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Old 07-10-15, 06:54 PM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 10th, '15

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"I think the president should veto it, I think the president will veto it. This is a central economic growth issue for this administration." – Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass






































October 10th, 2015




Satellite Internet Gets a Fresh Look, Cash Infusion

The race for Internet service from space is on, again.
AFP

After a series of failed satellite Internet projects over the past two decades, fresh investment is coming into the sector, and at least three high-profile projects are moving forward.

OneWeb, a London-based consortium backed by tycoon Richard Branson, announced in June it had raised $500 million from investors including Airbus, Qualcomm and Intelsat to advance its plan for satellite broadband to underserved parts of the world.

Also this year, US-based space exploration firm SpaceX secured a $1 billion investment that could help founder Elon Musk's plan to build a satellite Internet network, with backing from Google and the financial firm Fidelity.

US-based LeoSat, backed by Europe's Thales Alenia Space, is also working on a satellite broadband project aimed at business. And Samsung outlined plans in a research report this year "to make affordable Internet services available to everyone in the world via low-cost micro-satellites."

The projects seek to launch hundreds of low-orbit satellites to beam the Internet from space. The initial costs could be high, but would avoid the expense of building ground-based systems for wired or wireless broadband.

If the plans sounds familiar, we've seen this before.

Teledesic, a 1990s project backed by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Saudi royal family investors, died before it went into service, as did another venture called SkyBridge, whose assets were eventually acquired by OneWeb.

Greg Wyler, chief executive of OneWeb, said much has changed since Teledesic abandoned its "Internet in the sky" plan more than a decade ago: the cost of satellite technology has come down, and most people now realize that connectivity is needed to spur economic development.

"If your goal is to end extreme poverty, boost the things that contribute to economic growth like health care and education, all of those things sit on a foundation of connectivity," Wyler told AFP.

OneWeb plans to begin launching its 648 low-orbit satellites in 2017, and begin connecting customers by 2019, Wyler said.

The company has "contractual arrangements" to operate in more than 50 markets and is looking at a broad global footprint.

"More than half the world is not connected," he said.

In some developed markets like the United States, individuals who live in remote areas could subscribe to Internet broadband. In developing countries, it may be schools, health care centers and other government entities.

"Our technology fundamentally reduces the cost of connectivity," he said.

Musk vs Branson

An equally ambitious plan is being developed by Musk and SpaceX, which could launch as many as 4,000 satellites.

Musk said on Twitter that he sees "advanced micro-satellites operating in large formations" that would provide "unfettered (Internet access) certainly and at very low cost."

Details of the SpaceX plan are still sketchy, but the company filed plans with the US Federal Communications Commission to begin testing. Eventually, FCC approval could allow the SpaceX project to offer broadband services globally.

LeoSat's plan calls for between 78 and 108 satellites for a broadband network aimed at high-volume business customers such as major corporations, governments, maritime operators and the oil and gas industry, said chief executive Mark Rigolle.

While LeoSat, a startup created in 2013, is aiming at only a few thousand customers, it can also serve as a "backbone" for other operators, which would mean millions could use its connections.

"We want to become 'fiber from the sky' from anywhere to anywhere," Rigolle told AFP.

"It's not a product that is available in today's market."

The company was created by former oil and gas industry executives who understood the need for better connections in remote parts of the world, Rigolle said.

These low-earth orbit systems require more satellites but can cover areas not served by the higher-orbit systems, with better connectivity because of faster transmission speeds.

Rigolle said LeoSat will be able to transmit around the globe "from satellite to satellite without ever touching the ground," create a system which is "effectively faster than fiber" and more secure.

Natural advantages

Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said now may be an opportune time to launch a space broadband service because of advances in technology and growing needs for connectivity.

"Space has a lot of natural advantages" over terrestrial systems, he said.

"Space systems provide a way to cover massive amounts of territory very quickly, and the new satellites are increasingly sophisticated."

Because growing numbers of people around the world rely on wireless broadband, Pace said that "demand is more intense than in the 1990s and satellite systems have a chance of meeting that demand and being a player."

Still, he said it's not clear if satellite systems can compete effectively with ground-based systems. And he said that any new entrant will still have to compete for airwave spectrum and deal with regulators in various countries.

With a number of satellite firms competing, it is not clear if all will survive, Pace said.

"It's a question of who can get there quick enough and surmount the regulatory hurdles," he said.

"I don't know that there is room for multiple systems. There might be room for one, maybe two."
http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/satel...sion-1.2594345





Net Neutrality on Chopping Block As Democrats Fight to Save FCC’s Rules

Sens. Franken and Markey want to block budget rider that would limit FCC powers.
Jon Brodkin

Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) today said they will try to preserve the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules in a budget standoff with Republicans.

A Republican budget proposal that came out in June would prevent the FCC from enforcing its net neutrality rules until Internet providers who are suing the commission have exhausted all their legal options.

"ISPs are certainly free to file their suits but until they prevail, and I don’t believe they will, there is no basis for Republicans blocking the FCC from doing its job," Franken said in a press conference today.

ISPs previously petitioned a federal appeals court for a stay that would delay implementation of the rules until the legal case is decided. The court refused to issue a stay, allowing the net neutrality rules to take effect on June 12. But the Republican budget proposal for fiscal 2016 would prohibit implementation of the rules until the court cases are over.

The White House urged Republicans to pass the budget without "unrelated ideological provisions," such as the net neutrality prohibition. Franken and Markey said they plan to make sure the budget as passed by Congress doesn't include the net neutrality ban, but President Obama could veto the budget if Democrats lose the battle.

"I think the president should veto it, I think the president will veto it," Markey said. "This is a central economic growth issue for this administration."

To make sure it doesn't get to that point, Markey said, "we will have to organize as Democrats to block this rider and any other riders the Republicans seek to attach to the appropriations process. Net neutrality is at the top of the list."

The FCC's net neutrality order reclassified broadband providers as common carriers and issued prohibitions on blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment.

The budget proposal from House Republicans says that "none of the funds made available" to the FCC may be used to implement net neutrality rules until "there has been a final disposition" on the court cases pitting ISPs vs the FCC.

The House and Senate proposals also prohibit the FCC from "directly or indirectly" regulating the prices and terms charged and imposed by broadband providers. This prohibition would remain in place even after the court cases are decided. The FCC hasn't regulated the prices charged by ISPs, but Franken said a prohibition on "indirect" regulation could block the FCC's ban on paid prioritization.

Budget negotiations are ongoing.

Republicans in Congress have made numerous proposals throughout this year to eliminate net neutrality rules and limit the FCC's power to regulate broadband providers. Republicans have claimed that the FCC is imposing "heavy-handed agency regulations that would slow Internet speeds, increase consumer prices and hamper infrastructure development," and that the rules must be stopped to "protect our innovators from these job-killing regulations.”

Franken argued that "net neutrality lets small businesses or individuals play on a level playing field with giant corporations." He gave the example of YouTube, saying that "before YouTube there was Google Video and Google Video wasn't very good... because of net neutrality, YouTube was able to get to you, you were able to get to YouTube at the same speed as Google Video. YouTube was better… Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion." Net neutrality rules are about protecting "the next YouTube," he said.

There weren't any net neutrality rules in place when YouTube was created in 2005. When asked why net neutrality rules are needed now if YouTube thrived without them, Markey argued that there were "de facto" net neutrality rules stemming from principles outlined by former FCC chairmen such as Michael Powell. Powell in 2004 urged the broadband industry to preserve "Internet freedoms" including the "freedom to access content" and "freedom to use applications." (Powell is now a cable lobbyist and critic of the FCC's latest net neutrality rules.)

Net neutrality rules were first formalized by the FCC in 2010, a few years after Comcast was caught interfering with BitTorrent traffic. Verizon sued and was able to overturn a major portion of the rules, leading to another net neutrality rulemaking this year.

"What we're talking about now is formalizing what was the de facto environment," Markey said. "There have never been Internet fast lanes and slow lanes. Now the FCC has formally made the rules, and broadband companies want the rules to be undone."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...h-republicans/





Internet Providers Would Be Forced to Block Filesharing Sites Under TPP
Jordan Pearson

Digital rights advocates’ worst fears were confirmed on Friday morning after the finalized intellectual property chapter of the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal was leaked by Wikileaks, just days after talks concluded in Atlanta.

Under the agreement, it appears that internet service providers could be forced to block websites hosting content that infringes copyright.

The leaked copyright chapter of the TPP is just a portion of the text that all 12 negotiating nations agreed upon; the rest of the agreement will remain a closely-guarded secret until the full text is released in the coming months.

According to the leaked text, Canada was able to preserve its more measured takedown system, compared to the US at least, which is based on notifying all parties before any action is taken. But it comes at a cost: internet service providers must "remove or disable access" to content upon “becoming aware” of a decision by a court that says the content infringes copyright. According to internet legal expert Michael Geist, that court order could come from any TPP signatory.

“The broadly worded provision could force Canadian ISPs to block content on websites after being notified of a foreign court order—without first having to assess whether the site is even legal under Canadian law,” Geist wrote in a blog post this morning.

That means that if a US court were to, say, find that a popular filesharing website was distributing copyrighted Hollywood movies, ISPs in all TPP countries would be compelled to block access to that site.

Until now, leaked drafts of the agreement's chapters have been outdated works in progress, leaving commentators guessing as to which provisions would actually be left in the final document.

But while the TPP text may be finalized, the agreement must still be ratified by the governments of all signing countries, which could push back against the agreement’s provisions or even abandon the deal altogether. At the very least, it’s possible that the content blocking stipulation could be reevaluated and clarified, Geist said, but it’s unlikely.

“Canada didn’t take a very strong stand on many copyright issues, it would appear,” Geist wrote me in an email. “Not sure of the interest in doing so later.”

The leaked chapter also confirms that US negotiators succeeded in pushing for extended copyright terms—70 years plus the life of the author, for all countries, which include developing nations like Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam.

The rest of the TPP chapters will be released in the coming months, President Barack Obama stated on Monday, and if the leaked copyright chapter is any indication, more nasty non-surprises will be waiting.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/int...ites-under-tpp





Users Have Been Betrayed in the Final TPP Deal—Help Us Tell Washington How You Feel
Jeremy Malcolm

Trade negotiators from the U.S. and its 11 Pacific Rim partners announced their agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) today, concluding the final round of closed negotiations in Atlanta and marking the culmination of seven years of secrecy. Throughout all that time, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has acted as a de facto representative of the Hollywood big media lobbies in pushing other countries to adopt the most punitive aspects of U.S. copyright policies—such as our over-the-top civil and criminal penalties—while at best giving lip service to pro-user aspects such as fair use.

Throughout this time EFF and our partner organizations, including the Our Fair Deal coalition, tried to play by the USTR's rules. We wrote whitepapers and open letters, we held side-events for negotiators, we gave presentations (during the limited window when we were allowed to do so), and we spoke with USTR officials bilaterally. But successive leaks of the TPP have demonstrated that unless you are a big business sector, the USTR simply doesn't care what you have to say. The latest evidence of this is that it was only when Google finally weighed in on the need for more robust support for fair use in the TPP, that the USTR budged on that issue—having ignored our similar calls for years.

Now, the deal is finally done and the text still won't be available for another 30 days.

Well enough's enough. The time for whitepapers and presentations is past. The USTR has failed us, so now it's time for the public to rise up and take their message about the TPP's threats to user rights to Congress, which has the ultimate authority to approve or reject the deal for the United States. To be effective we'll need to deliver that message in terms that are clear, and in-your-face—literally. So, that's what we're planning: to display signs and banners about how the TPP threatens digital rights and freedoms around the world, during demonstrations that are to be held in Washington, DC from November 14 to 18, 2015, while trade ministers are attending an APEC meeting in the Philippines.

That's where we need your help.

We don't want to just tell Congress what EFF thinks about the TPP. We specifically want them to know what you think. So, we're crowdsourcing the production of messages that you'd like us to use on the placards that we take to Washington, DC. You can contribute your messages via Twitter by quoting this tweet. (Not sure how to quote a tweet? Click the Retweet icon under the post, then type your message in the "Add a comment" field, then click the Retweet button.)

To get some ideas, you can read through all the materials that we've produced on this issue, including:

• Our TPP's Copyright Trap campaign on how the extension of copyright term would steal from the public domain to pad the pockets of big media companies.
• The dangerous trade secrets rules that could turn whistleblowers, journalists, and hackers into criminals.
• The deal's DRM circumvention ban that would introduce new barriers to users’ abilities to tinker with their devices and content, even for entirely lawful purposes.
• How criminal copyright enforcement rules could shut down fan communities and threaten online archivists.
• The risk that Hollywood could use special private "courts" for investors to attack countries that adopt US-style "fair use" rules.

And there's so much more to be worried about, that we're sure your biggest problem won't be finding something to say on a protest banner, but trying to limit it to a few choice words! Feel free to submit as many suggestions as you like.

We'll sift through your suggestions over the next week and choose the best messages on October 14. We'll then have our in-staff designer transform them into powerful protest banners and make 50 of them for EFF staff, members, and partners to use on the ground at the protest in DC. We'll also take photos of the protest and post them to the EFF website where you'll be able to see your messages in action.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/0...n-how-you-feel





EU's Highest Court Rules for Student in Facebook Data Privacy Case
AP

The European Union's highest court ruled Tuesday in favor of an Austrian law student who claims a trans-Atlantic data protection agreement doesn't adequately protect consumers, a verdict that could have far-reaching implications for tech companies doing business in Europe.

Student Max Schrems launched the case following revelations two years ago by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about the NSA's surveillance programs.

See also: Student Files Privacy Class Action Suit Against Facebook

Schrems complained to the data protection commissioner in Ireland, where Facebook has its European headquarters, that U.S. law doesn't offer sufficient protection against surveillance of data transferred by the social media company to servers in the United States.

Irish authorities initially rejected his complaint, pointing to a 2000 decision by the EU's executive Commission that, under the so-called "safe harbor" agreement, the U.S. ensures adequate data protection.

The agreement has allowed for the free transfer of information by companies from the EU to U.S. It has been seen as a boost to trade since, absent such a deal, swift and smooth data exchange over the Internet would be much more difficult.

On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice ruled the decision by the Commission invalid. It said that the "safe harbor" deal enables interference by U.S. authorities with fundamental rights and contains no reference either to U.S. rules to limit any such interference or to effective legal protection against it.

The court said the effect of the ruling is that the Irish data commissioner will now be required to examine Schrems' complaint "with all due diligence."

Once it has concluded its investigation, the authority must "decide whether ... transfer of the data of Facebook's European subscribers to the United States should be suspended on the ground that that country does not afford an adequate level of protection of personal data," the court said in a summary of its ruling.

Facebook said it couldn't immediately comment.

Schrems said he hoped the ruling will be a milestone for online privacy.

"This decision is a major blow for U.S. global surveillance that heavily relies on private partners," Schrems said in a statement. "The judgement makes it clear that U.S. businesses cannot simply aid U.S. espionage efforts in violation of European fundamental rights."

However, he noted that the ruling doesn't bar data transfers from the EU to the U.S., but rather allows national data protection authorities to review individual transfers.

"Despite some alarmist comments I don't think that we will see mayor disruptions in practice," Schrems said.

Sophie In't Veld, a leading Liberal lawmaker in the European Parliament, welcomed the ruling and called the "safe harbor" decision "a travesty of legality."

"We need clear rules to govern the transfer of personal data to the U.S. and other non-EU countries," she said. "But they must be legally watertight, provide real and meaningful protection, and there must be proper enforcement."
http://mashable.com/2015/10/06/safe-harbor-case/





Edward Snowden: Smartphones Can be Hacked into with Just One Text Message and then Used to Spy on their Owners

GCHQ, the UK’s spying agency, has a ‘smurf suite’ of tools that allow it to break into and listen in on phones, Snowden claims from Moscow
Andrew Griffin

The world’s spying agencies have tools that allow them to take over smartphones with just a text message, according to Edward Snowden, and there is “very little” that their owners can do to stop it.

The UK’s intelligence agency has a suite of tools that let it listen on phones and their owners, Snowden told the BBC’s Panorama in Moscow. All spies would need to do is send a special text message and they will be able to gain access to the camera and its microphones, the BBC reported Snowden as saying.

The set of tools is called “Smurf Suite”, according to Snowden. Each of the individual tools has their own name — “Dreamy Smurf” lets the phone be powered on and off, for instance, and “Nosey Smurf” lets spies turn the microphone on and listen in on users, even if the phone itself is turned off.

GCHQ even has a tool called “Paranoid Smurf” that hides the fact that it has taken control of the phone. The tool will stop people from recognising that the phone has been tampered with if it is taken in for a service, for instance.

“For example, if you wanted to take the phone in to get it serviced because you saw something strange going on or you suspected something was wrong, it makes it much more difficult for any technician to realise that anything's gone amiss,” Snowden said.

The comments mirror those by Snowden earlier in the year, when his lawyer said that the whistleblower doesn’t use an iPhone because it “has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him, that’s why on security grounds he refused to have this phone”.

The text message used to gain access to the phone wouldn’t be seen by its user and they would have no idea that it had arrived, Snowden said.

"That's a specially crafted message that's texted to your number like any other text message but when it arrives at your phone it's hidden from you,” Snowden said. “It doesn't display. You paid for it [the phone] but whoever controls the software owns the phone."

Snowden said that GCHQ’s counterpart in the US, the NSA, has spent $1 billion on similar tools.

A spokesperson for the UK government told the BBC that it does not comment on intelligence matters but that its spying work is carried out within a “strict legal and policy framework”.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...-a6680546.html





Former NSA Chief: I 'Would Not Support' Encryption Backdoors
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

Michael Hayden, the former head of the CIA and the NSA, thinks the US government should stop railing against encryption and should support strong crypto rather than asking for backdoors.

The US is “better served by stronger encryption, rather than baking in weaker encryption,” he said during a panel on Tuesday.

Hayden said that the US government developed certain habits that led it to favor offense rather than defense in cyberspace, but that nowadays, the world has changed, and there’s a need for a change in attitude, referring to the 1990s debate over the Clipper Chip, a telephone surveillance backdoor that the US government tried to impose on telephone companies.

“American security might be best secured by toeing more in the direction of giving up the offensive advantage, in order to more secure American communications,” Hayden said during a panel on cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan.

This is surprising because current leadership in the Department of Defense and at the FBI has strongly advocated the opposite position. In July, Hayden already hinted that he didn’t support the FBI’s push for backdoors, but he came strongly against it on Tuesday.

When I asked Hayden about his position on the current encryption debate in an interview following the event, the former top spy told me that he “would not support [FBI] Director [James] Comey’s demands for access.”

The debate, which some have billed as the new Crypto War, has been brewing in Washington, DC for more than a year, after the FBI warned that Apple’s new plan to lock iPhone’s by default could lead to “a very dark place.”

Hayden also specifically added that he “would not” ask for a backdoor.

Hayden’s clear and direct dismissal of the FBI’s demands puts him at odds even with the current NSA director, Adm. Mike Rogers, who has publicly said he shared Comey’s concerns, and that there needs to be “legal framework” for the US government to access data held or exchanged using online services or devices created by US tech companies.

Hayden said that losing the first Crypto War on the Clipper Chip did not stop the US government from obtaining the information it needed.

“In retrospect, we mastered the problem we created by the lack of the Clipper Chip,” he said. “We were able to do a whole bunch of other things. Some of the other things were metadata, and bulk collection and so on.”
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/for...-on-encryption





Obama Administration Opts Not to Force Firms to Decrypt Data — for Now
Ellen Nakashima and Andrea Peterson

After months of deliberation, the Obama administration has made a long-awaited decision on the thorny issue of how to deal with encrypted communications: It will not — for now — call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement.

Rather, the administration will continue trying to persuade companies that have moved to encrypt their customers’ data to create a way for the government to still peer into people’s data when needed for criminal or terrorism investigations.

“The administration has decided not to seek a legislative remedy now, but it makes sense to continue the conversations with industry,” FBI Director James B. Comey said at a Senate hearing Thursday of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The decision, which essentially maintains the status quo, underscores the bind the administration is in — balancing competing pressures to help law enforcement and protect consumer privacy.

The FBI says it is facing an increasing challenge posed by the encryption of communications of criminals, terrorists and spies. A growing number of companies have begun to offer encryption in which the only people who can read a message, for instance, are the person who sent it and the person who received it. Or, in the case of a device, only the device owner has access to the data. In such cases, the companies themselves lack “backdoors” or keys to decrypt the data for government investigators, even when served with search warrants or intercept orders.

The decision was made at a Cabinet meeting Oct. 1.

“As the president has said, the United States will work to ensure that malicious actors can be held to account — without weakening our commitment to strong encryption,” National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh said. “As part of those efforts, we are actively engaged with private companies to ensure they understand the public safety and national security risks that result from malicious actors’ use of their encrypted products and services.”

But privacy advocates are concerned that the administration’s definition of strong encryption also could include a system in which a company holds a decryption key or can retrieve unencrypted communications from its servers for law enforcement.

“The government should not erode the security of our devices or applications, pressure companies to keep and allow government access to our data, mandate implementation of vulnerabilities or backdoors into products, or have disproportionate access to the keys to private data,” said Savecrypto.org, a coalition of industry and privacy groups that has launched a campaign to petition the Obama administration.

To Amie Stepanovich, the U.S. policy manager for Access, one of the groups signing the petition, the status quo isn’t good enough. “It’s really crucial that even if the government is not pursuing legislation, it’s also not pursuing policies that will weaken security through other methods,” she said.

The FBI and Justice Department have been talking with tech companies for months. On Thursday, Comey said the conversations have been “increasingly productive.” He added: “People have stripped out a lot of the venom.”

He said the tech executives “are all people who care about the safety of America and also care about privacy and civil liberties.”

Comey said the issue afflicts not just federal law enforcement but also state and local agencies investigating child kidnappings and car crashes — “cops and sheriffs . . . [who are] increasingly encountering devices they can’t open with a search warrant.’’

One senior administration official said the administration thinks it’s making enough progress with companies that seeking legislation now is unnecessary. “We feel optimistic,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. “We don’t think it’s a lost cause at this point.”

Legislation, said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), is not a realistic option given the current political climate. He said he made a recent trip to Silicon Valley to talk to Twitter, Facebook and Google. “They quite uniformly are opposed to any mandate or pressure — and more than that, they don’t want to be asked to come up with a solution,” Schiff said.

Law enforcement officials know that legislation is a tough sell now. But, one senior official stressed, “it’s still going to be in the mix.”

On the other side of the debate, technology, diplomatic and commerce agencies were pressing for an outright statement by Obama to disavow a legislative mandate on companies. But their position did not prevail.

Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, said absent any new laws, either in the United States or abroad, “companies are in the driver’s seat.” He said that if another country tried to require companies to retain an ability to decrypt communications, “I suspect many tech companies would try to pull out.”

Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...699_story.html





California Now Has the Nation’s Best Digital Privacy Law
Kim Zetter

California continued its long-standing tradition for forward-thinking privacy laws today when Governor Jerry Brown signed a sweeping law protecting digital privacy rights.

The landmark Electronic Communications Privacy Act bars any state law enforcement agency or other investigative entity from compelling a business to turn over any metadata or digital communications—including emails, texts, documents stored in the cloud—without a warrant. It also requires a warrant to track the location of electronic devices like mobile phones, or to search them.

The legislation, which easily passed the Legislature last month, is the most comprehensive in the country, says the ACLU.

“This is a landmark win for digital privacy and all Californians,” Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of California, said in a statment. “We hope this is a model for the rest of the nation in protecting our digital privacy rights.”

Five other states have warrant protection for content, and nine others have warrant protection for GPS location tracking. But California is the first to enact a comprehensive law protecting location data, content, metadata and device searches, Ozer told WIRED.

“This is really a comprehensive update for the modern digital age,” she said.

State senators Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Joel Anderson (R-Alpine) wrote the legislation earlier this year to give digital data the same kinds of protection that non-digital communications have.

“For what logical reason should a handwritten letter stored in a desk drawer enjoy more protection from warrantless government surveillance than an email sent to a colleague or a text message to a loved one?” Leno said earlier this year. “This is nonsensical and violates the right to liberty and privacy that every Californian expects under the constitution.”

The bill enjoyed widespread support among civil libertarians like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as tech companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Twitter, which have headquarters in California. It also had huge bipartisan support among state lawmakers.

“For too long, California’s digital privacy laws have been stuck in the Dark Ages, leaving our personal emails, text messages, photos and smartphones increasingly vulnerable to warrantless searches,” Leno said in a statement today. “That ends today with the Governor’s signature of CalECPA, a carefully crafted law that protects personal information of all Californians. The bill also ensures that law enforcement officials have the tools they need to continue to fight crime in the digital age.”

The law applies only to California law enforcement entities; law enforcement agencies in other states would be compelled by the laws in their jurisdictions, which is why Ozer and others say it’s important to get similar comprehensive laws passed elsewhere.

The law places California not only at the forefront of protecting digital privacy among states, it outpaces even the federal government, where such efforts have stalled.

Civil libertarians and others have long lobbied federal lawmakers to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to offer such protection nationwide. An amendment to that law has been wending through Capitol Hill, where it has 300 co-sponsors. But the proposal is less comprehensive than the law Brown signed, and would merely focus on digital content. Currently, the federal ECPA requires a warrant for stored content that is newer than 180 days; the amendment would extend the warrant requirement to all digital content regardless of age.

California has long led the way in privacy protection. Voters amended the state constitution in the 1970s to provide explicit privacy rights far more robust than those guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution. But while the state amendment ensured a right to privacy for all Californians, lawmakers couldn’t envision the technological advances that would come in the decades to follow. The law that Brown signed today closes surveillance loopholes left by that amendment and “codifies what was intended by that privacy right,” Ozer says.

“We certainly hope that this bill is a clarion call [for the federal amendment],” she told WIRED. “This is not only a comprehensive update for all Californians, but hopefully is a model for making sure that all Americans have this kind of digital privacy protection.”
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/califor...l-privacy-law/





IPhones at Risk From China Advertising Malware, Researcher Says
Tim Culpan

Malicious software appearing to come from an advertising company in China is capable of infecting Apple Inc.’s mobile devices, according to researchers at Palo Alto Networks Inc.

YiSpecter malware mostly affects Apple mobile users in China and Taiwan by downloading applications that remain hidden from view, the researchers wrote. The code can infect iPhones and iPads that have been “jailbroken,” or unlocked to skirt software and hardware restrictions, and those that haven’t been modified.

YiSpecter is at least the second malware unveiled in the past month to target applications for Apple devices after XcodeGhost was found to secretly collect information and report data back to a central server. By infecting phones that aren’t jailbroken, attackers are able to bypass Apple security measures intended to limit the spread of malicious code.

“Whether an iPhone is jailbroken or not, the malware can be successfully downloaded and installed,” the researchers wrote. “Even if you manually delete the malware, it will automatically re-appear.”

The code can be downloaded through corporate application installations and when Internet traffic is intercepted and replaced by network service providers, they said.

YiSpecter began spreading as early as November 2014 and may open up a full-screen advertisement on a device when a normal app is opened, according to Palo Alto Networks.

Carolyn Wu, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Apple, wasn’t immediately able to comment on the report Monday, which is a public holiday in China.

XcodeGhost can be remotely controlled by attackers and used to install apps directly to a device without permission, read contents of its clipboard, and trick the user into providing their iCloud password, the researchers wrote last month.

While similar, YiSpecter was likely developed by a different organization and has the added ability to install applications while hiding the icon from the device’s screen to avoid detection, the Palo Alto Networks researchers wrote.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...esearcher-says





This Portable FM Transmitter Brings Information to People in Crisis

“When there is no existing infrastructure that is stable for any kind of media, we thought, let’s come back to good old radio.”
Shan Wang

Half the population of Syria has been displaced. Hundreds of thousands have died in the conflict and millions are fleeing. For those who remain in the country, critical infrastructure is unstable and might be under the control of warring factions at a given moment. The Internet is constantly interrupted. Cell phone coverage can be spotty.

Enter Pocket FM, a portable FM transmitter the size of a shoebox that starts working as soon as it’s connected to a small antenna, a power source, and an audio signal. Pocket FM resembles a radio receiver more than a transmitter, and a single device can air radio programs over a radius of about six kilometers. At its core is Raspberry Pi, an affordable mini computer that can easily be further developed and modified with different features for different scenarios.

Pocket FM was developed by the Berlin-based nonprofit Media in Cooperation and Transition in collaboration with design firm IXDS. MiCT, which focuses on media development in crisis regions and doesn’t usually create hardware, had been working to set up an independent Syrian radio network known as the Syrian Radio Network, or Syrnet, with support from the German Federal Foreign Office. The network combines programming from stations within and outside the country and circulates local reporting from those stations more widely.

As part of its Syrnet project, MiCT helped design the modular, portable Pocket FM to spread the FM signal to areas where it may not be possible to set up a large FM transmitter. (Syrnet shows can also be downloaded from the Internet, but small Pocket FM transmitters set up in the country broadcast the programs locally.)

“The challenge in Syria is that it can be scary, in some areas, to set up big FM transmitters, because they are easy to detect, easy to destroy, and expensive to run,” said Klaas Glenewinkel, MiCT’s co-founder and director. “We had the idea of bringing in many small ones and creating a mesh of radio transmitters so people can access local information where TV and other means have failed.”

Big radio transmitters, Glenewinkel said, were sometimes stolen by people who then demanded money for their return, or could be co-opted to broadcast certain messages. But a decentralized network of hard-to-spot transmitters circumvents those obstacles and is simpler to set up in remote areas. Pocket can also find new frequencies to broadcast on if one is jammed, and can even send out quick text messages to listeners using the RDS protocol.

“When there is no existing infrastructure that is stable for any kind of media, we thought, let’s come back to good old radio,” Glenewinkel said. “But FM transmitters have not really developed in past 20 or 30 years. So we thought, OK, let’s go back to this and think about what FM transmitters of the future could look like.”

The team that participated in the initial creation of Pocket involved not only staff from MiCT and IXDS but also software developers, people from NGOs, radio engineers, and logistical experts who helped coordinate transport (both legal and illegal) of various pieces of Pocket FM equipment to difficult-to-reach areas. “This is not just an app that you can download from the store. It’s still a physical device. If you want to bring equipment from Germany to Syria, into Aleppo, you need a lot of coordination,” Glenewinkel said.

Critical to the process were Syrian activists and journalists intimately aware of the on-the-ground situation in their home countries. Among those who fled Syria and now reside in Germany, Glenewinkel said, were many qualified journalists with connections to peers and colleagues still in Syria.

Syria isn’t the only country where MiCT is using radio systems to spread information. The first iteration of Pocket FM is also beta-testing in Sierra Leone in collaboration with the Freetown-based Culture Radio, in an effort to target communities that haven’t had access to any media campaigns around the prevention of the spread of Ebola. Various villages across all the country’s provinces received FM transmitters, as well as receivers, to broadcast education and awareness-related content tailored to that region.

MiCT also has initiatives ongoing in other countries such as Yemen and Tanzania. (At the moment MiCT has distributed 23 units of the first prototype of Pocket FM inside Syria, one in Yemen, two in Tanzania, and eight in Sierra Leone.)

The team dedicated to Pocket FM has grown quite a bit since it was first piloted, and is hurrying to finish the new version by the end of the year. (A Slovenian company is manufacturing the hardware.) Developers are working to add features that will bolster security for the journalists and activists who might use the device, including the ability for someone running the transmitter to turn it off remotely via a mobile phone. Other new features include a built-in solar panel, GPS, and Internet connectivity. The more powerful version of Pocket FM will cost about $2,000 (USD).

Glenewinkel said that the team has been getting a lot of requests from people who want to use the device, and he hopes their affordable new version will be on the market soon. When that time comes, the team will be have to be careful about who gets a hold of it.

“Right now the twenty to thirty pieces we have are within our control,” Glenewinkel said. “Once we advertise it and sell it, we will need to have some kind of serious vetting process to find out whether this person who called is actually who they say they are.”
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/thi...ple-in-crisis/





Newsonomics: 10 Numbers on The New York Times’ 1 Million Digital-Subscriber Milestone

Digital subscribers are proving to be the bedrock of the Times’ business model going forward. How much more room is there for growth — and at what price points?
Ken Doctor

If, half a decade ago, you’d been able to put money down in Vegas on The New York Times’ chances of reaching 1 million digital subscribers by 2015, what kind of odds could you have gotten? Longer than longshot. In 2010, when the Times announced it would put up a paywall, hardly anyone thought readers would pay for that sort of “commodity” — general news — on the web. TimesSelect, the Times’ first foray into digital paid content in the mid-2000s, had gone bust, and the program’s name served as an easy punchline for the conventional wisdom of the moment.

Today, four and a half years after the Times introduced its metered paywall, we can declare a milestone. The Times can now count 1 million digital-only subscribers. It’s a moment the Times should be celebrating. And yet, despite this success, the Times’ ad results paralleled too closely that of its peer newspaper companies. For the quarter, overall ad revenues dropped 5.5 percent, anchored down by a print loss of 12.8 percent despite a digital gain of 14.2 percent. That means overall revenues dipped 1.5 percent. The outlook for the third quarter: another “decrease in the mid-single digits” in overall ad revenue. None of that is surprising; it’s largely more of the same, with a deeper print gloom to consider.

For today, though, let’s pull apart the million-reader milestone. It’s worth celebrating for all who value journalism.

Ironically, almost all of the Times’ top leadership that put the metered paywall into place — save its owners — are gone. The next generation of Times execs faces this question: What do we build on top of the paywall? The paywall didn’t “save the Times,” but it’s come damn near close. This year, digital-only reader revenue will reach close to $200 million. And though print circulation continues to shrink, there’s little doubt it would have dropped more quickly if print subscribers had continued to be confronted with what now seems like a crazy paradox: Pay hundreds of dollars for a print Times — or get all the content free not only online, but on that smartphone and tablet that have become third and fourth arms of our lives.

One million acts as a threshold number. Let’s plumb what it means, looking at 10 related numbers that flesh out its meaning.

1. Readers reward elite global journalism.
The Times can claim first place with the million. The Wall Street Journal is close behind, at 900,000, while the FT’s digital subscription number stands at 520,000. These solid numbers form bedrock for the future. For news companies, being national now means being global, and being global means enjoying unprecedented reach. These audiences of a half-million and more portend more reader revenue to come.

2. Digital-only news readers about pay for the cost of the newsroom.
If we figure an average all-in cost per full-time Times journalist at $150,000 and throw in extensive travel and related costs, we can estimate a budget of $200 million a year. That’s assuming that, with the rehiring the Times has done post-2014 buyout, it now houses close to 1,300 journalists. Digital-only readers will add about $185 million to the coffers this year. Of course, the digital subscription system costs money, to build and to operate. But the rough equivalency offers a tantalizing questions: Could readers directly pay for voluminous, high-quality journalism?

The short answer: No. The Times’ greater recent success owes a lot to its steady integration of dozens if not hundreds of technologists into the news process. News tech is becoming irrevocably intertwined with journalism, at everywhere from the Times to Vox, Vice, and BuzzFeed. Then there’s the growing marketing and audience development costs required to operate a winning digital business, which aren’t minimal. So the equivalency might get our juices going, but it only starts the digital-only conversation for the future.

3. Mobile engagement drives much of the digital subscriber business.
According to data from the Times, almost a quarter of its iPhone app’s monthly users are subscribers. While 30× more Times unique visitors access the Times through a mobile browser than through its app, it’s the subscribers who disproportionately love the app. Love = engagement, with about three times more pages consumed on apps than through browsers. The iPad app elicits similar behavior.

The Times has smartly built out its suite of products to allow its frequent readers to move, with less effort, from desktop to smartphone to tablet and back. Yet its that mobile utility and convenience — largely through the app — that drives much of the subscriber satisfaction.

4. The Times can count about the same number of paying daily readers today as it could in 1995.
In those pre-digital days, the Times’ daily circulation stood at 1.5 million. Today, it counts 625,000 daily print payers (home delivery and single copy) and those 1 million digital payers. That’s a little over 1.6 million. That’s another mind-boggling equivalency. With all that has changed, in the news business particularly, roughly the same number of people pay for The New York Times. One takeaway: Even at the peak of financial success — and the ’90s were good for the industry — the Times still relied on only a tiny percentage of Americans. At one point, a million and a half paying readers meant sustaining prosperity. Now, it seems like a shaky lifeline. There’s truth and there’s perception, and a lot to think about.

5. Only a small percentage of Times readers generate a huge part of its income.
The Times generates about 60 million unique visitors (U.S.) a month. One million of them pay; 59 million don’t. That’s less than two percent. The rest of the digital audience supplies attention which the Times monetizes through advertising, but then again it’s those one million paying readers who consume a greater slice of the pageviews, doubling their value. It’s the more 1.15 million print payers who are responsible for all the print reader revenue — and all the print ad revenue. So we can safely say that the business — today’s and tomorrow’s — is built on a narrow slice of people who consume Times content in any given month. That’s not a problem — it’s just a realization for all digital news companies. Loyal core readers build the foundation of the new business.

On Sunday, the 1.15 million paying print readers mean that the Times can count more than 2 million total paying customers (adding in those million digital-onlies). Is 3 million an achievable goal at some point? That’s the target that Dow Jones CEO Will Lewis has set for The Wall Street Journal.

6. The Times’ crossover grows more profound.
Revenue from readers — print and digital — now stands at 55 percent of all revenue. Advertising revenue makes up 39 percent. That crossover works to the Times’ advantage. As advertising continues to absorb losses, its decline is minimized by the fact that the Times is not as reliant on ad revenue as it once was. The Times reader/ad ratio is the flipside of most dailies, who still count on ad dollars for most of their revenue.

7. Zero remains a number of achievement.
What’s been one net impact of all that digital reader revenue? It’s a goose egg — but an important one. Without that almost $200 million in revenue, each quarter would be bathed in red ink, with revenues down in low to middle single digits. With that revenue, though, during the Mark Thompson years, we’ve seen 2014 full-year revenue growth of 0.7 percent and 2013 full-year revenue growth of 0.5 percent. Zero, practically. Now, even with a million digital subscribers, it’s mired around zero (“The newsonomics of zero and The New York Times“).

8. The global opportunity rises in importance.
Reliably, 12 to 13 percent of digital subscriber growth arrives from outside the U.S. That means the non-U.S. digital subscriber population is approaching 100,000. Expect 2016 to see a major focus, and an investment, on moving well past that number.

9. Newsroom investment is a business driver.
Of the Times’ total expense budget, about 20 percent goes to the newsroom. That’s about one-third more than the average U.S. daily, which spends 12.5 percent — or one out of eight dollars — on content creation. It’s no accident that the two regional leaders in digital-only sales, The Boston Globe (with 63,000 digital-only subscribers) and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis (with 58,000 digital-onlies), both spend closer to 20 percent as well. Readers know quality, depth, and breadth when they see it, and they’re willing to pay for it. There’s a lesson in that for the industry.

10. Paywalls 2.0 still waits in the wings.
NYT Now, launched in April of last year and made free in May of this year, failed at its original goal: to find a new younger, paying audience with niche under-$10-a-month products. There’s no doubt NYT Now has influenced current mobile presentation and story choice. But the question still hangs in the air, for the Times and the wider industry: Other than full-priced subscriptions to around-the-clock firehose of NYT content, what will anyone pay for?

NYT Now found 20,000 new subscribers before it went free. Can the Times turn its popular Cooking app into a reader revenue source? What else might generate new reader payment — sports, health, travel? Expect new experimentation in 2016. Paywalls 1.0 — even with the 1 million number — can only take the Times so far; it needs to find additional spigots of reader revenue to get past flat revenue and into growth.

Alternatively, we may see differing spins on low-cost “newspaper” subscriptions. Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post brings Amazon-like thinking to subscription pricing (“Is The Washington Post closing in on the Times?”), offering subs for as low as $19 for a full year. The Post would need a huge buyer multiple to make a business model out of that number. But at this point, the more product and price experimentation, the better.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/new...ber-milestone/





Amazon Launches Snowball, A Rugged Storage Appliance For Importing Data To AWS By FedEx
Frederic Lardinois

Amazon surprised developers today with the launch of Snowball, a new physical appliance that will allow AWS users to ship huge amounts of data for import into AWS by shipping the device back and forth between their offices and the AWS data centers.

The appliance is a bit larger than an old-school desktop case and it can hold up to 50 terabytes of data. It has a Kindle on the side, which functions as an automatic shipping label.

Amazon says the case can withstand a 6 G jolt and is entirely self-contained, with a 110-volt power supply and 10 GB network connection built-in.

Every import/export job will cost developers $200. The first 10 days of onsite usage are free, each extra day on site will cost developers $15 days. Amazon won’t charge for importing the data from Snowball into S3, but it will charge $0.03 per GB for export.

After the user sets up a Snowball job on AWS, Amazon will ship them a Snowball appliance. They then import their data into the appliance and ship it back to Amazon, with the built-in Kindle functioning as the shipping label.

For now, all of the data from Snowball appliances will be uploaded into S3 Standard in Amazon’s Oregon data center — support for other data centers is coming soon.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/07/ama...-aws-by-fedex/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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