P2P-Zone  

Go Back   P2P-Zone > Peer to Peer
FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Peer to Peer The 3rd millenium technology!

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old 18-06-14, 07:39 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
JackSpratts's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New England
Posts: 10,013
Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 21st, '14

Since 2002


































"It appears that the Doyle estate is concerned not with specific alterations in the depiction of Holmes or Watson in Holmes-Watson stories written by authors other than Arthur Conan Doyle, but with any such story that is published without payment to the estate of a licensing fee." – Judge Richard A Posner


"The more practical present-day concern is about the data caps themselves. What's the justification for a cap if music can be so easily uncapped? Certainly not congestion. Any time a carrier says hey, pay us a little more or use a certain service and the data is free, then you have to think the cap is arbitrary in the first place." – Matt Wood






































June 21st, 2014




Meet Movie Studios’ Worst Nightmare: IsoPlex, the Free Torrent-Streaming Movie App
Chris Smith

Popcorn Time is an amazing online service that allows users to stream movies online free of charge instead of downloading them via Torrent services. Basically, Popcorn Time allows users to instantly watch torrents in a Netflix-like manner, a service that’s dangerous for copyright content owners, as you can’t be punished for streaming illegal movies as you can for downloading and storing them. However, Popcorn Time had a short life, and was quickly removed, before resurfacing again.

Those Popcorn Time users who would like to use a similar service can check out a similar product called IsoPlex, which uses a technology similar to Popcorn Time.

“It’s an application for your PC or Mac where you can find and stream your favorite movies with no need to download them to your hard drive! It works completely standalone, without torrent clients or other additional software. You don’t need to keep any huge movie files on your computer,” the company wrote on its website. “We always think about what the future of torrents and online sharing can be and we think that Isoplex is a perfect solution!”

Isohunt offers IsoPlex clients for Windows, Mac and Linux, which then allows users to stream videos online without downloading the full movies on their hard drive. The service is available free of charge, streams movies in Full HD, HD, SD and low quality, and offers access to more than a million movies, Myce reports.
http://bgr.com/2014/06/16/free-isohu...vie-streaming/





Game of Thrones Breaks Its Own File-Sharing Record…
Nina Ulloa

7.1 million people tuned in to HBO to watch the Game of Thrones season four finale episode, “The Children”. And what about the people that cannot, or will not, subscribe to HBO?

This episode has now broken the record for the largest BitTorrent swarm of all time, according to TorrentFreak.

Over 250,000 people were sharing the file at the same time. The record was previously held by a different Game of Thrones episode, which was shared by 200,000 people simultaneously.

In the twelve hours after the show aired, around 1.5 million people illegally downloaded it.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/perm...ame-of-thrones





Forget Piracy, Here's a Movie You Can Share for Free Once It Opens in Theaters
Lucas Shaw

“The Internet's Own Boy” tells the story of boy genius turned activist Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz's belief in the free spread of information landed him in jail. The people who want to watch a movie about his life will face no such legal problems.

Anyone who buys the movie via Vimeo will also be able to download it and share it for free. Vimeo is putting up a DRM-free version of the movie that comes with a Creative Commons License.

Creative Commons, which Swartz helped build, offers public copyright licenses that facilitate the easier spread of an artist or intellectual's work and indemnifies people from prosecution for piracy. People who buy the movie starting June 27 via Vimeo cannot resell their movie, but they will be able to download it and share it with friends.

This type of distribution is unusual for a movie, but it satisfies the wish of director Brian Knappenberger and gels with the ideals of Swartz, who co-founded Reddit and later turned into a prominent Internet activist. His lax beliefs with regard to intellectual property landed him in hot water.

“I was really dedicated to having a version of the film VOD day and date, accessible to people as soon as possible with creative commons license” Knappenberger told TheWrap. “Vimeo found a way for us to do that.”

The movie will still receive a traditional theatrical distribtion. FilmBuff will release it June 27 with support from Participant Media, which will also air the movie on its TV network Pivot later this year.

Yet whereas distributors typically acquire the rights, Participant and FilmBuff have licensed the movie. Participant, which has financed socially conscious work such as “Promised Land,” “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Food Inc.,” is the rare partner that would accept such terms. It will also mount a campaign to raise awareness about poor oversight in the U.S. justice system given what many view as unfair treatment of Swartz.

Knappenberger has told TheWrap a few times that he turned down big money at the Sundance Film Festival, where the movie premiered.

“The Internet's Own Boy” will be available on Vimeo, iTunes and other video-on-demand platforms the same day it opens in theaters, a release method known as day-and-date. Vimeo is the only place you will be able to buy the movie for the first month it is out, at a price of $9.99. You can rent it on those other sites, and then buy it after that first month.

Curious? Watch the movie's trailer below.
http://www.thewrap.com/forget-piracy...s-in-theaters/





Is Peer to Peer the Future of File Sharing? Maybe.
Michael Brown

While peer-to-peer file sharing may have gained traction via the attention received by a few startups, is the technology really secure enough for MSPs to offer to their customers?

Amidst the cloud computing revolution, peer-to-peer file sharing is beginning to gain momentum as well. TechCrunch has recently cast the spotlight on a small company, Infinit, who is involved in this new trend.

“We see that a lot of our users share huge files,” said co-founder and COO Baptiste Fradin in the above article, “And a lot of people managed to digitize processes that were still physical. For example, in video post-production, you had to hire a delivery person to ship a hard drive — now you can use Infinit.”

While this may be a good fit for personal use, is it a good fit for a business and MSPs?

It is Fast and Easy

With peer-to-peer file sharing, sending files to someone else can be very simple. Users are able to send a file directly to someone else, through the sharing application or by creating a direct link to download the file.

This direct transfer bypasses the cloud, therefore eliminating the need to store information in massive servers and reducing cost. The cloud is easy, but this may be even easier to quickly get files to coworkers, friends or family. Speed and simplicity are two factors that clients of MSPs are always looking for in file sharing applications.

Best Way to Transfer Massive Files

Thanks to the nature of peer-to-peer sharing, massive files can easily be transferred directly from computer to computer, and can even be paused and resumed as needed. “An Australian post-production studio recently sent a 500GB file in just 32 minutes using Infinit — it didn’t cost a dime.”

Entertainment industry professionals are among the group that consistently needs to transfer huge files and therefore will enjoy the benefits of peer to peer file transferring. This type of sharing could become the accepted method of file transfer for certain large data industries.

How Secure Is Peer to Peer?

Because peer to peer involves multitudes of computers, how secure is the network? Services encrypt the file being transferred, but it still leaves me to wonder truly how secure all the information would be if it were being sent to and from hundreds of computers throughout a large organization, like many MSP’s clients. There is that old adage “Only as strong as your weakest link”…

Perhaps the peer-to-peer model just needs a bit more evolution to be more convincing in the security department, but for now I’d imagine most MSPs would tread cautiously with peer-to-peer security if their client’s data is very sensitive. More traditional cloud file sharing providers have a much more proven record of security (they’ve simply been around longer).

Collaborating on a Document is a Bit More Tedious

With a peer-to-peer file sharing model, users would have to send the same document back and forth to each other. This results in a greater chance that one could lose track of which file is the most recent one, or multiple people could simultaneously be working on out-of-date files.

For clients that collaborate on documents frequently, where time is vital, a more traditional file sharing where a central document can be edited in real time by many people may be the best option. This will keep everyone on the same page, avoiding wasted time on older files and accidentally doubling up on work effort.

It will be interesting to see where peer-to-peer file sharing will go in the future. There are of course pros and cons to the model (as there are with anything) and the applications definitely provide some great advantages in the right scenarios.

It could be the MSPs simply have another option for the file transferring needs of their clients, and as always, options are a good thing to have.
http://mspmentor.net/infocenter-clou...-sharing-maybe





Conceding Defeat Again, Symantec Bows Out of Cloud File-Sharing Race
David Braue

Increasing competition between Web file-sharing services has claimed a high-profile victim as security giant Symantec prepares to delete all user files and shutter its second cloud file-sharing effort just a year after its launch.

Symantec announced this month that it would close down its Norton Zone file-sharing service, which was launched in the US on 30 April 2013. While it was available to ANZ users, Norton Zone was never formally launched in this region.

The closure of Norton Zone came as the company admitted the service is “not yet solving [customer] needs fully” earlier this month, citing the features of competitive secure file-sharing offerings and customers' evolving needs.

“While security is one of our strengths, file-sharing is not,” a Symantec spokesperson told CSO Australia, conceding that the product was “a late entry to the market” and that “the discontinuation of Norton Zone will allow us to shift resources toward projects that play to our strengths, develop offerings that are innovative, and bring those offerings to market faster.”

Norton Zone is not the first cloud-storage service the company has shut down: on January 6, Symantec stopped selling its Backup Exec.cloud service, also after a little more than a year, on the grounds that it lacked the mobile and content-sharing features that competing solutions now offer. That service will be available until 6 January 2015.

“Customers want features such as synch & share and mobile access,” the company's FAQ on the shutdown says, suggesting that the company would focus on adding such features to Norton Zone.

“Backup Exec.cloud was not designed with these features in mind. As a result, Symantec has decided to discontinue Backup Exec.cloud in order to focus on more productive and feature-rich cloud-based applications which include this type of functionality... Symantec will continue to invest in... innovative cloud-based storage, sharing and synchronization platforms.”

That FAQ recommends Norton Zone as a possible alternative and tells Backup Exec.cloud users they are eligible to move to the solution “at any time”. However, discontinuing the Norton Zone service will effectively end the company's work in those areas, pushing customers to competing offerings as Symantec progresses a staggered shutdown of the service.

By July 7, users will no longer be able to access their files from mobile devices, but will be limited to accessing them from Windows or Mac computers.

On August 6, users' files and stored metadata about those files – including filenames and other attributes – will be “permanently deleted from the service and neither you nor Symantec will be able to access them.”

“This is a critical step in ensuring your privacy but it means you must be sure to copy all data out of Norton Zone before August 6,” the company advised in an email recently sent to users.

Symantec has put in place mechanisms to ensure that all copies of customer data are automatically and permanently deleted, with file encryption keys – stored separately from the files and used to encrypt every file stored in the service – also destroyed.

“Since every single file is encrypted, this measure will render the file completely inaccessible.”

This article is brought to you by Enex TestLab, content directors for CSO Australia.
http://www.cso.com.au/article/547604...-sharing_race/





Law Firms Prosecute Their File Sharing and Collaboration Solutions

Superfast file sharing and collaboration solutions allow law firms to work on time-sensitive files
Press release

As lawyers constantly work with important, highly time-sensitive documents, they struggle to effectively collaborate with each other when coordinating with branch offices or those working remotely. Many solutions have tried to create efficient file sharing and collaboration, but they lose the ability to guarantee files are updated in real-time, as and when amendments are made.

Andrew Mullen, Senior VP Sales and Marketing of Talon Storage, believes that file acceleration and sharing technology is changing the landscape. It’s making it easier for law firms, with branch offices and remote workers, to be able to connect and communicate in a more productive way.

“Often working to multiple tight deadlines, lawyers need access to the latest files regardless of location; there must be secure and quick file updates that are accessible to all employees. In order for this to happen, file-sharing technology must accelerate data for all users across the distributed enterprise – including those in or near Internet gateways, branch offices, data centres, and remote workers. In an ideal world, firms would have full-scale branch office consolidation which eliminate performance bottlenecks,” he stated.

“Firms have tried to leverage wide area network (WAN) optimisation and data replication, but this often falls short on performance and end-user productivity. This could be a major issue when critical information might be sitting 300 miles away and the team needs to be able to access the file as if it was sitting on the local area network (LAN). Organisations often find that WAN has limited bandwidth and very high latency, which causes huge delays.

“Effective sharing of information can sometimes be the difference between submitting important documents in time or not, and this can affect the service to clients. For optimal file sharing, solutions should be an integral part of the Microsoft Windows Server framework.

“File Aware™ optimisation also accelerates user response time. By acting as an independent channel for file distribution between the user and the server, and understanding how SMB/CIFS functions, file sharing can now anticipate user requests. This results in data being retrieved before it is requested and, due to the traditionally ‘chatty’ nature of CIFS, performance improvement is dramatically increased.”

Working with colleagues across the country, and even around the world, has always had its challenges especially as cases have such tight deadlines. Accuracy and security are obviously hugely important in the legal sector and ensuring you are working on the most up-to-date document, that has being worked on by multiple lawyers, is crucial to avoid error. However, having to continuously save files on the central server can be slow and time consuming, and in no way ensures that you are working on the most up-to-date version. Having an intelligent file sharing solution, with end-to-end distributed locking, guarantees file integrity between users; users can fully benefit from application locking principles which eliminates loss of data or file duplicates.

Mullen concludes: “By providing a secure and intelligent file-sharing environment, it eliminates loss of data or file duplicates ensuring lawyers have immediate access to documents and files whenever and wherever the data is needed, and without any low bandwidth latency issues. Technology is catching up with demand, and law firms need to look closely at whether their current infrastructure is up to the job.”
http://www.realwire.com/releases/Law...tion-solutions





Sherlock Lives in Public Domain, US Court Rules in Case of the Heckled Brand

Judgement closes copyright loophole in US limiting right to bring detective back to life
Jessica Glenza

A US court has ruled that Sherlock Holmes – along with 46 stories and four novels he’s appeared in – is in the public domain, reaffirming the expiration of the copyright once owned by the estate of Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle.

The ruling by the seventh US circuit court of appeals in Chicago comes after the Doyle estate threatened to sue the editor of a book of original Holmes fiction if the author didn’t pay licensing fees.

Doyle’s estate contacted Leslie Klinger in 2011, when he was about to publish an anthology of original fiction starring Holmes, A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. The estate demanded publisher Random House pay $5,000 in licensing fees for the use of the Holmes character.

Random House paid the fees, even though Klinger thought that the Holmes stories were in the public domain.

As Klinger was working on a sequel, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, to be published by Pegasus Books and distributed by WW Norton & Company, the estate again threatened to sue Klinger and the publisher if a licensing fee wasn’t paid.

“If you proceed instead to bring out Study in Sherlock II [the original title of In the Company of Sherlock Holmes] unlicensed, do not expect to see it offered for sale by Amazon, Barnes & Noble and similar retailers. We work with those compan[ies] routinely to weed out unlicensed uses of Sherlock Holmes from their offerings, and will not hesitate to do so with your book as well,” wrote Doyle’s estate.

This time, Klinger sued.

He said he wasn’t infringing on the 10 Holmes stories that remained under 95-year copyright protection, where details about Holmes’ feelings about dogs and Dr Watson’s second marriage were revealed.

US copyright lasts for anywhere from 95 years, or the life of the creator plus 70 years, depending on a number of factors, such as when it was published and whether it was a hired work.

Initially, Doyle’s estate didn’t show up to court for the complaint. When Klinger filed a motion for summary judgment, the estate argued against Klinger’s right to use the character and for even greater copyright protection.

Klinger prevailed, and Doyle’s estate appealed.

That appeal prompted the seventh circuit court judges' scathing affirmation of the expiration of copyright.

The estate argued that copyright should continue to apply because Holmes was made a more “round” character in the last 10 stories.

“Flat characters thus don’t evolve. Round characters do; Holmes and Watson, the estate argues, were not fully rounded off until the last story written by Doyle. What this has to do with copyright law eludes us,” wrote Judge Richard A Posner in the court’s opinion.

The decision is one of the few where a reader might find a federal court discussing Star Wars. Judges said that the estate’s argument was tantamount to an argument that copyrights on Star Wars, Episodes IV, V and VI were extended because of the release of Episodes I, II and III.

“We don’t see how that can justify extending the expired copyright on the flatter character,” Posner wrote.

“Anyway it appears that the Doyle estate is concerned not with specific alterations in the depiction of Holmes or Watson in Holmes-Watson stories written by authors other than Arthur Conan Doyle, but with any such story that is published without payment to the estate of a licensing fee,” the judges wrote.

On Monday, Klinger told Reuters he was "very, very pleased" and hoped to publish the new book in November. "The urge to publish more comes from the love for the first 60 stories, and people should be encouraged to create more."

Benjamin Allison, a lawyer for the Conan Doyle estate, told Reuters no decision has been made on an appeal.

Reuters contributed to this report.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...tate-copyright





Verizon Lobbyists Are Arguing that Net Neutrality Could be Harmful to Disabled Americans

INTERNET Net Neutrality: Blind, Deaf and Disabled
Chris Smith

Verizon lobbyists are apparently on the prowl on Capitol Hill with new anti-net neutrality arguments, Mother Jones has learned, telling congressional staffers that Verizon needs to offer fast lane-like Internet access in order to meet the needs of blind, deaf and disabled customers whose lives may depend on fast access to Internet-connected medical services.

However, it appears that groups representing disabled Americans have not backed this plan.

Mark Perriello, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities told the publication that this was the first time he heard “these specific talking points.” Meanwhile, Free Press policy director Matt Wood went as far as to accuse Verizon’s lobbying efforts of being “disingenuous.”

Verizon apparently didn’t confirm that its lobbyists are using this particular pitch, but a spokesperson said that the company’s position on the FCC recent net neutrality proposal is “not disingenuous,” as the company has not taken a public stance on it.

The publication says Verizon has used the same pitch in 2009, when the FCC was drafting new regulations for ISPs. Former Verizon CEO then said that people with health conditions would not benefit from life-saving technological advances if Verizon wasn’t allowed to prioritize certain medical data.

Mother Jones has further revealed that ISPs have paid lobbyists $19 million in the first quarter of the year, or 68% of the money spent on net neutrality-related lobbying.

A recent report revealed that lobbyists managed to dupe community groups into joining an anti net neutrality coalition that supports the proposed fast-lane-slow-lane Internet proposal.
http://bgr.com/2014/06/13/net-neutra...-and-disabled/





Former FCC Commissioner: “We Should Be Ashamed Of Ourselves” For State of Broadband In The U.S.
Kate Cox

In Washington, DC today, a group of internet industry executives and politicians came together to look back on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and to do a little crystal-ball gazing about the future of broadband regulation in the United States. Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps was among the presenters, and he had sharp words for the audience about the “insanity” of the current wave of merger mania in the telecom field and the looming threats of losing net neutrality regulation.

Copps has been a longtime pro-consumer advocate. He was the lone member of the five-person FCC to vote against the merger of Comcast and NBC, and since the 2010 net neutrality rule was vacated in February he has been urging the FCC to reclassify broadband ISPs as a common carrier service. He has also advocated against continued media consolidation and big telecom mergers.

Several current and former members of Congress spoke first about the 1996 Telecom Act, sharing their memories of bringing the bill to law. Sen. Ed Markey (MA) and former Reps. Thomas Bliley (VA) and John Shadegg (AZ) all praised the bipartisan process that created the regulation, and lauded the capacity for competition that the Act created. In all, both business representatives and lawmakers alike were largely retrospective and celebratory, ignoring the problems that face internet industries and consumers today.

Copps, however, was anything but retrospective when he stood to speak. “I’m not here to celebrate,” he began, “I’m here to advocate.” And the landscape he laid out is indeed not one to cheer for.

He led off by agreeing with the several executive speakers that true competition is the way of the future, and the best way to serve consumers. “But we haven’t given competition the chance it needs,” he continued, before referring to how poorly U.S. broadband compares on the global stage. “We have fallen so far short that we should be ashamed of ourselves. We should be leading, and we’re not. We need to get serious about broadband, we need to get serious about competition, we need to get serious about our country.”

Broadband competition is indeed scarce in the United States, and the looming wave of “merger mania” is unlikely at best to improve the situation for anyone.

For all that the current bout of mergers — Comcast with TWC, AT&T with DirecTV, and maybe even Sprint with T-Mobile — seems inevitable, it’s not. The mania for consolidation, Copps said, did not fall ordained from the hand of God, derive from natural law, or arise organically from an unfettered free market. It is, instead, the result of “conscious public policy choices” that shape the business environment we live in.

And that environment is dire. Even taking into account the previous monopolies of 19th and 20th century industry, Copps said, “there has never been a more urgent need for legislators and regulators” to make moves to protect consumers.

He called back to an earlier speaker, who had pointed out that the internet, to most users, had become about the very core of freedom of expression: the freedom to say, read, and watch what we want. And with “the likelihood of gatekeeper control” impending, in the form of the FCC’s new proposed net neutrality rule, those freedoms are in danger.

In the end, Copps directly challenged both the FCC and current members of Congress to do more, and do better. “Our democracy depends on what happens between now and the end of this year,” he said. “Are we going to have regulators and legislators with enough gumption to make this happen?”

“I know it can,” he added, calling on the audience in the room to speak up and make their voices heard with lawmakers. But ultimately, he concluded, it all boils down to two questions:

“Whose internet is it anyway? And whose democracy is it anyway?”
http://consumerist.com/2014/06/18/fo...nd-in-the-u-s/





The U.S. Government Is Investigating Why Your Netflix Is So Slow
Gerry Smith

If your "Orange is the New Black" binge marathon has been interrupted by buffering and you wondered who to blame, the Federal Communications Commission is now trying to answer your question.

In a statement Friday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said he has asked his staff to obtain information about the secret deals that Web companies like Netflix make with Internet service providers to ensure their content travels smoothly across broadband networks to your computer.

Such arrangements have been the subject of growing conflict between Netflix and Verizon, which have spent the past two weeks publicly blaming each other for those frustrating moments when Netflix videos buffer or freeze.

Last week, Netflix began posting a series of error messages to its customers suggesting that congestion on Verizon's network was degrading video quality. Verizon responded by sending Netflix a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the company stop sending the notices.

When Internet service slows, it is often impossible for the public to tell which company is at fault because the details of such arrangements are kept secret.

On Friday, Wheeler said he wants "to understand whether consumers are being harmed." He said the FCC has received details of the deals between Comcast and Netflix and Verizon and Netflix, and is asking for others.

"To be clear, what we are doing right now is collecting information, not regulating," Wheeler said. "We are looking under the hood. Consumers want transparency. They want answers. And so do I."

"The bottom line is that consumers need to understand what is occurring when the Internet service they’ve paid for does not adequately deliver the content they desire, especially content they’ve also paid for. In this instance, it is about what happens where the ISP connects to the Internet. It’s important that we know -- and that consumers know," he said.

Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said in an email that "we welcome this review," but cautioned that "the broadband consumer should be the focus of this inquiry and not any particular business model.

Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said that such deals have "worked well for the Internet ecosystem and consumers" and "we are hopeful that policymakers will recognize this fact and that the Internet will continue to be the engine of growth of the global economy."

Netflix spokesman Corie Wright said the company also welcomed "more transparency in this area."

"Americans deserve to get the speed and quality of Internet access they pay for," Wright said in an email.

Many large tech companies -- including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook -- have quietly brokered content deals with Internet service providers. Because its popular, data-heavy videos can create traffic jams on broadband networks, Netflix has agreed to pay Comcast and Verizon to ensure its content is streamed to customers smoothly. However, Netflix has also repeatedly complained about the arrangements.

The agreements are technically beyond the scope of the FCC's recent proposal to allow Internet providers to charge web companies more to deliver their content via a "fast lane." The FCC's proposed net neutrality rules only relate to the so-called last mile of online traffic that flows directly to customers' homes.

But Wheeler told a congressional panel recently that the FCC would start looking more closely at the deals between Web companies and Internet providers, which are known in the industry as peering arrangements.

On Friday, consumer groups applauded Wheeler's announcement. Michael Weinberg, vice president at the digital rights advocacy group Public Knowledge, said he "hopes that this effort by the FCC will begin to shine a light on this increasingly important aspect of the Internet."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5492542.html





FCC Looking Into Slow Internet Download Speeds
Alina Selyukh and Marina Lopes

U.S. regulators will review agreements between Netflix, Verizon, Comcast and other content and Internet providers to figure out whether they are causing slow web download speeds for some consumers, especially for streaming video content.

Consumers have complained to the Federal Communications Commission about the ongoing spat between Netflix and Internet service providers (ISPs). Both sides accuse each other of causing a slowdown in Internet speeds by the way they route traffic.

"At the heart of this is whether ISPs that provide connectivity in the final mile to the home can advantage or disadvantage content providers, and therefore advantage or disadvantage consumers," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said on Friday.

Large content providers such as Netflix Inc (NFLX.O) have historically paid middlemen or ISPs to deliver their content to consumers. The specifics of such agreements, known as "interconnection" and sometimes "peering," have been secret and outside of the FCC's regulatory scope.

The FCC earlier this year launched a new effort to set rules regulating how broadband providers manage Internet traffic on their networks. Netflix has urged the agency to begin regulating such agreements to do away with fees that content companies pay.

Though the FCC has not indicated that it plans to regulate the deals, the agency is now asking multiple Internet service providers and content companies, particularly video service providers, to provide details, Wheeler said.

"Consumers need to understand what is occurring when the Internet service they’ve paid for does not adequately deliver the content they desire, especially content they’ve also paid for," he told reporters after a monthly FCC meeting.

"What we are doing right now is collecting information, not regulating. We are looking under the hood. Consumers want transparency. They want answers. And so do I," he said.

In an earlier statement Wheeler said the commission is "not suggesting that any company is at fault."

Consumer advocates, who support stricter regulatory oversight of relationships between content and Internet providers, welcomed the step and called on the FCC to make details of those agreements public.

It is unclear whether the FCC plans to do so.

Analysts pegged the FCC's move as a win for Netflix, which on Friday welcomed the move toward more transparency.

"Americans deserve to get the speed and quality of Internet access they pay for," Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said in a statement.

Netflix earlier this year agreed to pay fees to Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and Comcast (CMCSA.O) to bypass middlemen and deliver content directly to the companies' subscribers, ensuring faster speeds.

"Netflix has been paying (for traffic delivery) since inception. It wants free, I get it, but someone has to pay for it," Jim Cicconi, AT&T Inc (T.N) senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, said earlier this week.

Netflix streaming accounts for nearly one-third of North American web traffic during peak times, according to research by Sandvine Corp.

Netflix vice president for global public policy, Christopher Libertelli, this week said the company already invests money in delivering traffic to the Internet provider.

"We pay a lot of money to drop content at the doorstep of an ISP. All we're really asking is for the ISPs to swing the door open," Libertelli said at the Aspen Institute think tank. "This has become a new choke point."

The FCC has regulated "net neutrality" only on the part of the network that goes from the Internet service providers to the consumer, and has not delved into what happens before that. The agency's proposed net neutrality rules keep that distinction.

Comcast, Verizon and AT&T welcomed the FCC's review on Friday. Internet providers pointed out that traffic exchange fees have long been negotiated through commercial agreements and said they hoped the review would focus on consumers and not a particular business model.

(Reporting By Marina Lopes and Alina Selykh in Washington and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Ros Krasny and Chris Reese)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0EO1SW20140613





Democrats Unveil Legislation Forcing the FCC to Ban Internet Fast Lanes
Brian Fung

Democratic lawmakers will unveil a piece of bicameral legislation Tuesday that would force the Federal Communications Commission to ban fast lanes on the Internet.

The proposal, put forward by Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), requires the FCC to use whatever authority it sees fit to make sure that Internet providers don't speed up certain types of content (like Netflix videos) at the expense of others (like e-mail). It wouldn't give the commission new powers, but the bill — known as the Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act — would give the FCC crucial political cover to prohibit what consumer advocates say would harm startup companies and Internet services by requiring them to pay extra fees to ISPs.

"Americans are speaking loud and clear," said Leahy, who is holding a hearing on net neutrality in Vermont this summer. "They want an Internet that is a platform for free expression and innovation, where the best ideas and services can reach consumers based on merit rather than based on a financial relationship with a broadband provider."

Leahy and Matsui's proposed ban on fast lanes would apply only to the connections between consumers and their ISPs — the part of the Internet governed by the FCC's proposed net neutrality rules. The FCC's current proposal tacitly allows for the creation of a tiered Internet for content companies, though the commission has asked the public whether it should ban the practice as "commercially unreasonable."

"A free and open Internet is essential for consumers," said Matsui. "Our country cannot afford ‘pay-for-play’ schemes that divide our Internet into tiers based on who has the deepest pockets."

Because the bill merely directs the FCC to rely on its current authorities, there's a limit to how effective it can be. An ongoing debate at the FCC is whether it's legally able to ban traffic discrimination at all. Under the current proposal, the FCC would tacitly allow commercial speed agreements but then review problematic ones on a case-by-case basis, rather than lay down a blanket restriction against what's called "paid priortization."

Consumer advocates have suggested instead that the FCC reclassify broadband as a utility — a decision that would subject ISPs to greater regulation. But broadband companies have said that even that would not guarantee a prioritization ban's survival, because of a loophole in the law that allows for some traffic discrimination so long as it isn't "unjust" or "unreasonable."

The Democratic bill is another sign that net neutrality is dividing lawmakers along partisan lines. In May, Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) introduced a bill that would prevent the FCC from reclassifying broadband. A Democratic aide conceded Monday that the Leahy-Matsui bill is unlikely to attract Republican cosponsors.

The fact that Republicans control the House make it unlikely that the Leahy-Matsui bill will advance very far. Still, the politics of net neutrality are obscuring the underlying economics at stake, according to the aide, who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

"People are missing the point," the aide said. "The point is: Ban paid prioritization. Because that'll fundamentally change how the Internet works."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said that he's reserving the reclassification option in case his existing plan fails to protect consumers. He has been reluctant to use that option so far, likely because it would be politically controversial. But increasingly, it seems net neutrality is divisive enough without him.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...et-fast-lanes/





What if the FCC is the Wrong Agency to Handle Net Neutrality?
Brian Fung

Is the Federal Communications Commission the wrong agency to handle matters of net neutrality and Internet openness?

That's what some in Congress and elsewhere are suggesting. Instead, they say, ensuring that Internet providers don't abuse their network operator roles should be a matter for the Federal Trade Commission and antitrust law.

In a hearing Friday, members of the House Judiciary Committee grilled current and former federal officials over the possibility of letting the FTC take on the punishing of broadband companies that have harmed consumers.

"Do you believe the FTC would be effective at protecting the competitive interest?" asked Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

Former Republican FCC commissioner Robert McDowell and current FTC commissioner Joshua Wright told the committee that using the FTC to regulate companies after the fact would be enough and that the FCC does not need to regulate Internet service providers (ISPs). So far, there's been no evidence of a market failure that would require the FCC's preemptive regulation, they said.

"The FCC is 0 and 2 in the appellate courts [with its net neutrality rules]," said McDowell. "The courts gave it a very small needle, and it's trying to put a big fat regulatory rope through that eye. I think they'll fail again in court unless they're very, very careful."

But net neutrality advocate Tim Wu testified in the hearing that looking at Internet policy solely through the lens of antitrust law would ignore the non-economic harms that Internet providers could wreak on the Internet, such as suppressing speech and limiting diversity.

"What I'm suggesting is that net neutrality has supported and upheld this network as a platform for speech and innovation and noneconomic values," Wu told the committee, "none of which is captured by antitrust scrutiny."

The question over which agency has proper jurisdiction over this aspect of the Internet could end up broadening the debate on net neutrality beyond the agency that has historically regulated the nation's telecom networks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...et-neutrality/





Unlike AT&T, T-Mobile Isn’t Charging Companies to Circumvent Data Caps

Still, T-Mobile favors big content providers with unlimited music streaming.
Jon Brodkin

T-Mobile US last night announced a "Music Freedom" program that will exempt certain music streaming services from counting against the monthly data limits that the so-called "uncarrier" imposes on its customers.

"Beginning immediately, T-Mobile’s Simple Choice customers will now be able to stream all the music they want from all the most popular streaming services, including Pandora, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, and Spotify—without ever hitting their high-speed 4G LTE data service [limits]," T-Mobile said. "Music services from T-Mobile partners—Samsung’s Milk Music and the forthcoming Beatport music app from SFX—will also stream without data charges for T-Mobile customers."

Companies don't have to pay T-Mobile for the privilege of not counting against 4G data limits.

"T-Mobile is not paid by the streaming services," a company spokesperson told Ars. Even for partners Samsung and SFX, "nothing related to music streaming is paid," T-Mobile said. T-Mobile is polling customers about which services they would like added to the unlimited streaming program.

T-Mobile's decision not to send a bill to the streaming companies is in contrast with AT&T, which this year started turning its data caps into greater profits by charging content providers for the right to serve media without chewing up consumers' monthly data limits.

Technically, T-Mobile Simple Choice customers can use unlimited data but are throttled after using up their 4G allotments. Individual plans start at $50 a month for 1GB of 4G data and unlimited talk and text. After hitting the 4G limit, customers have to make do with paltry "2G" speed—128Kbps at the most—for the rest of the month unless they buy more high-speed data.

Exempting popular content from data caps is no doubt a good thing for consumers who subscribe to those services—although unlimited data for everything would be better. Although it's not a paid service, the T-Mobile program is drawing opposition from network neutrality proponents who say the program nonetheless favors big content providers at the expense of smaller ones.

T-Mobile is launching its own music service in partnership with Rhapsody, so unlimited data for other music streaming companies was needed to show that T-Mobile isn't favoring its own service over others.

Even so, T-Mobile is "choosing winners and losers online," argued Michael Weinberg, VP of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. In an e-mail to Ars, he wrote:

At its most basic, net neutrality is about preventing ISPs from choosing winners and losers online. This is exactly what T-Mobile is doing with this announcement. Having created artificial scarcity by throttling customers after they use a certain amount data, T-Mobile is now opening up special lanes for a handful of music services that presumably are either already popular or have someone on staff with an existing relationship with T-Mobile. This immediately creates two classes of music services—those that can get you throttled on T-Mobile and those that cannot. These classes create a barrier to any new entrants. If they can get enough customers to vote for them, they can get into the unlimited lane, but now they have to attract those customers as a service that will get them throttled. Furthermore, there are plenty of niche services that are important to their users but may never meet critical mass to get into the T-Mobile unlimited lane. Even a quick survey of people in the office this morning identified music apps from local radio stations like WFMU and KCRW and bigger subscription services like those from Google and Rdio that don't make the cut. WFMU and KCRW might be popular by community radio standards, but they are unlikely to be a position to get into the T-Mobile unlimited club.

More generally, this plan highlights again how data caps are currently being used by ISPs to manipulate their customers' experience online. Whether it is Comcast exempting its own video services from a data cap or T-Mobile blessing a handful of music services, these caps allow ISPs to push people toward some services over others. That fundamentally changes the nature of competition online.


Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood agreed, telling Ars that "even if all music apps are on equal footing, they are advantaged against other kinds of apps. That kind of favoritism skews innovation because it favors certain content, business models and technologies over others."

The FCC is drawing up a new set of net neutrality rules after its previous ones were gutted by a court decision, but the FCC's latest proposal largely exempts wireless carriers.

Creating data scarcity

T-Mobile's move to exempt certain kinds of services is a tacit admission that its own data limits can be bad for consumers. Why should browsing the Web or watching video, but not listening to music, count against a user's data plan?

"The more practical present-day concern is about the data caps themselves," Wood said. "What's the justification for a cap if music can be so easily uncapped? Certainly not congestion. Any time a carrier says hey, pay us a little more or use a certain service and the data is free, then you have to think the cap is arbitrary in the first place."

T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in the company's announcement that he is "personally outraged at the way the other guys are using the music you love to lure you into over-priced plans with sweet ‘promotional offers’ that quickly roll into higher prices or trigger those absurd overage charges. Music should be free of all that. Music should have no limits. So, beginning right now, you can stream all you want at T-Mobile from all of the top music services—data charges do not apply.”

According to a CNN article, "Legere dismissed concerns about Music Freedom's net neutrality implications, saying new services could be quickly included in the program."

We asked T-Mobile how it chose these particular streaming services and how other online services (whether music or otherwise) can join the unlimited data program. In response, T-Mobile pointed to the poll of consumers it is conducting to determine which other music services should get the unlimited data treatment. The poll offers a choice of Amazon Prime, Beats, Google's All Access, Grooveshark, Jango Radio, Last.fm, Rdio, Sirius XM, Sony Music, SoundCloud, and TuneIn Radio.

T-Mobile didn't say whether it will offer a similar program for non-music services.

"We started with [music] services that cover 85 percent of our customers but are allowing them to tell us what other services they want," a T-Mobile spokesperson told Ars. "It’s all about the customers for T-Mobile!"
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014...ent-data-caps/





Portland Inches One Step Closer to Google Fiber
David Murphy

If you live in Portland, then you're probably a bit happy at the news that Portland's City Council officially approved a franchise agreement with the search giant earlier this week.

As a result of the unanimous vote, Google will be subject to a five percent "franchise fee" on its video revenues. It won't have to pay a three percent "PEG" fee that Portland otherwise charges rival Comcast, but it will offer free Internet service for Portland residents for a $300, one-time fee. It'll also provide free Internet service to some to-be-determined nonprofits, in addition to providing a total of three free Wi-Fi networks in various parts of the city.

Google, however, will not be required to service all parts of Portland with its fiber service. While that's pretty standard for Google's fiber agreements — at least, that's what it's done in places like Kansas City — Google's intent is to hold "fiber rallies" to gauge interest in various neighborhoods. Those with the highest number of people who would commit to subscribing up to Google Fiber will likely receive the service. Though, we should clarify that bit. Google is as interested in the number of people who would sign up for its basic Internet plan (5 Mbps of service) as it is its more expensive premium plans.

That all said, it's unclear just how well the Fiber planning process would work with existing apartment buildings, which might very well have signed agreements with other ISPs for service. It's thought that Google would have to negotiate separately with these apartments, which either means a delay for these residents to get their hands on Google Fiber or, depending on Google's desire or ability to negotiate with the apartments, no Fiber service at all.

We should also note that Portland's desire to play ball doesn't mean that Google is necessarily taking the field. Google still has to evaluate local regulations which includes, among other things, determining how it might gain access to the city's various utility poles and how it might best be able to slap around 200 utility cabinets or so around the city. Google is also still waiting for franchise agreements with five other suburbs that it would need in order roll out its full services to the greater Portland area.

On the plus side, one can celebrate with a delicious "Gigabit IPA" while one waits for Google Fiber to (possibly) arrive in the area.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2459553,00.asp





Can Google Connect the "Other Three Billion" in Developing Nations and Rural Areas?
Larry Press

Google wants to bring Internet connectivity to rural areas and developing nations and has a comprehensive effort under way to do so. They are experimenting with terrestrial and extra-terrestrial wireless technology. I will look at terrestrial wireless in a subsequent post -- this one focuses on extra-terrestrial technologies.

During the last couple decades, NGOs, governments and entrepreneurs have worked with four extra-terrestrial connectivity technologies:

Let's look at Google's projects in this context.

High altitude platforms (HAPs) are blimps, drones or balloons that hover or circulate in the stratosphere. They have cloudless access to solar energy and being above the weather helps with control, but their signals must travel through rain and clouds. They are the lowest flying technology, so packet latency is relatively small, but so is their "footprint" -- the area their signal covers on the ground.

The most visible HAP Internet effort has been that of Sanswire, which has run well-publicized tests for over a decade. Sanswire has gone through bankruptcy, announced projects in Latin America that never materialized and faced complaints by suppliers and employees, but they are still working on Internet connectivity.

Google has two HAP projects, Project Loon, using balloons and a drone project using technology from recently purchased Titan Aerospace. There have been reports of Google blimp trials, but I've not seen any details on those. Let me know if you have more information.

Most satellites -- like the Space Station and sensing satellites -- are in low Earth orbit (LEO). LEO satellites move relative to the ground, which means that either communication windows are intermittent or many satellites -- a "constellation" -- are needed to cover the planet.

The first LEO Internet project I know of was used for intermittent connectivity in Africa during the early 1990s. Shortly thereafter, a number of entrepreneurial LEO projects were announced. The most ambitious was Teledesic, which proposed Internet connectivity for the entire planet using a constellation of 288 satellites orbiting at 700 kilometers. Teledesic had high-profile backers like Bill Gates, Paul Allen and a Saudi prince, but the technology of the day was not up to the task and the company failed.
Today, the best-known LEO communication system is Iridium's satellite phone service, consisting of 66 LEO satellites. (Iridium was conceived by motorola as an Internet project, but was scaled back to telephony, went bankrupt and reemerged as a phone service).

This week, Google acquired Skybox Imaging, a company that has put a LEO satellite in a 600 kilometer orbit. The company was formed for data gathering, for example for providing real time video and images of traffic on roads, the sea and in the air, environmental monitoring, or map and earth imaging.

This sort of imagery has both economic and military value, so it will provide Google both revenue and expertise in the short run. Might they be planning to parlay that into a constellation of Skybox communication satellites -- Teledesic II with modern technology -- in the long run?

Medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites are used for communication and navigation. Google recently announced a project with O3b Networks (other three billion). O3b currently has four satellites in 8,000 kilometer equatorial orbits and they plan to launch four more this year. They say those eight satellites will enable them to offer continuous service to all parts of the Earth within 45 degrees of the Equator.

The project with Google is headed by two O3b executives and they speak of spending billions dollars and putting at least 180 satellites in orbit. When they speak of 180 satellites, one wonders whether they are considering a LEO constellation.

Today's commercial satellite Internet connectivity is provided by geostationary satellites, which are positioned above the equator and remain stationary with respect to the surface of the earth since they orbit exactly once per day. Their orbit altitude enables multi-country footprints, but latency and launch costs are high.

Geostationary satellites have been used in rural areas and developing nations since the early days of the Internet, and the industry has remained viable as a result of technical progress in launch technology (public and private), antennas, solar power, radios and other electronics, as well as tuning of TCP/IP protocols to account for the 1/4 second latency due to the orbital altitude. (I've had surprisingly natural voice over IP conversations with people on geostationary satellite connections).

Have those technologies progressed to the point where HAPs and lower orbit satellites are now viable as well?

Google, along with Facebook, is a founding partner of Internet.org, which seeks "affordable internet access for the two thirds of the world not yet connected." Since the beginning years of the Internet, NGOs, government agencies and entrepreneurs has been working on the Grand Challenge of connectingdeveloping nations. They have not succeeded, but Google, with improved technology, deep pockets, a long-range viewpoint and economic motivation (ads) may be able to pull it off.

Finally, I cannot end this post without wondering whether Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and Richard Brnason, founder of Virgin Galactic are eyeing those other three billion people.
http://cis471.blogspot.com/2014/06/c...e-billion.html





AT&T Confirms Inside Job Responsible for Customer Data Breach
Chris Smith

AT&T late last week confirmed that three employees of one of the company’s vendors accessed personal data belonging to some of its customers for almost two weeks in April. The company did not say how many accounts were affected during the data breach, or why it took so long to confirm it.

“We recently learned that three employees of one of our vendors accessed some AT&T customer accounts without proper authorization,” AT&T executive director for media relations Mark Siegel told Re/code. “This is completely counter to the way we require our vendors to conduct business. We know our customers count on us and those who support our business to act with integrity and trust, and we take that very seriously. We have taken steps to help prevent this from happening again, notified affected customers, and reported this matter to law enforcement.”

The Register further notes that according to California law, companies are required to issue a public disclosure any time they suffer a breach that affects more than 500 residents.

AT&T has filed documents with the California Attorney General’s office that reveal more details about what actually happened. Between April 9 and April 21, three unnamed employees accessed personal data including social security numbers and dates of birth in an unlocking scheme. The hackers would have also been able to access the Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) during the process, which is information related to what subscribers purchase from AT&T.

The information is needed to unlock certain devices locked to AT&T’s network, and then resell them.

AT&T apparently contacted customers who have been affected via snail mail, with the carrier saying it will offer them one year of credit monitoring services free of charge. AT&T is also advising them to immediately change the passwords of their accounts.

AT&T’s letter to customers is available at the source link below.
http://bgr.com/2014/06/16/att-customer-data-breach/





This Tool Boosts Your Privacy by Opening Your Wi-Fi to Strangers
Andy Greenberg

In an age of surveillance anxiety, the notion of leaving your Wi-Fi network open and unprotected seems dangerously naive. But one group of activists says it can help you open up your wireless internet and not only maintain your privacy, but actually increase it in the process.

At the Hackers on Planet Earth conference next month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation plans to release software designed to let you share a portion of your Wi-Fi network, password-free, with anyone nearby. The initiative, part of the OpenWireless.org campaign, will maintain its own flavor of free, open-source router firmware called Open Wireless Router. Good Samaritans can install this firmware on a cheap Wi-Fi router, creating a public slice of bandwidth that can dialed up or down with a simple smartphone interface.

“We want to encourage a world of open wireless, sharing Wi-Fi with each other for privacy, efficiency, and innovation in devices that don’t have to fall back on subscriptions to wireless carriers,” says EFF activist Adi Kamdar. Many locked wireless networks sit idle for much of the day, Kamdar argues. OpenWireless.org would put that untapped bandwidth to use while still allowing the router’s owner to take priority when needed, limiting freeloaders to as little as 5 percent of the pipe.

And just how does opening your network protect privacy, as Kamdar claims? One goal of OpenWireless.org, says EFF staff attorney Nate Cardozo, is dispelling the legal notion that anything that happens on a network must have been done by the network’s owner. “Your IP address is not your identity, and your identity is not your IP address,” Cardozo says. “Open wireless makes mass surveillance and correlation of person with IP more difficult, and that’s good for everyone.”

On the other hand, mixing a stranger’s traffic with your own can be risky. In 2011, for instance, a man in Buffalo, New York saw his home raided by a SWAT team that accused him of being a pornographer and a pedophile. The police eventually realized he’d simply left his Wi-Fi router unprotected, and a neighbor had used it to download child porn.

For anyone wary of home invasions by similarly misguided cops, OpenWireless.org says it will at some point integrate an option to route guest traffic over the anonymity software Tor or a VPN that ties it to a different IP address. But Cardozo hopes the open routers will for most users cement the idea that network owners aren’t responsible for passersby who use their connection. “If everyone runs open Wi-Fi, there’s no real argument that anyone is being negligent by doing so,” he says. “If you’re not the person doing the illegal activity, you have no liability.”

OpenWireless.org won’t be the first attempt to create a network of open guest access points. But others who have tried the strategy, like the Spanish company Fon and British Telecom, have required users to be subscribers or pay for access. The EFF’s option will be free for all.

The first version of the software is to appear on OpenWireless.org in mid-July. The initial download will be compatible with one specific cheap Wi-Fi router that the OpenWireless developers declined to reveal until the HOPE talk. If the idea catches on, the group says it will eventually update the firmware to work on other models and eventually offer its own router with pre-installed hardware.

Anyone wishing to use the initiative’s free Wi-fi hotspots should search for networks called “OpenWireless.org,” the label the project is encouraging people to give their networks. For guest users, the router software is also designed to offer better-than-average security: Each user’s link will be individually encrypted with a protocol called EAP-TLS, the equivalent of HTTPS on every connection. The price of that encryption, however, is that users must download a certificate from OpenWireless.org before accessing the free networks, a tradeoff that will no doubt limit use in favor of privacy. “Part of the goal here is to make open Wi-Fi as secure as logging on to a private network,” says Ranga Krishnan, an EFF technology fellow working on the project.

Network owners may ask what incentive beyond altruism might motivate them to share limited Wi-Fi resources with strangers. The Open Wireless Router creators argue their software will be more convenient and secure than the buggy default firmware in typical Netgear and Linksys devices. Unlike those rarely-updated devices, the OpenWireless.org router firmware will be security-audited and allow users to check for updates on the devices’ smartphone-friendly web interface and quickly download updates. “We want to get a much better router in peoples’ hands that will improve their overall experience and security,” says Krishnan.

Krishnan argues that users also will benefit, both personally and on a societal level, from the barrier to surveillance that comes from sharing their network with strangers. “This is not just a neighborly good thing to do,” he says. “If you allow this kind of guest usage, it will make your traffic part of the mix and not associated with you. That gives you some protection.”

But Kamdar points instead to security guru Bruce Schneier’s famous argument that despite the security risks, leaving your Wi-Fi open is an act of civic hospitality. “To me, it’s basic politeness,” Schneier wrote in 2008. “Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea.”

Given the kind of widespread network surveillance that’s been revealed in the years since Schneier wrote that line, no one would be considered rude for keeping their network locked down. With the right tools and protections, though, sharing Wi-Fi might become as common as any other baseline social kindness. “For some users,” Kamdar says, “A smile from a friend or neighbor is incentive enough.”
http://www.wired.com/2014/06/eff-open-wireless-router/





Tor Is For Everyone: Why You Should Use Tor
Cooper Quintin

EFF recently kicked off our second Tor Challenge, an initiative to strengthen the Tor network for online anonymity and improve one of the best free privacy tools in existence. The campaign—which we've launched with partners at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Tor Project, and the Free Software Foundation—is already off to a great start. In just the first few days, we've seen over 600 new or expanded Tor nodes—more than during the entire first Tor Challenge.

This is great news, but how does it affect you? To understand that, we have to dig into what Tor actually is, and what people can do to support it. Support can come in many forms, too. Even just using Tor is one of the best and easiest things a person can do to preserve privacy and anonymity on the Internet.

What is Tor?

Tor is a network and a software package that helps you anonymously use the Internet. Specifically Tor hides the source and destination of your Internet traffic, this prevents anyone from knowing both who you are and what you are looking at (though they may know one or the other). Tor also hides the destination of your traffic, which can circumvent some forms of censorship. Tor has been in development for many years and is very stable and mature. It is regarded as one of the best privacy tools currently in existence and it does not cost you anything.

How does Tor help me?

This graphic shows how Tor and https can work together to protect your privacy on the Internet. Basically, Tor encrypts that data you send across the Internet in multiple layers, like an onion. Then it sends that data through multiple relays, each one of which peels a layer off the onion until your packet leaves the final relay and gets to its destination. This is called 'onion routing' and it is a fantastic method for keeping privacy on the web. Proper use of tor—along with HTTPS Everywhere—can be one of the best ways to ensure your browsing will remain anonymous.

But I don't need privacy, I have nothing to hide!

Everyone needs privacy sometimes! For example: perhaps you end up with an embarrassing medical condition and you want to search for information about it but you don't want Google and every advertiser to know about your bodily functions. Tor can help you keep that information private. Tor can also help prevent online tracking more generally as well. Proper use of Tor can circumvent most third party trackers that governments and corporations can use to track your browsing habits and send you obnoxious intrusive advertisements. Tor can also protect your data from hackers on your network. Tor can also help you get around censorship and firewalls from the filter at your school or office or even help you circumvent firewalls or censorship put in place by your government.

How do I use Tor?

The easiest way to get up and running with Tor is to use the Tor Browser Bundle. It is a version of Firefox that comes preconfigured to use Tor. Tor Browser Bundle is set up to use Tor the right way so that you will avoid a lot of the common pitfalls that can pierce your veil of anonymity. If your prefer a more holistic approach or wish to use Tor for something other than just web browsing, you can use Tails. Tails is an operating system that runs off of a live CD. It is configured so that all Internet connections run through Tor; and when you are done, everything that you did is wiped clean from your computer's memory. It never touches your hard drive and leaves no traces on your computer. If you want to use Tor on your android phone, check out Orbot, it can run your browsing and other programs through Tor.

Tor sounds great. What can I do to help?

To help make Tor faster and more secure one of the best things you can do is set up a Tor relay. That's what we're asking people to do in our Tor Challenge. The more relays there are in the Tor network the more speed and security Tor has. Setting up a relay may also improve your own personal anonymity. But even just using Tor increases the anonymity of all the other users. There's some safety in numbers: if the only people using Tor are those who have a serious need for it then any use of Tor is suspicious. But if Tor gets used for everything from pizza orders to looking at funny cat photos then it is much less so.

So if I use Tor will I have perfect anonymity all of the time?

Nothing is foolproof, not even Tor. If you use Tor the wrong way you can end up destroying your own anonymity. If you use Tor to log into Facebook or Gmail, for example, they may not know where you are coming from but they will certainly know who you are and they may even be able to track your browsing around the web. The Tor Project has posted a list of common mistakes that inexperienced users sometimes make.

When used properly Tor is one of the best tools for internet privacy that exists. You can use it to circumvent firewalls in an oppressive country, retain your privacy, or browse the Internet while at school. Setting up and running Tor is easy and it is one of the best things any citizen of the Internet can do to help keep a free and open Internet.

And if you can run a Tor relay, or want to commit to boosting the bandwidth on a relay you already run, you can take part in our Tor Challenge and push us over our target while collecting prizes. Check out the Tor Challenge today.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/0...should-use-tor





UK Intelligence Forced to Reveal Secret Policy for Mass Surveillance of Residents’ Facebook and Google Use

Britain’s top counter-terrorism official has been forced to reveal a secret Government policy justifying the mass surveillance of every Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google user in the UK.

This disturbing policy was made public due to a legal challenge brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Pakistani organisation Bytes for All, and five other national civil liberties organisations1

The statement, from Charles Farr, the Director General of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, claims that the indiscriminate interception of UK residents’ Facebook and Google communications would be permitted under law because they are defined as ‘external communications’.

Farr’s statement, published today by the rights organisations, is the first time the Government has openly commented on how it thinks it can use the UK’s vague surveillance legal framework to indiscriminately intercept communications through its mass interception programme, TEMPORA.

The secret policy outlined by Farr defines almost all communications via Facebook and other social networking sites, as well as webmail services Hotmail and Yahoo and web searches via Google, to be ‘external communications’ because they use web-based ‘platforms’ based in the US.

The distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ communications is crucial. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (‘RIPA’), which regulates the surveillance powers of public bodies, ‘internal’ communications may only be intercepted under a warrant which relates to a specific individual or address. These warrants should only be granted where there is some suspicion of unlawful activity. However, an individual’s ‘external communications’ may be intercepted indiscriminately, even where there are no grounds to suspect any wrongdoing.

By defining the use of ‘platforms’ such as Facebook, Twitter and Google as ‘external communications’, British residents are being deprived of the essential safeguards that would otherwise be applied to their communications - simply because they are using services that are based outside the UK.

Such an approach suggests that GCHQ believes it is entitled to indiscriminately intercept all communications in and out of the British Isles. The explanations given by Mr Farr suggest that:

• GCHQ is intercepting all communications - emails, text messages, and communications sent via “platforms” such as Facebook and Google – before determining whether they fall into the “internal” or “external” categories
• The Government considers almost all Facebook and other social media communications, and Google searches will always fall within the “external” category, even when such communications are between two people in the UK
• Classifying communications as “external” allows the Government to search through, read, listen to and look at each of them. The only restriction on what they do with communications that they classify as “external” is that they cannot search through such communications using keywords or terms that mention a specific British person or residence.
• Even though the Government is conducting mass surveillance - intercepting and scanning through all communications in order to work out whether they are internal or external - they consider that such interception “has less importance” than whether a person actually reads the communication, which is where the Government believes “the substantive interference with privacy arises”.
• The Government believes that, even when privacy violations happen, it is not an “active intrusion” because the analyst reading or listening to an individual’s communication will inevitably forget about it anyway.

The legal challenge is brought following revelations made by Edward Snowden about the UK’s global digital surveillance activities. Farr is the government’s star witness in the case, which will be heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal between 14 and 18 July 2014. Read our arguments here.

In addition to Farr's statement, we are publishing the witness statements from Dr Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International, and Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy International. Additional evidence submitted by Privacy International, from Dr Ian Brown, Oxford Internet Institute, and Cindy Cohn, Legal Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, can be found here and here.

Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy International said:

“Intelligence agencies cannot be considered accountable to Parliament and to the public they serve when their actions are obfuscated through secret interpretations of byzantine laws. Moreover, the suggestion that violations of the right to privacy are meaningless if the violator subsequently forgets about it not only offends the fundamental, inalienable nature of human rights, but patronises the British people, who will not accept such a meagre excuse for the loss of their civil liberties.”

James Welch, Legal Director of Liberty said:

“The security services consider that they’re entitled to read, listen and analyse all our communications on Facebook, Google and other US-based platforms. If there was any remaining doubt that our snooping laws need a radical overhaul there can be no longer. The Agencies now operate in a legal and ethical vacuum; why the deafening silence from our elected representatives?”

Michael Bochenek, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International said:

“British citizens will be alarmed to see their government justifying industrial-scale intrusion into their communications. The public should demand an end to this wholesale violation of their right to privacy.”
https://www.privacyinternational.org...e-of-residents





Judge Orders DOJ to Turn Over FISA Surveillance Documents

The agency failed to justify keeping the 66 pages of documents secret, the federal judge said
Stephen Lawson

A federal judge's order on Friday could force the U.S. government to reveal more information about its widespread collection of citizens' phone records.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the federal district court in Oakland, California, ordered the Department of Justice to produce 66 pages of documents for her review. Rogers will decide whether the documents, including one opinion and four orders by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), were improperly withheld from the public.

Rogers' order was a victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is suing under the federal Freedom of Information Act to make the DOJ release information about surveillance on U.S. citizens. EFF says a document leaked last year revealed that the government used a "secret interpretation" of the USA Patriot Act to collect the phone records of virtually everyone in the U.S.

Revelations in recent years about U.S. surveillance of its own and foreign citizens has led to a backlash both political and economic, affecting sales of some U.S.-made technology.

Under the Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the government seeks authorization for surveillance actions from a secret court created under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union sued in 2011 to find out what types of surveillance the government had asked permission to do. Since then, the lawsuit has produced hundreds of pages of previously secret documents that revealed, among other things, that the National Security Agency misused its mass surveillance database and collected cell-site locations, EFF says.

In her order Friday, Judge Rogers said evidence shows the DOJ withheld entire documents when disclosure of parts of those documents would have been required. The DOJ also didn't explain why the documents contained so many descriptions of intelligence activities, sources and methods that it couldn't reveal any part of them, Rogers wrote. The documents date from 2005 to 2008.

"Further, the Court finds that the public's interest in the documents withheld is significant," Rogers wrote. "The scope and legality of the government's current surveillance practices of broad swaths of its citizenry is a topic of intense public interest and concern."
http://www.itworld.com/security/4230...ance-documents





U.S. Officials Scrambled to Nab Snowden, Hoping He Would Take a Wrong Step. He Didn’t.
Greg Miller

While Edward Snowden was trapped in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport last year, U.S. officials were confronting their own dearth of options in the White House Situation Room.

For weeks, senior officials from the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and other agencies assembled nearly every day in a desperate search for a way to apprehend the former intelligence contractor who had exposed the inner workings of American espionage then fled to Hong Kong before ending up in Moscow.

Convened by White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, the meetings kept ending at the same impasse: Have everyone make yet another round of appeals to their Russian counterparts and hope that Snowden makes a misstep.

“The best play for us is him landing in a third country,” Monaco said, according to an official who met with her at the White House. The official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article discussed internal deliberations on the condition of anonymity, added, “We were hoping he was going to be stupid enough to get on some kind of airplane, and then have an ally say: ‘You’re in our airspace. Land.’ ”

U.S. officials thought they saw such an opening on July 2 when Bolivian President Evo Morales, who expressed support for Snowden, left Moscow aboard his presidential aircraft. The decision to divert that plane ended in embarrassment when it was searched in Vienna and Snowden was not aboard.

A year later, Snowden appears to have moved further beyond U.S. reach. His expiring asylum status in Russia is expected to be extended this summer. Negotiations between his attorneys and the Justice Department about a possible deal to secure his return have been dormant for months.

U.S. officials offer conflicting accounts of how much they know about Snowden’s situation in Russia.

“It’s an ongoing investigation,” U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in an interview. “We have done the appropriate things at this stage of the investigation, and we know exactly where Mr. Snowden is.”

Others said the United States lacks answers to even basic questions about Snowden’s circumstances, including where he lives and — perhaps most important — the role of the Russian security service, the FSB, in his day-to-day life.

Asked whether the United States knows Snowden’s location, a U.S. official regularly briefed on the matter said, “That’s not our understanding.”

The gaps persist despite Snowden’s ability to meet with U.S. journalists in Moscow and make high-profile appearances, including during a call-in show with Russian President Vladi#mir Putin.

Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia until February, said he never had detailed information on the American fugitive’s whereabouts. “I do not know where Mr. Snowden is living, what his relationship to the Russian government is or how he makes a living,” said McFaul, who has returned to the faculty at Stanford University.

Several U.S. officials cited a complication to gathering intelligence on Snowden that could be seen as ironic: the fact that there has been no determination that he is an “agent of a foreign power,” a legal distinction required to make an American citizen a target of espionage overseas.

If true, it means that the former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor, who leaked thousands of classified files to expose what he considered rampant and illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, is shielded at least to some extent from spying by his former employers.

Snowden is facing espionage-related charges, and the FBI has power to conduct wiretaps and enlist the NSA and CIA in its investigative efforts overseas. But even with such help, officials said, the bureau’s reach in Moscow is limited.

“The FBI doesn’t have any capability to operate in Moscow without the collaboration of the FSB,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who served in the Russian capital.

The lack of a warrant deeming Snowden a foreign agent would also cast doubt on the claims of some of his critics. U.S. officials, including Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have speculated that Snowden had Russian help in stealing U.S. secrets and probably works with the FSB now.

Snowden has acknowledged that he was approached by Russian intelligence upon his arrival, but he has said he rejected the pitch and did not bring any classified files with him. He insisted in a recent NBC television interview that he has “no relationship” with the Russian government.

Snowden attorney Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who corresponded with his client for this article, said Snowden gets no financial support from the Russian government and does not need it.

Beyond savings from his six-figure NSA jobs, Snowden has received tens of thousands of dollars in cash awards and appearance fees from privacy organizations and other groups over the past year, Wizner said. An organization called the Courage Foundation launched a Web site to raise money for Snowden’s legal defense and listed contributions of $1,356 as of Saturday afternoon.

The apparent stability of Snowden’s situation contrasts with the uncertainty of the eight-week stretch last summer after he had publicly identified himself as the source of a trove of NSA documents but before he secured asylum in Russia — a critical but now closed window in U.S. efforts to catch him.

The burst of activity during that period — including the White House meetings, a broad diplomatic scramble and the decision to force a foreign leader’s plane to land — was far more extensive than U.S. officials acknowledged at the time.

President Obama in particular seemed to strike a dismissive pose, saying on June 27 that he was “not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.” Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said Obama’s remark referred only to the prospect of using military assets. “The president made clear he wouldn’t,” Hayden said in recent statement the The Washington Post. “Not because we weren’t working hard to get Snowden back to the U.S.,” but because it was a law enforcement matter.

From the outset, the pursuit of Snowden was led by the FBI. Lon Snowden, the fugitive’s father, said FBI agents descended on his house within hours after a video of his son identifying himself as the source of the NSA leaks appeared on the Web site of the British news outlet the Guardian.

“I spoke to them approximately four hours on the 10th of June,” Lon Snowden said. Later, the FBI offered to send the elder Snowden to Moscow as part of an effort to deliver a scripted pitch to his son to turn himself in and return home. A former officer in the Coast Guard, Lon Snowden was initially cooperative with the bureau but became angered as his son was depicted by U.S. officials as a traitor.

“I came to know that they were not functioning in good faith” and turned down the trip, Snowden said.

By then, Monaco was convening meetings nearly every day at the White House. Among the participants were the CIA’s head of counterintelligence, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and McFaul, who often took part by videoconference in sessions that got underway well after midnight in Moscow.

The meetings “were not just about Edward Snowden the fugitive” and covered subjects including assessments of the damage the leaks had caused, Joyce said. But there was a constant search for ideas to recover him. “There were several things that were sort of ongoing,” Joyce said, declining to be more specific. “None of them actually panned out.”

Many of the meetings were followed by a stream of calls from U.S. officials to Moscow. Then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III made more than half a dozen direct appeals to his FSB counterpart, Alexander Bortnikov, officials said, all for naught.

U.S. officials said the aim was to convince Putin that turning over Snowden would bolster the U.S.-Russia relationship at a trivial cost to Moscow. But even those making the appeals regarded them as long shots.

“Key players in this were very pessimistic,” said a former U.S. intelligence official involved in the discussions. “The FBI and CIA would have put the chances of cutting some deal with the Russians to send him home at close to zero. This was just too juicy for Putin.”

Against those odds, the Obama administration focused on the prospect that Snowden — who had cited interest in finding asylum in Iceland or Latin America — would abandon his Moscow perch.

State Department and CIA officials pressured countries seen as potential destinations to turn Snowden away, reducing his options to a handful hostile toward the United States. Among them was Bolivia, whose president had signaled publicly that he would consider giving Snowden asylum.

“Why not?” Morales said during a July visit to Moscow. “Bolivia is there to welcome personalities who denounce — I don’t know if it’s espionage or control.”

In interviews, U.S. officials acknowledged that they had no specific intelligence that Snowden would be on Morales’s plane. But the Bolivian leader’s remark was enough to set in motion a plan to enlist France, Spain, Italy and Portugal to block the Bolivian president’s flight home.

“The United States did not request that any country force down President Morales’s plane,” said Hayden, the National Security Council spokeswoman. “What we did do . . . was communicate via diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries through which Mr. Snowden might transit.”

Another U.S. official described the effort as a “full-court press” involving CIA station chiefs in Europe.

As it crossed Austria, the aircraft made a sudden U-turn and landed in Vienna, where authorities searched the cabin — with Morales’s permission, officials said — but saw no sign of Snowden.

The initial, official explanation that Morales was merely making a refueling stop quickly yielded to recriminations and embarrassment.

Austrian officials said they were skeptical of the plan from the outset and noted that Morales’s plane had taken off from a different airport in Moscow than where Snowden was held. “Unless the Russians had carted him across the city,” one official said, it was unlikely he was on board.

Even if Snowden had been a passenger, officials said, it is unclear how he could have been removed from a Bolivian air force jet whose cabin would ordinarily be regarded as that country’s sovereign domain — especially in Austria, a country that considers itself diplomatically neutral.

“We would have looked foolish if Snowden had been on that plane sitting there grinning,” said a senior Austrian official. “There would have been nothing we could have done.”

Diverting Morales’s plane was more than a diplomatic setback. It also probably caused Snowden to abandon any idea of leaving Russia, squandering what Monaco had described as “the best play” for the United States.

A year after his arrival in Moscow, Snowden is seeking ways to find normalcy. Wizner, his attorney, said Snowden is considering taking a position with a South African foundation that would support work on security and privacy issues.

Snowden has also fielded inquiries about book and movie projects.

“Any moment that he decides that he wants to be a wealthy person, that route is available to him,” Wizner said, although the U.S. government could also attempt to seize such proceeds.

Wizner declined to discuss where Snowden lives, or how he secured an apartment in a city where such transactions require government involvement — except to indicate that Snowden’s Russian attorney, Anatoly Kucherena, has helped with such arrangements.

Snowden’s relationship with Kucherena, who has close ties to Putin and serves on an FSB advisory board, has fueled speculation that he is working with the Russian government.

McFaul, the former ambassador, raised other questions, including how Snowden has managed to arrange interviews with prominent U.S. journalists — all requiring Russian visas that could not be obtained without FSB approval — but has yet to grant such access any Russian reporters.

“Many Russian journalists are eager to interview him and ask these questions, but so far he has refused,” McFaul said.

Snowden’s critics and supporters do occupy a thin strand of common ground. They agree that Snowden is probably under nearly constant scrutiny by the FSB and lives a life that is constrained by his dependence on the government that granted him asylum.

“When Snowden says that he has ‘no relationship’ with the Russian government, he means that he hasn’t cooperated with their intelligence services in any way and that his asylum isn’t conditioned on cooperation,” Wizner said. “Of course, the Russian government could choose to expel him at any time.”

Sari Horwitz, Ellen Nakashima and Julie Tate contributed to this article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...11f_story.html





Supreme Court Delivers Huge Victory for Internet Privacy & Blows Away Gov't Plans for Reform
Michael Geist

For the past several months, many Canadians have been debating privacy reform, with the government moving forward on two bills: lawful access (C-13) and PIPEDA reform (S-4). One of the most troubling aspects of those bills has been the government's effort to expand the scope of warrantless, voluntary disclosure of personal information.

Bill C-13 proposes to expand warrantless disclosure of subscriber information to law enforcement by including an immunity provision from any criminal or civil liability (including class action lawsuits) for companies that preserve personal information or disclose it without a warrant. Meanwhile, Bill S-4, proposes extending the ability to disclose subscriber information without a warrant from law enforcement to private sector organizations. The bill includes a provision that allows organizations to disclose personal information without consent (and without a court order) to any organization that is investigating a contractual breach or possible violation of any law. I appeared before both committees in recent weeks (C-13, S-4), but Conservative MPs and Senators were dismissive of the concerns associated with voluntary disclosures.

This morning another voice entered the discussion and completely changed the debate. The Supreme Court of Canada issued its long-awaited R. v. Spencer decision, which examined the legality of voluntary warrantless disclosure of basic subscriber information to law enforcement. In a unanimous decision written by (Harper appointee) Justice Thomas Cromwell, the court issued a strong endorsement of Internet privacy, emphasizing the privacy importance of subscriber information, the right to anonymity, and the need for police to obtain a warrant for subscriber information except in exigent circumstances or under a reasonable law.

I discuss the implications below, but first some of the key findings. First, the Court recognizes that there is a privacy interest in subscriber information. While the government has consistently sought to downplay that interest, the court finds that the information is much more than a simple name and address, particular in the context of the Internet. As the court states:

the Internet has exponentially increased both the quality and quantity of information that is stored about Internet users. Browsing logs, for example, may provide detailed information about users’ interests. Search engines may gather records of users’ search terms. Advertisers may track their users across networks of websites, gathering an overview of their interests and concerns. “Cookies” may be used to track consumer habits and may provide information about the options selected within a website, which web pages were visited before and after the visit to the host website and any other personal information provided. The user cannot fully control or even necessarily be aware of who may observe a pattern of online activity, but by remaining anonymous - by guarding the link between the information and the identity of the person to whom it relates - the user can in large measure be assured that the activity remains private.

Given all of this information, the privacy interest is about much more than just name and address.

Second, the court expands our understanding of informational privacy, concluding that there three conceptually distinct issues: privacy as secrecy, privacy as control, and privacy as anonymity. It is anonymity that is particularly notable as the court recognizes its importance within the context of Internet usage. Given the importance of the information and the ability to link anonymous Internet activities with an identifiable person, a high level of informational privacy is at stake.

Third, not only is there a significant privacy interest, but there is also a reasonable expectation of privacy by the user. The court examines both PIPEDA and the Shaw terms of use (the ISP in this case) and concludes that PIPEDA must surely be understood within the context of protecting privacy (not opening the door to greater disclosures) and that the ISP agreement was confusing at best and may support the expectation of privacy. With those findings in mind:

in the totality of the circumstances of this case, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in the subscriber information. The disclosure of this information will often amount to the identification of a user with intimate or sensitive activities being carried out online, usually on the understanding that these activities would be anonymous. A request by a police officer that an ISP voluntarily disclose such information amounts to a search.

Fourth, having concluded that obtaining subscriber information was a search with a reasonable expectation of privacy, the information was unconstitutionally obtained therefore led to an unlawful search. Addressing the impact of the PIPEDA voluntary disclosure clause, the court notes:

Since in the circumstances of this case the police do not have the power to conduct a search for subscriber information in the absence of exigent circumstances or a reasonable law, I do not see how they could gain a new search power through the combination of a declaratory provision and a provision enacted to promote the protection of personal information.

There are several important implications that flow from this decision. First, with a finding that police need a warrant for subscriber information (except in exigent circumstances), the practice of obtaining information on a voluntary basis should come to an end.

Second, the government's plans for expanded voluntary, warrantless disclosure under Bill C-13 must surely be reformed as it is unconstitutional. Just yesterday, Conservative MP Bob Dechert relied on R. v. Ward to support the C-13 approach with respect to immunity for voluntary disclosure. The court has effectively rejected the Ward decision and Dechert's defence of the provision no longer stands.

Third, the government should remove the expansion of voluntary disclosure in S-4. With the Supreme Court emphasizing the privacy importance of subscriber information, the government should not be seeking to expand warrantless disclosures. In fact, immediate reports indicate that the Senate has delayed debate on the bill to consider the ruling.

Fourth, Internet providers need radical reform of their current approach to disclosure of subscriber information. The Supreme Court examined Shaw's terms of service policy and found it provided "a confusing and unclear picture of what Shaw would do when faced with a police request for subscriber information." The same can be said for virtually every ISP in Canada. While ISPs have been regularly disclosing this information hundreds of thousands of times, the Court ruled:

Given that the purpose of PIPEDA is to establish rules governing, among other things, disclosure “of personal information in a manner that recognizes the right of privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information” (s. 3), it would be reasonable for an Internet user to expect that a simple request by police would not trigger an obligation to disclose personal information or defeat PIPEDA’s general prohibition on the disclosure of personal information without consent.

The court notes that ISPs are not required to disclose this information and this case reaches the conclusion that they are not permitted to do so absent a warrant either. This means ISPs must change their practices on voluntary warrantless disclosure. Much more to come on a decision that seems likely to define Internet privacy for many years to come.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/7156/125/





Global Deletion Orders? B.C. Court Orders Google To Remove Websites From its Worldwide Index
Michael Geist

In the aftermath of the European Court of Justice "right to be forgotten" decision, many asked whether a similar ruling could arise in Canada. While a privacy-related ruling has yet to hit Canada, last week the Supreme Court of British Columbia relied in part on the decision in issuing an unprecedented order requiring Google to remove websites from its global index. The ruling in Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack is unusual since its reach extends far beyond Canada. Rather than ordering the company to remove certain links from the search results available through Google.ca, the order intentionally targets the entire database, requiring the company to ensure that no one, anywhere in the world, can see the search results. Note that this differs from the European right to be forgotten ruling, which is limited to Europe.

The implications are enormous since if a Canadian court has the power to limit access to information for the globe, presumably other courts would as well. While the court does not grapple with this possibility, what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country. Yet the B.C. court adopts the view that it can issue an order with global effect. Its reasoning is very weak, concluding that:

the injunction would compel Google to take steps in California or the state in which its search engine is controlled, and would not therefore direct that steps be taken around the world. That the effect of the injunction could reach beyond one state is a separate issue.

Unfortunately, it does not engage effectively with this "separate issue."

The case involves a company that claims that another company used its trade secrets to create a competing product along with "bait and switch" tactics to trick users into purchasing their product. The defendant company had been the target of several court orders demanding that it stop selling the copied product on their website. Google voluntarily removed search results for the site from Google.ca search results, but was unwilling to block the sites from its worldwide search results.

The case turned largely on jurisdictional questions: could a B.C. court assert jurisdiction over Google? Was a Canadian court the right court to hear the case when Google is based in California? Is it appropriate to issue an order requiring the complete removal of results for all users worldwide?

The court answered affirmatively to all questions. On the issue of jurisdiction, the court cited the European Court of Justice decision, concluding that the companies search and advertising services were inextricably linked and that therefore Google has a Canadian connection. As for concerns that the decision would give every state jurisdiction over Google, the court was unmoved:

I will address here Google's submission that this analysis would give every state in the world jurisdiction over Google’s search services. That may be so. But if so, it flows as a natural consequence of Google doing business on a global scale, not from a flaw in the territorial competence analysis.

Further, on concerns that the B.C. court order would have global effect, the court was similarly unpersuaded:

I note that Google objects to British Columbia retaining jurisdiction because the order sought would require Google to take steps in relation to its websites worldwide. That objection is not resolved by "going to California". If the order involves worldwide relief, a California court will be no more appropriate a forum than British Columbia to make such an order. Even if the order can be construed more narrowly as requiring Google to take steps at the site where the computers controlling the search programs are located, Google has not established that those computers are located in California, or that they can only be reprogrammed there.

The issues raised by the decision date back to the very beginning of the globalization of the Internet and the World Wide Web as many worried about jurisdictional over-reach with courts applying local laws to a global audience. This decision provides the sense that the court felt that Google's global reach needed to be matched by the court's reach. While there is much to be said for asserting jurisdiction over Google - if it does business in the jurisdiction, the law should apply - attempts to extend blocking orders to a global audience has very troubling implications that could lead to a run on court orders that target the company's global search results.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/7159/125/





Spying Together: Germany's Deep Cooperation with the NSA

Cooperation between Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, and America's NSA is deeper than previously believed. German agents appear to have crossed into constitutionally questionable territory.

Three months before Edward Snowden shocked the world with his revelations, members of NSA's "Special Source Operations department" sat down for a weekly meeting at their headquarters in the US state of Maryland. The group, considered internally to be particularly efficient, has several tasks, one of which is overseeing the intelligence agency's delicate relationship with large telecommunications firms. It is the department that Snowden referred to as the "crown jewels" of the NSA.

At this particular meeting, one significant slip-up was on the meeting agenda. On March 14, 2013, an SSO member had reported a potentially damaging incident. "Commercial consortium personnel" had apparently discovered the program "Wharpdrive," for which SSO had tapped a fiber-optic cable. "Witting partner personnel have removed the evidence," he explained further, "and a plausible cover story was provided." According to an internal NSA document to which SPIEGEL has access, a team was quietly put together to to reinstall the program.

The NSA, apparently, did not perform the highly sensitive operation on its own. All signs indicate that the agency had help from Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the country's foreign intelligence agency. The code name Wharpdrive appears in a paper drafted in preparation for a BND delegation's visit to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, and which instructs NSA leaders to "thank the BND for their assistance with the trilateral program." It also makes clear that the German agency plays a leadership role in the Wharpdrive program, with the NSA providing only technical assistance.

It isn't clear from the document exactly where the BND and NSA accessed the fiber-optic cable nor is there any indication of the operation's target. Neither agency responded to questions about Wharpdrive. What appears obvious, however, is that the BND cooperates closely with NSA in one of its most sensitive areas of operation.

Germany's collaboration with US intelligence, which Berlin officials agreed to in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, is opaque and convoluted: opaque because the German parliament and public are unable to review most of what is delivered to the United States; convoluted because there are questions about its legality.

Constitutionally Unacceptable

Leading constitutional law experts have their doubts. In testimony before the NSA investigation committee in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, heavyweight constitutional law experts Hans-Jürgen Papier, Wolfgang Hoffmann-Riem and Matthias Bäcker stated that the BND is potentially violating the German constitution by working with data received from the NSA. Furthermore, they argued that basic constitutional rights such as the privacy of correspondence, post and telecommunications apply to Germans abroad and to foreigners in Germany. That would mean that surveillance performed by the BND and NSA is constitutionally unacceptable.

German intelligence agencies, for their part, consider their cooperation with the NSA to be indispensable -- for counter-terrorism efforts, for the fight against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and for the battle against organized crime. According to a classified paper created by the government in response to a query from the opposition, the BND does not keep official statistics on the amount of telephone, email and text message metadata that is shuttled to American agencies. "All metadata" collected at the NSA site in Bad Aibling in Bavaria "is made available," the response states. In 2012 and 2013, some 3 million items of content data, or intercepted conversations and messages, were sent to the United States each month.

These facts and figures, until now available only to select parliamentarians, offer a window into German-American intelligence cooperation. Documents SPIEGEL has seen from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden, when combined with SPIEGEL's own reporting, open up a much broader panorama.

They show that the exchange of data, spying tools and know-how is much more intense than previously thought. Given this close partnership, BND statements claiming they knew little about the programs and methods used by the NSA are, at minimum, startling.

One location in Germany is particularly illustrative of the trans-Atlantic pact. It is located in the Alpine foothills, in the beautiful valley of Mangfalltal. For decades, the NSA maintained its largest listening post in Germany in Bad Aibling, population 18,000. The agency once had up to 1,800 workers stationed here: They frequented Chicken Joe, a bar near the American base, and Johnny's Bowling. And they cruised through town in American off-road vehicles sporting US license plates.

The Americans' affection for the town can be seen in "A Little Bad Aibling Nostalgia," a document that NSA employees posted on the agency's intranet. They reminisced wistfully about "free bier" emails and leberkäse, a bologna-like substance "made neither of liver nor cheese." German locals were fond of the agents, in part because they were reliable tenants. "Two men who specialized in Arabic dialects lived at my place," recalled jeweler Max Regensburger. "Nice people." Everyone, from baker to butcher to carpenter, profited from the Americans. When they left the base in 2004, Bad Aibling residents waved American flags in farewell.

The Tin Can

But the NSA did not completely abandon Bad Aibling. The BND took over most of the facilities on site, including nine white Radomes, the oversized golf ball-like structures crucial to many surveillance operations. But one small NSA special unit remained active and joined BND agents in the Mangfall Kaserne. The Americans built a specially constructed windowless building with an exterior of black-painted metal.

BND agents refer to the American complex, which houses the "Special US Liaison Activity Germany," or SUSLAG, as the "Tin Can." The unit's very existence is classified information. But it is clear that the Germans and Americans who work there know each other and value one-another's presence.

The official nature of the cooperation between Germany and the US in Bad Aibling is documented in a contract, written two years prior to the NSA's official departure, drafted under the auspices of then-Chancellery Chief of Staff Frank-Walter Steinmeier, now Germany's foreign minister. The "Memorandum of Agreement," signed on April 28, 2002, is six pages long and marked Top Secret. It is not from Snowden's material.

Much of the document consists of broad declarations of "good cooperation," but the important points can be found in the 74-page appendix. There, the two sides agree on joint espionage areas and targets, such as counter-terrorism, and the battles against organized crime and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Surveillance as such isn't mentioned, at least initially. The treaty signatories, instead, commit to respecting fundamental rights such as the privacy of correspondence, post and telecommunications and agree not to conduct surveillance on German or American citizens. The deal is valid both for "real" and "legal entities," meaning it applies to companies and associations as well.

But even in this memorandum, the crux is in the small print -- the addenda and exceptions. In the case of "terrorist activity," the taboos mentioned earlier no longer apply. Should it become clear that intercepted information originated from a German citizen, it can still be used as long as the partner agency is informed and agrees. The same is true in cases where the end point of monitored communications is located in a foreign country.

'Exciting Joint Ventures'

According to the German constitution, the BND is not allowed to perform surveillance on German citizens. But does the memorandum's small print open up a back door? Does the NSA provide information about radicals that the German intelligence agency is not permitted to have access to?

The BND denies the existence of such channels and says, "At no time has there been a deviation from the legal framework."

It seems doubtful that the Germans know exactly what their NSA colleagues are doing in Bad Aibling. According to the agreement, the NSA is allowed to carry out its own surveillance operations and only has to allow the German partners to look at its task assignments and operational details if asked.

In any case, internal documents indicate that the NSA is pleased with the Bad Aibling facility. "Two exciting joint ventures" are carried out there. One involves teams for working on joint surveillance (referred to as "Joint SIGINT Activity") and the other for the analysis of captured signals (Joint Analysis Center or JAC). Snowden's documents hint at what precisely the trans-Atlantic allies were collaborating on. In 2005, for example, five NSA employees worked "side-by-side" with BND analysts on a BND operation called Orion. Its targets lay outside NATO's eastern border.

According to the documents, most of the targets monitored jointly by the BND and NSA are in Africa and Afghanistan. One document, though, reveals something else. Stemming from 2009, it includes a list of companies and organizations with domain endings such as .com, .net and .org that are explicitly to be removed from the surveillance efforts because they are German web addresses. Among them are basf.com and bundeswehr.org, but also such domains as orgelbau.com and feuerwehr-ingolstadt.org.

German Aid for US Drone Attacks?

The list includes addresses that appear to have fallen into the surveillance crosshairs and were only later revealed to be German. This indicates that the filtering system the BND reportedly uses does not reliably prevent German targets with .com and .org domain names from being monitored, and that those names must be removed retroactively.

In response to questioning about the close cooperation in Bad Aibling, the BND said that the Joint SIGINT Activity and the Joint Analytical Center were discontinued "in 2012 and 2011, respectively." In addition, the BND noted in a statement, no joint surveillance took place prior to the facility's discontinuation: "Even before, signals intelligence was performed exclusively by the BND."

The NSA documents, though, tell a different tale, for example in a document pertaining to the one-year anniversary of the Tin Can. In reference to the JSA, the document notes that the cooperation is "unique as a jointly manned, jointly tasked DNI site," with DNI referring to Digital Network Intelligence. An American document referring to levels of secrecy from 2005 notes that "the fact that NSA and BND ... perform SIGINT collection at Mangfall Kaserne" must remain confidential.

Bad Aibling also plays a central role in the question of whether the NSA is collecting data in Germany. A map from the spy program Boundless Informant, published by SPIEGEL in the summer of 2013, indicates that the NSA collects vast amounts of data in Germany and points to primary metadata collection points (or "SIGADS"), identified by the codes US-987LA and US-987LB.

The document shows that these two SIGADS sent some 500 million points of metadata from Germany to NSA databases during a four-week period from the end of 2012 to the beginning of 2013. One document, which explains the program, says that data is collected "against" a target country.

The NSA has never explicitly commented on the two collection sites, but according to the BND, there is an explanation that refutes the accusation that the US spied on Germany. The BND believes "that the SIGADs US 987-LA and US 987-LB refer to Bad Aibling and to a signals intelligence site in Afghanistan." That would mean, the BND says, that the 500 million data points might have been collected by the BND outside of Germany and then transferred to the NSA. Still, the German intelligence agency noted that it couldn't say for sure whether that would account for all of the data listed by the NSA.

Should the BND's explanation be correct, it would mean that the formulation used by "Boundless Informant" -- and SPIEGEL's own interpretation -- were misleading. But it would also provide yet more evidence for the enormous exchange of information between Germany and the NSA.

In the Wharpdrive program, BND specialists are taking the lead. According to one document from the Snowden archive, Germany's cooperation with the NSA's Special Source Operations is meant to provide "unconventional special access" to fiber-optic cables.

'High Interest Target Areas'

In that same document, the Americans express their respect, praising the Germans for operations undertaken "under risky conditions" and noted that the BND "offered NSA unique accesses in high interest target areas."

A 2006 document verifies that the BND and the NSA not only work closely together, but that they are also often on equal technological footing. At the time, US intelligence workers visited a BND office in the town of Schöningen, Lower Saxony. The office is just a few kilometers away from the city center's half-timbered houses. The site's location near the former border with East Germany used to help the BND eavesdrop on its communist neighbors.

As Germany got consumed by hosting the World Cup in the summer of 2006, BND analysts gave presentations to their American colleagues about which electronic tools they used. The equipment, the Americans noted in meeting minutes, were sometimes more effective than the NSA's own.

As far back as 2006, the BND was working in Schöningen on algorithms that could detect patterns or anomalies and thus enable it to exploit social networks for intelligence purposes. With a subject line on meeting notes reading "Visitors impressed with software demos," the Americans expressed high regard for their German colleagues. They also praised the intercepts from Afghanistan that the "BND shares on a daily basis."

Indeed, NSA staff seemed to be pleased with much of what the BND does in Afghanistan. There is no other issue in Snowden's documents that is the subject of as much praise for the BND, the role it plays and what it shares. There are numerous instances in which the agency lauds the Germans for leadership and for the monitoring of additional civilian and military targets that they have taken on.

A presentation on the cooperation among 14 intelligence services in Afghanistan shows that the partners have the ability to exchange intelligence in "near real time," including the contents of encrypted mobile phone conversations and so-called "target packages" containing information on targets.

Difficult Questions

When SPIEGEL reported last summer on the sharing of target information, the BND did not deny this activity. But it did challenge the conjecture that the data might serve as the basis for American drone attacks. The situation remains a complicated one: It's not possible to target a drone attack based on a mobile phone number's having accessed a cell phone base station, but drones can be turned into flying mobile phone base stations by equipping them with what are known as IMSI catchers -- phones then automatically connect to an IMSI catcher when the drone flies overhead. This also means that metadata supplied through BND surveillance could very well contribute to guiding the deadly drones to their targets. Indeed, the former head of NSA and CIA Michael Hayden recently confirmed, "We kill people based on metadata."

New documents also indicate the high significance of German surveillance to the US military in Afghanistan. Germany and 13 of its allies deliver intelligence to a unit on the American military base in Bagram. This is home to the NSA's "Cryptologic Services Group," a unit that feeds intelligence to controversial units like the secret Task Force 373, who had the mission of capturing or killing high-value Taliban or al-Qaida targets.

These connections between the BND and NSA raise difficult questions about the German government and its foreign intelligence service, such as whether Germany participated indirectly in death squad operations, which can result in the deaths of civilians or police.

The government has declined to comment on such questions. So far, there have merely been general statements, like the one made most recently by German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière at an event in Berlin. He described the United States as Germany's most important ally and said, "If it were up to us, we would continue it in absolute terms and even intensify it."

There is substantial evidence in Snowden's documents that German authorities are trying to do just that. In April 2013, a BND delegation led by an official named Dietmar B. visited the NSA. The BND "is eager to present its SIGINT capabilities ... with the goal of expanding the partnership," an NSA document notes. The document says that officials welcome "the BND's eagerness to strengthen and expand cooperation with NSA."

Smooth Sailing

Other documents state that the BND offers "language assistance" in African languages. It is also clear that the BND shares the results of its monitoring of two foreign ministries as well as Internet telephony originating from a crisis-plagued country in the Middle East.

These days, tensions between the upper echelons of government in Germany and the United States are at their highest in years, but these documents suggest a smooth relationship between the eager BND and the covetous NSA.

There was only one point on which the United States expressed reserve: A request by the Germans to use information from NSA surveillance in "open court." The document, from April 2013, said there were concerns that the disclosure of surveillance capabilities in a German court could have ramifications and that the "desired and planned level of cooperation" could not be maintained.

In this instance, Germany's adherence to its own constitution seems bothersome to the Americans.

By Hubert Gude, Andy Müller-Maguhn, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach, Jörg Schindler and Fidelius Schmid

Translated from the German by Charles Hawley and Daryl Lindsey
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-975445.html





House Votes 293-123 to Cut Funding for NSA Spying on Americans

The amendment would also stop "backdoors" from being built into tech products.
Megan Geuss

In a surprising vote late Thursday night, a strong majority of the House of Representatives voted to cut funding to NSA operations that involve warrantless spying on Americans or involve putting hardware or software "backdoors" into various products. The amendment to a defense appropriations bill, offered by Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY), passed 293 to 123.

The amendment specifies that, with a few exceptions, “none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by an officer or employee of the United States to query a collection of foreign intelligence information acquired under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1881a) using a United States person as an identifier.”

In addition, “none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency to mandate or request that a person...alter its product or service to permit the electronic surveillance...of any user of said product or service for said agencies.” Since Edward Snowden began leaking documents about the NSA's tactics in June of last year, security experts have worried about reports of intentional weaknesses left in widely used cryptography specifications.

The amendment is a contrast to the USA Freedom Act passed last month. That bill was initially intended to reform the NSA but, in its final form, still permitted the spy agency to access its vast trove of phone call metadata. Because the item passed tonight was an amendment to an appropriations bill, it went to the floor without being scrutinized by the intelligence committee, which is "basically a proxy for the intelligence community,” as Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute explained to Wired.

The amendment still has to be approved by the Senate in order to take effect in 2015.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...ing-backdoors/





Hackers Reverse-Engineer NSA's Leaked Bugging Devices

Using documents leaked by Edward Snowden, hackers have built bugs that can be attached to computers to steal information in a host of intrusive ways
Paul Marks

RADIO hackers have reverse-engineered some of the wireless spying gadgets used by the US National Security Agency. Using documents leaked by Edward Snowden, researchers have built simple but effective tools that can be attached to parts of a computer to gather private information in a host of intrusive ways.

The NSA's Advanced Network Technology catalogue was part of the avalanche of classified documents leaked by Snowden, a former agency contractor. The catalogue lists and pictures devices that agents can use to spy on a target's computer or phone. The technologies include fake base stations for hijacking and monitoring cellphone calls and radio-equipped USB sticks that transmit a computer's contents.

But the catalogue also lists a number of mysterious computer-implantable devices called "retro reflectors" that boast a number of different surreptitious skills, including listening in on ambient sounds and harvesting keystrokes and on-screen images.

Because no one outside the NSA and its partners knows how retro reflectors operate, security engineers cannot defend against their use. Now a group of security researchers led by Michael Ossmann of Great Scott Gadgets in Evergreen, Colorado, have not only figured out how these devices work, but also recreated them.

Ossmann specialises in software-defined radio (SDR), an emerging field in which wireless devices are created in software rather than constructed from traditional hardware such as modulators and oscillators. Instead of such circuits, an SDR uses digital-signal-processing chips to allow a programmer to define the wave shape of a radio signal, the frequency it uses and the power level. It operates much like a computer's sound card, but instead of making sounds or processing incoming audio, it makes and receives radio signals. And a single SDR can be changed to any band instantly, including AM, FM, GSM and Bluetooth.

"SDR lets you engineer a radio system of any type you like really quickly so you can research wireless security in any radio format," says Ossmann.

An SDR Ossmann designed and built, called HackRF, was a key part of his work in reconstructing the NSA's retro-reflector systems. Such systems come in two parts – a plantable "reflector" bug and a remote SDR-based receiver.

One reflector, which the NSA called Ragemaster, can be fixed to a computer's monitor cable to pick up on-screen images. Another, Surlyspawn, sits on the keyboard cable and harvests keystrokes. After a lot of trial and error, Ossmann found these bugs can be remarkably simple devices – little more than a tiny transistor and a 2-centimetre-long wire acting as an antenna.

Getting the information from the bugs is where SDRs come in. Ossmann found that using the radio to emit a high-power radar signal causes a reflector to wirelessly transmit the data from keystrokes, say, to an attacker. The set-up is akin to a large-scale RFID- chip system. Since the signals returned from the reflectors are noisy and often scattered across different bands, SDR's versatility is handy, says Robin Heydon at Cambridge Silicon Radio in the UK. "Software-defined radio is flexibly programmable and can tune in to anything," he says.

Ossmann will present his work in August at the Defcon hacking conference in Las Vegas. Other teams will be there as well, unveiling ways to usurp NSA spy technology. Joshua Datko of Cryptotronix in Fort Collins, Colorado, will reveal a version of an NSA device he has developed that allows malware to be reinstalled even after being dealt with by antivirus software. It works by attaching its bug to an exposed portion of a computer's wiring system – called the I2C bus – on the back of the machine. "This means you can attack somebody's PC without even opening it up," says Ossmann.

Having figured out how the NSA bugs work, Ossmann says the hackers can now turn their attention to defending against them – and they have launched a website to collate such knowledge, called NSAPlayset.org. "Showing how these devices exploit weaknesses in our systems means we can make them more secure in the future," he says.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...g-devices.html





Long Thought Dead, PC Sales Are Coming Back
Matt Phillips

Microsoft's retirement of Windows XP is one of the things driving businesses to drop cash on new machines. AP Photo/Eric Risberg

A fresh wave of corporate computer-buying is starting to materialize, which could be great news for both computer giants and the US economy.

Last week, the world’s largest chipmaker, Intel, raised its profit forecast for the second quarter, saying it’s seeing a stronger-than-expected surge in sales of computers to companies. Intel’s comments echoed similar optimism from Hewlett-Packard, which reported quarterly earnings in late May. “Overall we’re seeing a slowing market contraction and signs of stabilization, particularly in commercial PCs,” HP’s CEO, Meg Whitman, told investors on the company’s post-earnings call.

China’s Lenovo also said similar things, suggesting that corporations in both the US and Japan are in the midst of upgrading their aging fleet of computers. (The average age of companies’ computer stock is between five and seven years, according to JPMorgan analysts.) Moody’s analysts note that these company purchases are a big boon computer makers, as corporate machines tend to be higher-margin than consumer PCs. Moody’s estimates that the upgrade cycle could last another 12 to 18 months.

Besides being good news for computer makers, a rise in business spending on computers is also a welcome sign of corporate capital expenditures, a much-needed ingredient to support late-stage growth in what’s getting to be an increasingly drawn-out economic recovery in the US (paywall).
http://qz.com/221720/long-thought-de...e-coming-back/

















Until next week,

- js.



















Current Week In Review





Recent WiRs -

June 14th, June 7th, May 31st, May 24th


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
JackSpratts is online now   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 16th, '11 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 13-07-11 06:43 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - July 9th, '11 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 06-07-11 05:36 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 30th, '10 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 27-01-10 07:49 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 16th, '10 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 13-01-10 09:02 AM
Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 5th, '09 JackSpratts Peer to Peer 0 02-12-09 08:32 AM






All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:14 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
© www.p2p-zone.com - Napsterites - 2000 - 2024 (Contact grm1@iinet.net.au for all admin enquiries)