems, tested their idea by breaking a disc, putting it together and taking a picture of it using the high-powered 3-D digital laser microscope. "It was like sticking it into a kind of copy machine," Gogolin says. "There are patterns to represent the data, that is, the different letters." After determining the data patterns, "we then read them with a computer program to determine what data was on the disc." At this early stage of development, the computer program the scientists wrote contains and recognizes only simple alphabetic encoding. But, "there are many different types of data that could be on there, including letters, numbers and special characters," he says. "There is a huge range of possible data elements, and we don't have recognition set up for all of them, only for a subset, part of the alphabet." The ultimate goal is "to expand the capabilities of the recovery program to be able to recognize all the different types of data and encoding that could be present on an optical disc," he adds, stressing that big hurdles remain. "It's a huge deal in that there are many different combinations and variations of data that make it a significant challenge to be able to recognize everything that would be on an optical disc. You can have different types of discs and Blu Ray discs. Different manufacturers use different inks. You could have encryption. There are a lot of variables." Also, the larger the file, the more difficult the recovery, he says. "If it's a small file, the chances of recovering it are much better than if it's a large file, because the chances of the file running into that ‘destruction zone' are greater," he says. "If you need a complete file to affect the recovery, and it's a large file, it becomes a bigger issue." The researchers now are trying to decide if they want to test their ideas on other types of memory, such as flash drives "like that in your phone," he says, or solid state drives, rather than hard drives. "That's where everything is going," he says. "Would time be better spent trying to perfect a way to recover material from a flash or finishing what is needed for optical?" The team is a long way from making the process widely available. Nevertheless, "we wanted to prove the concept that it could be done, so that every time you see a broken disc, you won't necessarily think, 'oh, it's lost forever,"' Gogolin says. https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc....mc_id=USNSF_1 ![]() The Shut-In Economy In the new world of on-demand everything, you’re either pampered, isolated royalty — or you’re a 21st century servant. Lauren Smiley Angel the concierge stands behind a lobby desk at a luxe apartment building in downtown San Francisco, and describes the residents of this imperial, 37-story tower. “Ubers, Squares, a few Twitters,” she says. “A lot of work-from-homers.” And by late afternoon on a Tuesday, they’re striding into the lobby at a just-get-me-home-goddammit clip, some with laptop bags slung over their shoulders, others carrying swank leather satchels. At the same time a second, temporary population streams into the building: the app-based meal delivery people hoisting thermal carrier bags and sacks. Green means Sprig. A huge M means Munchery. Down in the basement, Amazon Prime delivery people check in packages with the porter. The Instacart groceries are plunked straight into a walk-in fridge. This is a familiar scene. Five months ago I moved into a spartan apartment a few blocks away, where dozens of startups and thousands of tech workers live. Outside my building there’s always a phalanx of befuddled delivery guys who seem relieved when you walk out, so they can get in. Inside, the place is stuffed with the goodies they bring: Amazon Prime boxes sitting outside doors, evidence of the tangible, quotidian needs that are being serviced by the web. The humans who live there, though, I mostly never see. And even when I do, there seems to be a tacit agreement among residents to not talk to one another. I floated a few “hi’s” in the elevator when I first moved in, but in return I got the monosyllabic, no-eye-contact mumble. It was clear: Lady, this is not that kind of building. Back in the elevator in the 37-story tower, the messengers do talk, one tells me. They end up asking each other which apps they work for: Postmates. Seamless. EAT24. GrubHub. Safeway.com. A woman hauling two Whole Foods sacks reads the concierge an apartment number off her smartphone, along with the resident’s directions: “Please deliver to my door.” “They have a nice kitchen up there,” Angel says. The apartments rent for as much as $5,000 a month for a one-bedroom. “But so much, so much food comes in. Between 4 and 8 o’clock, they’re on fire.” I start to walk toward home. En route, I pass an EAT24 ad on a bus stop shelter, and a little further down the street, a Dungeons & Dragons–type dude opens the locked lobby door of yet another glass-box residential building for a Sprig deliveryman: “You’re…” “Jonathan?” “Sweet,” Dungeons & Dragons says, grabbing the bag of food. The door clanks behind him. And that’s when I realized: the on-demand world isn’t about sharing at all. It’s about being served. This is an economy of shut-ins. In 1998, Carnegie Mellon researchers warned that the internet could make us into hermits. They released a study monitoring the social behavior of 169 people making their first forays online. The web-surfers started talking less with family and friends, and grew more isolated and depressed. “We were surprised to find that what is a social technology has such anti-social consequences,” said one of the researchers at the time. “And these are the same people who, when asked, describe the Internet as a positive thing.” We’re now deep into the bombastic buildout of the on-demand economy— with investment in the apps, platforms and services surging exponentially. Right now Americans buy nearly eight percent of all their retail goods online, though that seems a wild underestimate in the most congested, wired, time-strapped urban centers. Many services promote themselves as life-expanding — there to free up your time so you can spend it connecting with the people you care about, not standing at the post office with strangers. Rinse’s ad shows a couple chilling at a park, their laundry being washed by someone, somewhere beyond the picture’s frame. But plenty of the delivery companies are brutally honest that, actually, they never want you to leave home at all. GrubHub’s advertising banks on us secretly never wanting to talk to a human again: “Everything great about eating, combined with everything great about not talking to people.” DoorDash, another food delivery service, goes for the all-caps, batshit extreme: “NEVER LEAVE HOME AGAIN.” Katherine van Ekert isn’t a shut-in, exactly, but there are only two things she ever has to run errands for any more: trash bags and saline solution. For those, she must leave her San Francisco apartment and walk two blocks to the drug store, “so woe is my life,” she tells me. (She realizes her dry humor about #firstworldproblems may not translate, and clarifies later: “Honestly, this is all tongue in cheek. We’re not spoiled brats.”) Everything else is done by app. Her husband’s office contracts with Washio. Groceries come from Instacart. “I live on Amazon,” she says, buying everything from curry leaves to a jogging suit for her dog, complete with hoodie. She’s so partial to these services, in fact, that she’s running one of her own: A veterinarian by trade, she’s a co-founder of VetPronto, which sends an on-call vet to your house. It’s one of a half-dozen on-demand services in the current batch at Y Combinator, the startup factory, including a marijuana delivery app called Meadow (“You laugh, but they’re going to be rich,” she says). She took a look at her current clients — they skew late 20s to late 30s, and work in high-paying jobs: “The kinds of people who use a lot of on demand services and hang out on Yelp a lot ☺” Basically, people a lot like herself. That’s the common wisdom: the apps are created by the urban young for the needs of urban young. The potential of delivery with a swipe of the finger is exciting for van Ekert, who grew up without such services in Sydney and recently arrived in wired San Francisco. “I’m just milking this city for all it’s worth,” she says. “I was talking to my father on Skype the other day. He asked, ‘Don’t you miss a casual stroll to the shop?’ Everything we do now is time-limited, and you do everything with intention. There’s not time to stroll anywhere.” Suddenly, for people like van Ekert, the end of chores is here. After hours, you’re free from dirty laundry and dishes. (TaskRabbit’s ad rolls by me on a bus: “Buy yourself time — literally.”) So here’s the big question. What does she, or you, or any of us do with all this time we’re buying? Binge on Netflix shows? Go for a run? Van Ekert’s answer: “It’s more to dedicate more time to working.” Alfred, maybe, is the inevitable end point of this system. It’s an on-demand assistant that coordinates all the other on-demand apps for you, and it’s aimed at two groups: people who want the benefits of various apps but don’t want to bother setting them all up, and the “air traffic controllers,” who already have so many services coming to relieve their burden that coordinating them has become a new burden all of its own. With Alfred, you no longer have to open the door for the Instacart delivery: A worker comes into your apartment and stocks food in your fridge. You don’t hand off your dirty undies to a Washio messenger; Alfred puts the laundered undies in the drawer. This all happens by paying your Alfred $99 a month, plus the goods and services at reduced cost through Alfred’s hookups. Alfred won first place in the TechCrunch Disrupt SF conference last year. Shutting people out is an important part of being a shut-in: When signing up, customers can choose the option of not seeing their Alfred, who will come in when they’re at work. Alfred’s messaging is aimed at sweeping aside any middle-class shame. “We’re trying to remove the taboo and the guilt that you should have to do it,” says Alfred’s CEO Marcela Sapone over the phone. “We’re empowering you to let others do it for you. You’re the manager of your life. It’s against the stigma of ‘People use this because they’re lazy.’ Absolutely not. They’re using this because they’re extremely busy.” She’s talking about people like Christina Mallon, whom the Alfred folks put me in contact with. Mallon is a 26-year-old in New York City who works as a branding sales consultant to tech companies, regularly working from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Unlike the Silicon Valley tech campuses she works with, Mallon has no worksite cafeteria, so she uses food delivery apps for lunch and dinner. Her old West Village building has limited hot water, she says, so she gets her hair blown out three days a week using Vive, a subscription hairdresser service, for $100 a month. When Mallon gets back to her apartment at night for about a precious hour of free time before heading to bed (her boyfriend, who works in private equity, doesn’t make it home until 1 a.m.) Alfred has handled the rest. Gluten-free groceries from Whole Foods in the cupboards, her laundry hung, her packages picked up, others delivered, her bed made, her kitchen table tidied — and a note asking what she needs for next time. But the three hours she estimates Alfred saves her each week also buys her time to get out —she no longer has to wait at home on Saturdays waiting for TaskRabbits or FreshDirect groceries to appear. “My mom and dad worked a lot, so we grew up on fast food and had a cleaner come once every two weeks,” Mallon says. “I had to do my bed every morning and everything had to be clean. No allowance. I have a strong work ethic and worked 24–7 in college and went to school at night, so I know how to get things done. You have to outsource things that someone else can do for cheaper. To save an hour a day, I would spend $25.” In one hour of chore time saved, Mallon estimates she can make $1,000 for her company. Tech companies have long realized that if you hook up your employees with everything on site, they’ll work longer, more industrious hours. And if apps deliver that same to the home, corporations keep benefiting. Employees can work even more undistracted hours remotely or buy even more on-demand services (like that Netflix binge). The perfect cycle of productivity and consumption is created— and all without ever having to step outside. In many ways, social class can be defined by the chores you don’t do. The rich have personal assistants, butlers, cooks, drivers. The middle class largely do their own errands — with the occasional babysitter, pizza boy, maybe a cleaner. The poor do their own chores, and the chores of other people. Then came on-demand’s disruptive influence. The luxuries usually afforded to one-percenters now stretch to the urban upper-middle class, or so the technology industry cheers. But can you democratize the province of the rich without getting a new class acting, well, entitled? My parents made me put away the dishes not to “outsource” their workload — they could have done it faster. They did it so I wouldn’t turn out to be a brat. Now an entire generation is not just being served: It’s having to work out what it means when you buy someone to do it for you. Katy Rogers is a 29-year-old account director at a social startup, and a regular with laundry and grocery apps. But when the Homejoy app maid shows up at her apartment, she feels uncomfortable. The class implications of someone cleaning her toilet are jarring. “I feel like it’s a little bit awkward. I’m thinking, what do these people think of me?” She also wonders about the workers. Rogers wishes the companies were a bit more transparent about the payment structure. (“Some of them say there’s no need to tip. I’m like why? How much are they actually going to earn?”) While Dungeon & Dragons grabbed his dinner eagerly, Rogers has found herself tinkering with how exactly to interact with her hired help. By the end of our chat, it seemed as if she had almost talked herself out of the whole enterprise.“Maybe that’s something I should just do myself.” Who cleaned her house growing up? I ask. “My mom did everything.” That’s the other side of this, the gender one. The errands being served up by the on-demand economy — cooking, cleaning, laundry, groceries, runs to the post office — all were all once, and in many places still are, the jobs of stay-at-home mothers. Even now, when women outnumber men in the formal workplace, they continue to bear the brunt of that invisible domestic work, often for many, many hours a week. So women — those who can afford it, at least — have the most to win from passing that load on to somebody else. So it’s not a surprise that 60 percent of Alfred’s clients are female. One mother I know told me she has no time to cook while wrangling two kids under two, so she uses EAT24. Uber is an easy way to get out of the house with an infant, another told me, saying the driver helped her strap the baby seat into the black sedan. The invisible work handed off by some women simply becomes visible — oftentimes for other, less wealthy women. Despite the name, 75 percent of “Alfreds” are women. Last year the venture capital firm SherpaVentures — whose offices are just down the street from that apartment building full of Ubers and Squares and Twitters— released a sunny study on the future of our on-demand world. They have a stake in making it go big , of course: they’re seed investors in Shyp and Munchery and have $154 million to invest in on-demand businesses. As the desire for more instant, app-based services expands up the economic chain, the report argued, entrepreneurial freelancers — everyone from grocery deliverers to cleaners to accountants to lawyers — will have flexibility to monetize their time when they want to and pursue their passions. Brick-and-mortar stores die out, and so do their low-wage retail jobs, which it suggested would personalize the world, away from the sterile anonymity of big-box stores to a “21st-century village economy,” in which we’re “united” by cellphones. So who are we uniting with in this scenario? Some workers in the on-demand economy are hourly employees with benefits. Many others prefer an army of free-roving freelancers. Uber released a study purporting that the drivers (or “partners”) are happy with this: more than 70 percent of its drivers preferred setting their own hours over a traditional job. Other drivers dissent on this point, filing lawsuits. In the stream of delivery workers coming into the 37-story apartment fortress next to Uber HQ was TaNica, a Sprig contractor. She had been out of the work force for three years when she started with the app. “This is a job I need, but I actually love,” she says. She likes driving around — she works every day and tries to get in 50 hours a week, at $16 an hour. Not all the workers were so happy, though. The Google Express contractor in my lobby told me she’d earned a college degree in criminology and hopes to find a job in her field. Another bicycle messenger showed me in his phone’s settings how the app could track him at all hours, which he found Orwellian. He talked for a few minutes about how he’s just doing this part-time between creative gigs, and hoped to get out soon. Before we finished talking, his app flashed a message: “Let’s move!” and he pushed off. The SherpaVentures report didn’t mention shut-ins. It did, however, point out that grocery delivery has taken off massively in hyper-dense developing countries, where huge income disparities allow upper-middle-class citizens to turn the rest of the workforce into their personal delivery network. In Mexico City, the study noted, 20 percent of grocery orders are made remotely. As income inequality increases, the shut-in model is tailor-made for the new polarized extremes. After all, either you’re behind the door, receiving your dinner in the tower. Or you’re like the food delivery guy who, while checking in with the concierge, said, “This is my dream place to live.” He’s the opposite of a shut-in. He’s stuck outside, hustling. https://medium.com/matter/the-shut-i...y-ec3ec1294816 ![]() Tidal May Live Or Die On One Thing, And It’s Not High-Fidelity Sound Walt Hickey Jay Z launched a new music streaming service, Tidal, this week with a somewhat bizarre press conference. The service appears to bring two main things to the table: • Tidal has direct financial connections to very popular artists. • It’s selling itself as a purveyor of high-fidelity music. Existing services tend to max out at 320 kilobytes per second (kbps), and Tidal is offering 1,411 kbps streaming, which is essentially CD quality. It’s super early to start kicking Tidal’s tires, but it has a couple of competitive advantages and disadvantages out of the gate. I realize there are audiophiles among us, and they will probably love this product, but how much of America really cares a ton about music quality? I couldn’t find data on this, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of people downloading music on iTunes and yearning for higher quality. Audiophiles may enthusiastically sign on, but I don’t know if — discounting the exclusivity — the music quality alone would be enough to sell Tidal to the masses. What’s more, I think there’s evidence that people are not ready for the product that Tidal is offering. Remember, high-fidelity audio streams at 1,411 kbps. Most people who stream music are used to, at best, 320 kbps. Extra quality requires extra bandwidth. Here’s gadget blog Tools and Toys on what this means: Streaming an hour of 1,411 kbps music uses about 500 MB, compared to 140 MB that music streamed at 320 kbps uses. Since data usage — at least on mobile — is a real concern, most music streaming services default to a lower bitrate. So the data required to play an hour of 320 kbps music would be used up in about 17 minutes on 1,411 kbps. This isn’t a death sentence — users can get around the problem by downloading music when they’re on WiFi and not browsing new music too much while on 3G or 4G, but that’s not really how people stream music. I don’t think the average American’s data plans can take it, according to a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate. In January the investment blog The Motley Fool reported that the average U.S. consumer used 1.8 gigabytes of data in a month. Based on the Tools and Toys numbers, 1.8 gigs per month is only about 3 hours and 36 minutes of 1,411 kbps streaming. That’s way less audio than Americans typically consume. In May 2014, Edison Research found that Americans spent 4 hours and 5 minutes listening to audio per day (that includes terrestrial and satellite radio, owned and streamed music, and podcasts). Edison found 11.6 percent of that time was spent on Internet radio services. So Americans spent an average of 28 minutes per day streaming music. The average listener would blow through a month’s worth of data in about a week, is what I’m saying. Recruiting subscribers will be another obstacle for Tidal. Right now, it’s got 540,000 paying customers. Spotify says it has “over 15 million.” Pandora One had 3.5 million last November. Beats has fewer — maybe 300,000 — but it’s owned by Apple, which owns music juggernaut iTunes and is preparing for a major play in the streaming world in its own right. Consider the ancient (like one week old) parable of the Meerkat. The live video streaming app piggybacked off Twitter for several weeks. Then Twitter launched its own homegrown live video streaming app, Periscope. Meerkat is now screwed. If an entity with a massive paid subscriber base or distribution platform is able to replicate your startup’s core advantage, your startup is not going to have a good time. And that’s where the advantage of offering high-quality streaming may be jeopardized. If Apple comes out and says they too will have lossless high-fidelity sound, how much does that hurt Tidal? If Spotify creates a new tier at the same price point, will Tidal be able to compete for those hi-fi fans? There is an argument in Tidal’s favor. We’ve seen with Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO and other video streaming services that exclusivity is a very good way to gain and keep subscribers. Just like there are people who subscribe to HBO just for “Game of Thrones,” there’s an argument to be made that people could subscribe to Tidal just for, say, new Rihanna releases. Look at the people who were on stage with Jay Z on Monday: Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire, Beyonce, Calvin Harris, Chris Martin, Daft Punk, Deadmau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J. Cole, Kanye West, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher, according to Music Business Worldwide. Do you like any one of those artists? Well, here’s one reason they may agree to some degree of exclusivity with Tidal, according to Billboard: Each of the 16 participating artists are believed to have been gifted 3% equity in the company, with the remaining stakes owned by Jay Z, another investor and the record labels, according to executives familiar with Tidal’s financials. In other words, the most important thing for Tidal probably isn’t high-fidelity sound; Tidal may live or die on exclusivity. If it can score exclusive access to popular artists, it’s got a shot to compete. But it’s a late entrant in the space, and it will likely soon have the Apple Corporation to compete with. Music stars don’t have a great track record in the tech space. If Jay Z and company are able to play on their music connections, though, maybe they could change that. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/t...high-fidelity/ Until next week, - js. ![]() Current Week In Review ![]() Recent WiRs - March 21st, March 14th, March 7th, February 28th Jack Spratts' Week In Review is published every Friday. Submit letters, articles, press releases, comments, questions etc. in plain text English to jackspratts (at) lycos (dot) com. Submission deadlines are Thursdays @ 1400 UTC. Please include contact info. The right to publish all remarks is reserved. "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." - Hugo Black |
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