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Old 28-10-15, 07:41 AM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 31st, '15

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"Technologists, artists, and fans should not have to get permission from the government—and rely on the contradictory and often nonsensical rulings—before investigating whether their car is lying to them or using their phone however they want. But despite this ridiculous system, we are glad for our victories here, and that basic rights to modify, research, and tinker have been protected.”." – EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry





















































October 31st, 2015




Closing the Loopholes in Europe's Net Neutrality Compromise
Jeremy Gillula and Jeremy Malcolm

Since our last update on the upcoming net neutrality regulation in the European Union, a further compromise proposal has been developed, which heads to a vote in the European Parliament on Tuesday next week. On its face, the draft regulation appears to hit all the most important points, including providing that "When providing internet access services, providers of those services should treat all traffic equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender or receiver, content, application or service, or terminal equipment".

But the devil is in the details. There are several loopholes in the current text which, if not resolved, would result in limited net neutrality protections. Between now and Monday, European activists are pushing for amendments to improve the draft regulation to close these loopholes. Their proposed amendments would address:

Specialized services: The specialized services exception allows ISPs to use IP networks for delivery of other online services, distinct from general Internet access that they offer, without complying with the same non-discrimination rules. While the language here is better than in earlier drafts—it no longer allows general Internet access to be negatively affected by the availability of specialized services—clearer language could ensure that the range of specialized services that can take advantage of this exception is narrowly confined to those that legitimately require separate treatment.

Zero rating: The current text does not prohibit zero rating outright, but it also doesn't make clear that countries can regulate zero rated services if they choose to do so. Further clarity in the text would help to make clear that member states will retain the ability to regulate zero rating, to address competition or consumer harms that this practice may create.

Congestion management: The text contains an exception that would allow providers to regulate impending network congestion, not just actual congestion. This is seen by European activists as overstepping the bounds of reasonable network management. They seek an amendment that would confine network management for congestion to times when the network is already actually congested.

Traffic management based on traffic type: Probably the worst aspect of the current text is an exception that would allow ISPs to manage congestion by prioritizing traffic based "on objectively different technical quality of service requirements of specific categories of traffic." This language would give ISPs broad discretion to decide which traffic gets a higher priority based on its claimed Quality of Service ("QoS") requirements, e.g., by prioritizing VoIP traffic over peer-to-peer traffic, or by prioritizing gaming traffic over encrypted traffic on port 443. The problem with this is that in order for ISPs to do this prioritization, they first have to correctly categorize the traffic, which isn't always easy to do. For example, an application which uses peer-to-peer technology for a group VoIP chat service might end up being degraded because it looks like P2P traffic, even though it's actually VoIP traffic. Additionally, ISPs would be unable to categorize encrypted traffic without trying to do some sort of traffic flow analysis, and this analysis would likely fail at correctly categorizing new types of encrypted traffic. As a result, they could put put new encrypted services at risk of being degraded. ISPs should be able to prioritize prioritize different classes of traffic, but this prioritization should be at the behest of the customer and easy for the customer to manage. For example, it would be completely acceptable if an ISP offered a customer the option of prioritizing her own VoIP traffic over her own P2P traffic, but the ISP should not prioritize her VoIP traffic over her neighbor's P2P traffic if they're paying for the same level of service.

The amendments supported by European activists are important and should be adopted—especially because the regulation will become European law immediately when passed. (This differs from the alternative procedure of a "directive," which would have to be implemented in each country before it becomes law.) That means there are only a few days remaining to convince European Members of Parliament (MEPs) to support the amendments.

If you live in Europe, you can express your support for the suggested amendments by visiting the coalition site savetheInternet.eu. Please contact your MEP and help preserve an open Internet in Europe today.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/1...ity-compromise





Net Neutrality: EU Votes in Favour of Internet Fast Lanes and Slow Lanes

MEPs confused by false claims, tired of the arguments, keen to conclude the case.
Glyn Moody

The European Parliament has passed the flawed flawed compromise text on net neutrality without including any of the amendments that would have closed serious loopholes. The vote took place a few hours after a rather lacklustre debate this morning, which was attended by only 50 MEPs out of the European Parliament's total of 751, indicating little interest in this key topic among most European politicians. The Greens MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht called the result a "dirty deal."

Arguments in favour of the text were disappointing and superficial. Many concentrated on the other major component of the Telecoms Single Market package, the abolition of mobile roaming charges in the EU. This long-overdue, and highly-popular measure was cleverly offered as a carrot by the European Commission in order to persuade MEPs to accept the rest of the package. The misleading impression was given that supporting the net neutrality amendments proposed by MEPs would cause the abolition of roaming charges to be lost, but that was not the case.

As the German Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda pointed out, the Telecoms Single Market package doesn't even deliver on data roaming: "The plan to place an end to roaming surcharges in Europe has been adopted pending a review of pricing and consumption patterns. Even if the review is completed by the 15 June 2017 deadline, roaming surcharges will only be suspended up to a ‘fair use’ limit beyond which they still apply and continue to hinder the breaking down of barriers within Europe." In other words, those MEPs who voted in favour of the package in the belief that accepting poor net neutrality rules was a price worth paying in order to buy a speedy end to EU roaming charges were played for mugs.

On the few occasions that MEPs supporting the compromise text addressed the net neutrality rules directly, they simply parroted the claim by telecom companies that specialised services running over fast lanes were needed in order to encourage innovation in the EU. As those in favour of true net neutrality—including such luminaries as Sir Tim Berners-Lee—have emphasised, the opposite is true. For innovation to flourish as it has done so far, a level playing-field is needed. Allowing fast and slow lanes on the Internet plays into the hands of incumbents and companies with deep pockets.

Pressure was applied at the end of the morning's debate by Andrus Ansip, the vice-commissioner responsible for the EU Digital Market. He said that if the text was not passed in its entirety now, there was "a risk of delays, not only months, but years," and that "risk" may have weighed with some MEPs. But Reda pointed out on Twitter that is not true: "Actually it's only 6 weeks until 3rd reading," when a new compromise text could have been agreed. One other reason MEPs may have been unwilling to change the text was that it has been going back and forth between the various institutions of the EU for years, and MEPs are evidently sick of discussing it, as the poor turn-out for the earlier debate showed. In the end, sheer political fatigue may have played a major part in undermining net neutrality in the EU.
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy...nd-slow-lanes/





Carrier DT Targets Startups After Europe Agrees Net Neutrality Rules
Natasha Lomas

Well that was quick. Europe’s controversial new net neutrality rules haven’t even come into force yet and German mobile carrier Deutsche Telekom is suggesting it intends to charge startups to boost the quality of their services under the new rules — as many in the tech industry had feared.

One of the problems with the incoming rules, which will come into force on April 30, 2016, is their provision to allow for preferential treatment of Internet traffic for so called “specialized services”.

The EC has been couching these as “services like IPTV, high-definition videoconferencing or healthcare services like telesurgery” — which it says use the Internet protocol and the same access network but “require a significant improvement in quality or the possibility to guarantee some technical requirements to their end-users”.

Ergo it’s been trying to claim they are not the same as ‘normal’ Internet access services, whatever those might be.

Writing an explainer on this aspect of the rules back in June, it said: “The possibility to provide innovative services with enhanced quality of service is crucial for European start-ups and will boost online innovation in Europe. However, such services must not be a sold as substitute for the open Internet access, they come on top of it.”

The actual wording of the now agreed net neutrality rules — as pertains to these specialized services — states (emphasis mine):

There is demand on the part of providers of content, applications and services to be able to provide electronic communication services other than internet access services, for which specific levels of quality, that are not assured by internet access services, are necessary. Such specific levels of quality are, for instance, required by some services responding to a public interest or by some new machine-to-machine communications services. Providers of electronic communications to the public, including providers of internet access services, and providers of content, applications and services should therefore be free to offer services which are not internet access services and which are optimised for specific content, applications or services, or a combination thereof, where the optimisation is necessary in order to meet the requirements of the content, applications or services for a specific level of quality.

Critics of the net neutrality rules have dubbed this provision a loophole for the creation of a two tier Internet in Europe, as well as being critical of other aspects of the rules — such as the lack of a ban on the practice of zero-rating services (whereby carriers can, for instance, offer certain apps to users without data charges for accessing them), and other exceptions for certain types of congestion management.

The EC continually rebutted such criticism, with Günther Oettinger, the Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, arguing the rules allow flexibility for “innovation and investments”, and going on to claim that specialized services “have to be in the public interest” (although the wording of the law indicates that public interest is not, in fact, a legal requirement, but merely a “for instance” example).

It looks like we’re now getting a glimpse of what the new rules will mean in practice. And specifically how these ‘specialized services’ are going to manifest themselves: as a route for carriers to open up new revenue streams by tapping into startup coffers. (Critics of the new rules have suggested ‘specialized services’ were the concession demanded by carriers for giving up roaming fees — the other key plank of the legislation. Bottom line: carriers’ revenues have been declining for years and they have to find alternatives.)

Writing in a blog post yesterday DT CEO Timotheus Höttges suggests the carrier is preparing to use the provision of specialized services to charge startups for “guaranteed good transmission quality” — arguing this will offer them a way to compete with better resourced rivals, such as large tech platforms like Google.

Höttges first likens specialized services to quality differentiation on the Internet — such as users of cloud storage services paying more for more storage or to view HD instead of SD quality videos — and then goes on to write (emphasis mine):

Opponents of special services claim that small providers can’t afford this. The opposite is true: Start-ups need special services more than anyone in order to have a chance of keeping up with large Internet providers. Google and co. can afford server parks all around the world, to bring content nearer to their customers and thus improve the quality of their services. Small companies cannot afford this. If they want to bring services to market which require guaranteed good transmission quality, it is precisely these companies that need special services. By our reckoning, they would pay a couple of percent for this in the form of revenue-sharing. This would be a fair contribution for the use of the infrastructure. And it ensures more competition on the Internet.

Carriers have long complained they are being turned into dumb pipes by the apps sitting atop their network and running data services that allow users to circumvent the likes of SMS via messaging apps, for instance. So you can just imagine how they are salivating over the prospect of leverage over startups via the ability to pit one Internet business against the other by selling “guaranteed good transmission quality”.

The phrase “guaranteed good transmission quality” implies those businesses not paying a couple of per cent revenue-share to the carrier can expect less reliable transmission quality over DT’s network — albeit the EC continually stated that “paid prioritisation” is explicitly not allowed under the new net neutrality rules.

So it will presumably be up to national regulatory authorities to determine whether “guaranteed good transmission quality” amounts to “paid prioritisation” or not.

Well you can’t say people didn’t see this coming…
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/30/gua...rioritisation/





New York Probes Broadband Speeds
Sarah N. Lynch

The New York attorney general is probing whether three major Internet providers could be short-changing consumers by charging them for faster broadband speeds and failing to deliver the speeds being advertised, according to documents seen by Reuters.

The letters, which were sent on Friday to executives at Verizon Communications Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc, ask each company to provide copies of all the disclosures they have made to customers, as well as copies of any testing they may have done to study their Internet speeds.

"New Yorkers deserve the Internet speeds they pay for. But, it turns out, many of us may be paying for one thing, and getting another," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.

Time Warner Cable spokesman Bobby Amirshahi said in a statement: “We’re confident that we provide our customers the speeds and services we promise them and look forward to working with the AG to resolve this matter.”

Cablevision spokesman Charlie Schueler said the company's Optimum Online service "consistently surpasses advertised broadband speeds, including in FCC and internal tests. We are happy to provide any necessary performance information to the Attorney General as we do to our customers.”

Verizon declined comment, saying it had not yet seen the letter.

The probe by the attorney general is particularly focused on so-called interconnection arrangements, or contractual deals that Internet service providers strike with other networks for the mutual exchange of data.

In the letters, the office says it is concerned that customers paying a premium for higher speeds may be experiencing a disruption in their service thanks to technical problems and business disputes over the interconnection agreements.

A 2014 study by the Measurement Lab Consortium, or M-Lab, found that customers' Internet service tended to suffer at points where their broadband providers connected with long haul Internet traffic carriers including Cogent Communications Group Inc.

"Internet service provider interconnection has a substantial impact on consumer Internet performance - sometimes a severely

negative impact," the study said, adding that business relationships rather than technical issues were often at the root of the problem.

A spokesman for the attorney general's office said the findings in the 2014 study, coupled with consumer complaints and internal analysis, prompted the inquiry into the Internet speeds.

Some of the letters also raise questions about speeds delivered by Time Warner Cable and Cablevision to consumers over "the last mile," a term that refers to the point where a telecommunication chain reaches a retail consumer's devices.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Peter Cooney and Christian Plumb)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/1...0SK0AH20151026





Comcast’s Data Caps are ‘Just Low Enough to Punish Streaming’
Brad Reed

If you’re a cord cutter who lives in an area where Comcast has implemented its data caps and you constantly find yourself running up against your monthly limit, there may be a good reason for that. The Associated Press recently published an interesting report on Comcast’s plan to meter the Internet through data caps and what really stuck out for me was a quote from one Comcast customer who pointed out that these caps are just the right size to discourage people from getting all their television through streaming services instead of through a traditional cable TV package.

“I think the idea of limiting your usage is absolutely insane,” Comcast customer Matthew Pulsipher told The Associated Press. “It would make sense if the cap was 2 terabytes, but 300 is just low enough to punish streaming.”

This isn’t just the anecdote of some broadband hog who’s streaming 4K porn through his computer all day. I’ve been seeing lots of stories of cord cutters who suddenly find themselves facing the threat of overage fees because their decision to watch TV over the web is now being subjected to limits.

Take this report from Stop the Cap earlier this month about Florida residents who suddenly found that they had to adjust their streaming habits after Comcast started subjecting them to a 300GB monthly cap.

“It’s no surprise what they are targeting with these caps,” explained Florida-based Comcast subscriber Austin Chilson. “If you watch Netflix or Hulu on a regular basis, 300GB is not enough. Netflix alone is responsible for about 17GB of video usage during the first three days of the month.”

The FCC also recently published a series of complaints about data caps from Comcast customers who similarly said that watching Netflix and downloading PlayStation 4 games from the web was easily enough to blow through their monthly limits.

Comcast, of course, would like us to believe that these caps are all about “fairness” and limiting the negative impact that all those greedy data hogs are having on its network, which apparently is as fragile as a tulip on a chilly winter’s eve. In reality, of course, this is all about trying to mitigate the effects that cord cutting is having on Comcast’s traditional pay TV business.

Comcast tells the AP that roughly 8% of its customers go over 300GB per month but you can definitely expect that number to increase the more people rely on streaming services for television. And once more people start buying 4K TVs and watching Netflix streams in 4K, then 300GB per month will seem like absolutely nothing.

It’s not just cord cutters that will increasingly feel the pinch but gamers as well. Consider that the digital download of Grand Theft Auto V weighs in at just under 49GB, which means that downloading just one game can blow through 16% of your monthly cap.

So it’s not entirely accurate to say that Comcast’s data caps are just low enough to punish streaming because they’re also low enough to hinder advances in online commerce such as digital game downloads as well. That may be Comcastic news for at least one company but the rest of us shouldn’t be happy about it.
https://bgr.com/2015/10/28/why-is-comcast-so-bad-57/





T-Mobile's Next Big Trick: Unlimited Streaming for Netflix, HBO
Karl Bode

Rumors indicate that T-Mobile's upcoming "Uncarrier 10" event is going to be focused on one big, major trick: letting T-Mobile users stream Netflix and HBO content as much as they'd like, without eroding their usage caps. That's at least the claim being made by reporter Evan Blass (aka @EVLeaks), who insists T-Mobile will soon make large video services cap exempt. The idea falls on the heels of T-Mobile's Music Freedom service, which similarly lets users use major streaming services without it counting against their caps.

As such, you can expect T-Mobile's November 10 press announcement to call this service "Video Freedom" or something similar.

The idea hasn't been without controversy. Net neutrality critics call this practice "zero rating," and argue that by letting the biggest, most popular services be exempt from usage caps, you've immediately put less popular services, independents, and non-profits at a notable disadvantage.

So while on the surface the idea looks great because you're getting some services without eroding your allotment, it actually supports a tilted playing field where smaller companies and services find it harder than ever to compete. That's in pretty stark contrast to the very nature of the Internet, where bits are bits and any service has an equal shot at being successful.

Despite playing a character that's decidedly hip on TV, T-Mobile CEO John Legere has been decidedly less cool when it comes to net neutrality. Legere found himself "genuinely surprised" regarding the criticism surrounding the zero rating of some, select apps. His company also opposed the FCC's reclassification of ISPs under Title II in order to impose tougher net neutrality rules, claiming protecting consumers would "kill innovation" and competition.

Similarly, most consumers can't see past the "free stuff" part of the conversation to realize the negative precedent set by giving some services cap-exempt status, so it seems pretty obvious we're going to wander down the zero rating rabbit hole, oblivious and applauding all the way.
https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/...lix-HBO-135511





Title II Kills Investment? Comcast and Other ISPs are Now Spending More

ISP earnings reports contradict Republican claims of reduced investment.
Jon Brodkin

Net neutrality rules and Title II common carrier regulation were supposed to derail investment in the broadband industry. The Federal Communications Commission's new rules took effect in June despite the protest of Internet service providers and Republicans in Congress, who are still fighting the new regime in courts of law and public opinion.

Republicans held a hearing just two days ago to discuss how common carrier regulation will inevitably cause investment to decline, while some net neutrality opponents argue that the rules have already caused a drop in investment.

But in the quarter ending September 30, a three-month period that occurred entirely after the FCC's rules took effect, Comcast's latest earnings report says that its "capital expenditures increased 11.0 percent to $2.2 billion" over the same period the previous year.

Although the rules took effect in June, they were voted on in February. It was clear that change was coming back in November 2014 when President Obama urged the FCC to apply common carrier rules to ISPs. If the rules destroyed the case for network investment, ISPs had this entire year to prepare before they were finalized.

Yet in the nine months ending September 30, Comcast said its "capital expenditures increased 12.8 percent to $5.9 billion compared to the prior year." The Q3 increases are primarily due to "increased spending on customer premise equipment related to the deployment of the X1 platform and wireless gateways and our ongoing investment to expand business services," Comcast said.

Comcast is also dramatically upgrading Internet speeds with a new 2Gbps fiber service and gigabit cable service.

It's probably too early to say for sure whether investment will be harmed or helped by net neutrality. But Comcast's spending isn't the only evidence suggesting that there haven't been immediate ill effects.

Time Warner Cable, the nation's second biggest cable company after Comcast, reported today that its capital expenditures increased to $3.5 billion in the first nine months of 2015 due to efforts "to improve network reliability, upgrade older customer premise equipment and expand its network to additional residences, commercial buildings and cell towers."

TWC capital expenses remained steady at $1.1 billion in the third quarter, about the same as the previous year. But the nine-month total of $3.5 billion was up from $3.18 billion the prior year, an increase of 10.1 percent.

Wireless investment up at Verizon; T-Mobile continues LTE upgrades

The FCC's order reclassified both fixed and mobile broadband providers as common carriers while imposing bans on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

The new classification hasn't slowed mobile investment at Verizon, which is preparing for an upgrade to 5G and reported that its wireless capital investment is "$8.5 billion year to date, up 8.4 percent from a year ago." The increase was even more striking when comparing Q3 2014 to Q3 2015, with wireless capital spending going up 17.6 percent from $2.48 billion to $2.92 billion.

Verizon said it also "invested approximately $22 billion in spectrum licenses and capital for future network capacity" over the past nine months.

Capital investment isn't increasing throughout the industry, but even in cases of flat spending, there doesn't seem to be a clear link to net neutrality.

T-Mobile US said its Q3 capital expenditures "were $1.1 billion, down from $1.2 billion in the second quarter of 2015 and flat compared to $1.1 billion in the third quarter of 2014." But T-Mobile is still in building mode, boasting that it will cover 300 million Americans with LTE by year-end. T-Mobile also says it has more money than it needs to buy spectrum at a major auction next year.

Although Verizon's wireless spending is up, its wireline capital expenditures dropped from $1.46 billion in last year's third quarter to $1.2 billion in this year's third quarter. Wireline capital spending was $3.41 billion in the last nine months, down from $4.19 billion in the same period the previous year. However, this is a continuation of trends that pre-dated Obama's call for stronger broadband rules. Verizon decided to start winding down its copper-to-fiber upgrades more than five years ago.

AT&T's capital expenditures were $5.3 billion in the third quarter, up from $5.2 billion year-over-year. AT&T's capital expenses of $13.9 billion in the first nine months of the year were down from $17 billion the previous year.

But AT&T already decided to reduce investment before Obama's call for heavier regulation, because it had largely completed a two-year, $14 billion upgrade of its wireless and wireline networks known as Project Velocity IP. Months before the FCC's net neutrality decision, AT&T was already saying it planned to bring capital spending as a percent of total revenues back down to its historical capital spending levels.

Even so, AT&T has been expanding its gigabit fiber service this year and had enough money to complete a $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV. AT&T had claimed during the net neutrality debate that it had "paused consideration of any [additional] fiber investments" because of Obama's proposal.

Sprint, which has been struggling, is scheduled to report its latest quarterly results on Tuesday.
Republicans still predict investment declines

While net neutrality opponents warned of potential losses in investment in the months ahead of the FCC's vote, companies including Sprint and Verizon occasionally went off script, admitting that the rules wouldn't really harm investment.

ISPs are suing to overturn the rules, and the House Communications and Technology subcommittee held a hearing Tuesday on the supposed negative impacts on investment. Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) claimed that because of the FCC's rules, there is now "less incentive for any company to invest in new and innovative service offerings."

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) predicted that the expanded regulation will cause "depressed investment, fewer jobs, [and] reduced innovation."

The committee invited a few opponents of the FCC's rules to testify, but it also allowed NYU Business Professor Nicholas Economides to make the opposing case. Economides said that "economic models give mixed results on the impact of a network neutrality regulation on the incentive of ISPs to invest more," with some results suggesting that ISPs will invest less and others suggesting that ISPs would invest more.

"Therefore one cannot claim that network neutrality should result in lower investment by ISPs," he said. "It is equally possible that network neutrality will prompt ISPs to invest more."

Economic policy consultant Robert Shapiro, founder of Sonecon, called the FCC's common carrier regulation "a solution in search of a problem." He also said ISPs will face costs complying with the new rules. While Shapiro argued that the FCC decision will likely "negatively affect ISP investment," he acknowledged that this isn't certain yet.

Regulation generally reduces investment, he said, but "in assessing whether that would happen in this case, however, we cannot proceed directly, because it hasn’t happened yet."
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...et-neutrality/





With Another Major Expansion, Google Fiber's Looking Less Like An Adorable Experiment And More Like A Disruptive Broadband Revolution
Karl Bode

When Google Fiber first launched in 2012, many analysts (myself included) believed that while cool, Google Fiber was little more than a clever PR experiment. Having cities throw themselves at Google for $70, gigabit connections created wonderful PR fodder in papers nationwide, in the process drawing attention to the lack of broadband competition and spurring incumbent ISPs to action. But Google was never going to really follow through on the promise of better competition, and would probably get bored in a few years. After all, it would cost way too much to actually deliver competition on any scale, right?

But as the list of looming Google Fiber markets grows, Google Fiber is looking less like an unserious experiment and more like a wholesale telecom revolution, albeit one that's taking its time. Sure, Google Fiber is only available in portions of Provo, Austin and Kansas City now -- but the company's currently building networks in some major urban sprawl-scapes including Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Nashville, Atlanta, Raligh/Durham, and Charlotte. The company also recently unveiled (or is rumored to soon announce) expansions into Portland, San Diego, Irvine, Phoenix, San Jose, and Louisville.

This week, Google said it's also working with Oklahoma City, Jacksonville and Tampa to pave the way for gigabit speeds sometime in the next few years. And whereas many incumbent ISPs and sector analysts used to laugh off Google Fiber as an empty threat (one called it "over-hyped like Ebola"), lately they've been changing their tune. A recent study by Bernstein Research noted that while Google Fiber only currently has an estimated 100,000 or so subscribers, it has real potential to be a concrete, disruptive force over the next five to ten years:

(Incumbent ISPs) should not get “too complacent” in the face of those figures, (since) Google Fiber could nab between 40% to 50% market share in its areas, which could have a deeper impact if Google does decide to expand aggressively...Kirjner also speculated a scenario in which Google Fiber could deploy to 15 million to 20 million homes within six to eight years, which would represent a “non-trivial commitment” that is “far from impossible” considering Google’s means...Those results, the analyst said, “reinforce our view that Google Fiber could generate attractive ROIs, that incumbents stand to lose significant market share where Fiber is deployed, and that Google’s continued expansion of Fiber…is a non-trivial possibility."

In other words, in the eyes of many Google Fiber has gone from over-hyped paper tiger to a major, sustained threat to the incumbent duopoly logjam. And while Google could still very easily get bored and sell the entire project to a cadre of incompetents, the project's jump from hobby to the major leagues is good news for anybody interested in an affordable, ultra-fast connection unsaddled by usage caps or obnoxious below the line fees. Between Google Fiber, municipal broadband, and ad hoc deployments by unlikely contributors like Dan Gilbert and Tucows' Ting, we're witnessing individuals and organizations tired of the lazy broadband incumbency actually reclaiming the country's broadband future tooth and nail, one street at a time.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...volution.shtml





Russian Ships Near Data Cables Are Too Close for U.S. Comfort
David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt

Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

The issue goes beyond old worries during the Cold War that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.

While there is no evidence yet of any cable cutting, the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior American and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by Russian armed forces around the globe. At the same time, the internal debate in Washington illustrates how the United States is increasingly viewing every Russian move through a lens of deep distrust, reminiscent of relations during the Cold War.

Inside the Pentagon and the nation’s spy agencies, the assessments of Russia’s growing naval activities are highly classified and not publicly discussed in detail. American officials are secretive about what they are doing both to monitor the activity and to find ways to recover quickly if cables are cut. But more than a dozen officials confirmed in broad terms that it had become the source of significant attention in the Pentagon.

“I’m worried every day about what the Russians may be doing,” said Rear Adm. Frederick J. Roegge, commander of the Navy’s submarine fleet in the Pacific, who would not answer questions about possible Russian plans for cutting the undersea cables.

Cmdr. William Marks, a Navy spokesman in Washington, said: “It would be a concern to hear any country was tampering with communication cables; however, due to the classified nature of submarine operations, we do not discuss specifics.”

In private, however, commanders and intelligence officials are far more direct. They report that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables, which carry the lifeblood of global electronic communications and commerce.

Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay. It was monitored constantly by American spy satellites, ships and planes. Navy officials said the Yantar and the submersible vehicles it can drop off its decks have the capability to cut cables miles down in the sea.

“The level of activity,” a senior European diplomat said, “is comparable to what we saw in the Cold War.”

One NATO ally, Norway, is so concerned that it has asked its neighbors for aid in tracking Russian submarines.

Adm. James Stavridis, formerly NATO’s top military commander and now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said in an email last week that “this is yet another example of a highly assertive and aggressive regime seemingly reaching backwards for the tools of the Cold War, albeit with a high degree of technical improvement.”

The operations are consistent with Russia’s expanding military operations into places like Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria, where President Vladimir V. Putin has sought to demonstrate a much longer reach for Russian ground, air and naval forces.

“The risk here is that any country could cause damage to the system and do it in a way that is completely covert, without having a warship with a cable-cutting equipment right in the area,” said Michael Sechrist, a former project manager for a Harvard-M.I.T. research project funded in part by the Defense Department.

“Cables get cut all the time — by anchors that are dragged, by natural disasters,” said Mr. Sechrist, who published a study in 2012 of the vulnerabilities of the undersea cable network. But most of those cuts take place within a few miles from shore, and can be repaired in a matter of days.

What worries Pentagon planners most is that the Russians appear to be looking for vulnerabilities at much greater depths, where the cables are hard to monitor and breaks are hard to find and repair.

Mr. Sechrist noted that the locations of the cables are hardly secret. “Undersea cables tend to follow the similar path since they were laid in the 1860s,” he said, because the operators of the cables want to put them in familiar environments under longstanding agreements.

The exceptions are special cables, with secret locations, that have been commissioned by the United States for military operations; they do not show up on widely available maps, and it is possible the Russians are hunting for those, officials said.

The role of the cables is more important than ever before. They carry global business worth more than $10 trillion a day, including from financial institutions that settle transactions on them every second. Any significant disruption would cut the flow of capital. The cables also carry more than 95 percent of daily communications.

So important are undersea cables that the Department of Homeland Security lists their landing areas — mostly around New York, Miami and Los Angeles — at the top of its list of “critical infrastructure.”

Attention to underwater cables is not new. In October 1971, the American submarine Halibut entered the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan, found a telecommunications cable used by Soviet nuclear forces, and succeeded in tapping its secrets. The mission, code-named Ivy Bells, was so secret that a vast majority of the submarine’s sailors had no idea what they had accomplished. The success led to a concealed world of cable tapping.

And a decade ago, the United States Navy launched the submarine Jimmy Carter, which intelligence analysts say is able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on communications flowing through them.

Submarines are not the only vessels that are snooping on the undersea cables. American officials closely monitor the Yantar, which Russian officials insist is an oceanographic ship with no ties to espionage.

“The Yantar is equipped with a unique onboard scientific research complex which enables it to collect data on the ocean environment, both in motion and on hold. There are no similar complexes anywhere,” said Alexei Burilichev, the head of the deepwater research department at the Russian Defense Ministry, according to sputniknews.com in May 2015.

American concern over cable cutting is just one aspect of Russia’s modernizing Navy that has drawn new scrutiny.

Adm. Mark Ferguson, commander of American naval forces in Europe, speaking in Washington this month said that the proficiency and operational tempo of the Russian submarine force was increasing.

Citing public remarks by the Russian Navy chief, Adm. Viktor Chirkov, Admiral Ferguson said the intensity of Russian submarine patrols had risen by almost 50 percent over the last year. Russia has increased its operating tempo to levels not seen in over a decade. Russian Arctic bases and their $2.4 billion investment in the Black Sea Fleet expansion by 2020 demonstrate their commitment to develop their military infrastructure on the flanks, he said.

Russia is also building an undersea unmanned drone capable of carrying a small, tactical nuclear weapon to use against harbors or coastal areas, American military and intelligence analysts said.

Admiral Ferguson said that as part of Russia’s emerging doctrine of so-called hybrid warfare, it is increasingly using a mix of conventional force, Special Operations mission and new weapons in the 21st-century battlefield.

“This involves the use of space, cyber, information warfare and hybrid warfare designed to cripple the decision-making cycle of the alliance,” Admiral Ferguson said, referring to NATO. “At sea, their focus is disrupting decision cycles.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/wo...ncerns-us.html





ISPs Fail on Privacy Scorecard
Tara Seals

Digital rights group Fight for the Future has launched a “Corporate Scorecard” that grades more than 30 of the world’s largest technology companies based on their public positions on key US policy questions affecting Internet users’ privacy and security.

For instance, according to its tally so far, 23 major tech companies oppose Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), while 12 support it or are silent. Those that oppose CISA include Google, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Yahoo, Yelp, Netflix, Amazon, Ebay, Wikipedia and Dropbox.

The scorecard divides companies into two groups reflective of the group’s pro-privacy stance: “Team Internet” and “Team NSA,” based on their stated positions. It grades companies on three current policy questions: Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) reform, support or opposition for government backdoors in encryption, and CISA, which just hit the Senate floor this week.

ISPs including Comcast, Verizon and AT&T received among the worst scores, along with companies like Xerox, Priceline, and Expedia. IBM, LinkedIn, HP and Intel also fared badly, primarily due to their support for or silence on CISA.

CISA would open up an information exchange between the public and the private sectors: government would give companies classified information about potential threats, but the bill also incentivizes companies to funnel information to local law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, which must share the information with the National Security Agency "in real time." Privacy-focused organizations have accordingly been concerned.

“People trust these companies with a staggering amount of personal information, and we need ways to hold them accountable to ensure they keep our data safe from both attackers and the government,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future. “It’s not enough for companies to employ basic security practices, they need to be actively fighting for their users’ basic rights when key policy questions come up. Politicians constantly claim the support of the tech industry when attempting to undermine our privacy, so these companies have a responsibility to fight back.”

To be included on “Team Internet” a company must receive a “star” on all three issues. The scorecard only considered public statements made by companies in official blog posts, tweets, to the media or via their industry associations. Remaining silent on essential policy questions that affect a company’s users was also counted against that company’s score. Companies that took a particularly strong stand (issuing their own statement rather than through an industry association) received a special seal denoting that they went above and beyond.
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com...acy-scorecard/





Apple Unlock: Judge Compares Request to Execution Order
BBC

Ordering Apple to access data against its will would be akin to making a reluctant drug company carry out a lethal injection, a US judge has said.

Judge James Orenstein was hearing a US government request to make it retrieve information from a locked iPhone seized by law enforcement officers.

On Monday, the judge expressed doubt that he had the authority to do so.

Apple has agreed to similar requests previously but is now refusing, saying it would erode customers' trust.

'Inflammatory'

Referring to the US Department of Justice's request for him to order Apple to help it unlock the phone, the judge said: "What you're asking [Apple] to do is do work for you."

And he compared the request to a hypothetical one in which the government was asking him to order a drug company to take part in an execution against its conscientious objection.

He asked the department's lawyer, Saritha Komatireddy, whether or not he would have the legal authority to do so.

Ms Komatireddy asked to respond in writing, adding that the hypothetical was "somewhat inflammatory".

"Purposefully so," the judge responded.

'Burdensome'

Apple has argued that the order the government is seeking would be burdensome, in part because of the erosion of its customers' trust.

The company also said it lacked the technical ability to unlock phones running its newer operating systems, iOS8 and iOS9, though the phone at issue in the case runs an older system.

Ms Komatireddy questioned whether unlocking the phone would really be a burden for Apple, noting the company "has been doing this for years without any objection".

The judge pressed Apple's lawyer, Marc Zwillinger, to explain the company's change of heart.

Mr Zwillinger said the company had become more concerned about customer data in light of recent high-profile data breaches.

"Right now, Apple is aware that customer data is under siege from a variety of different directions," he said.

The judge asked both sides to submit additional letters addressing his questions to the court by Wednesday and said he would rule as soon as he could.

Ms Komatireddy said at the hearing that the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI were taking part in the underlying investigation, which is not public.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34647704





Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal: 10 Years Later

Object lessons from infamous 2005 Sony BMG rootkit security/privacy incident are many -- and Sony's still paying a price for its ham-handed DRM overreach today.
Bob Brown

Hackers really have had their way with Sony over the past year, taking down its Playstation Network last Christmas Day and creating an international incident by exposing confidential data from Sony Pictures Entertainment in response to The Interview comedy about a planned assassination on North Korea’s leader. Some say all this is karmic payback for what’s become known as a seminal moment in malware history: Sony BMG sneaking rootkits into music CDs 10 years ago in the name of digital rights management.

“In a sense, it was the first thing Sony did that made hackers love to hate them,” says Bruce Schneier, CTO for incident response platform provider Resilient Systems in Cambridge, Mass.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure, the Helsinki-based security company that was an early critic of Sony’s actions, adds:

“Because of stunts like the music rootkit and suing Playstation jailbreakers and emulator makers, Sony is an easy company to hate for many. I guess one lesson here is that you really don't want to make yourself a target.

“When protecting its own data, copyrights, money, margins and power, Sony does a great job. Customer data? Not so great,” says Hypponen, whose company tried to get Sony BMG to address the rootkit problem before word of the invasive software went public. “So, better safe than Sony.”

SONY BMG ROOTKIT REVISITED

The Sony BMG scandal unfolded in late 2005 after the company (now Sony Music Entertainment) secretly installed Extended Copy Protection (XCP) and MediaMax CD-3 software on millions of music discs to keep buyers from burning copies of the CDs via their computers and to inform Sony BMG about what these customers were up to. The software, which proved undetectable by anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, opened the door for other malware to infiltrate Windows PCs unseen as well. (As if the buyers of CDs featuring music from the likes of Celine Dion and Ricky Martin weren’t already being punished enough.)

The Sony rootkit became something of a cultural phenomenon. It wound up as a punch line in comic strips like Fox Trot, it became a custom T-shirt logo and even was the subject of class skits shared on YouTube. Mac fanboys and fangirls smirked on the sidelines.

“In a sense, [the rootkit] was the first thing Sony did that made hackers love to hate them,” says Bruce Schneier, Resilient Systems CTO.

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky estimated that the Sony rootkit made its mark on hundreds of thousands of networks in dozens of countries – so this wasn’t just a consumer issue, but an enterprise network one as well.

Once Winternals security researcher Mark Russinovich -- who has risen to CTO for Microsoft Azure after Microsoft snapped up Winternals in 2006 -- exposed the rootkit on Halloween of 2005, all hell broke loose.

Sony BMG botched its initial response: "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?" went the infamous quote from Thomas Hesse, then president of Sony BMG's Global Digital Business. The company recalled products, issued and re-issued rootkit removal tools, and settled lawsuits with a number of states, the Federal Trade Commission and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Microsoft and security vendors were also chastised for their relative silence and slow response regarding the rootkit and malware threat. In later years, debate emerged over how the term “rootkit” should be defined, and whether intent to maliciously seize control of a user’s system should be at the heart of it.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

In looking back at the incident now, the question arises about how such a privacy and security affront would be handled these days by everyone from the government to customers to vendors.

“In theory, the Federal Trade Commission would have more authority to go after [Sony BMG] since the FTC’s use of its section 5 power has been upheld by the courts,” says Scott Bradner, University Technology Security Officer at Harvard. “The FTC could easily see the installation of an undisclosed rootlet as fitting its definition of unfair competitive practices.”

Bill Bonney, principal consulting analyst with new research and consulting firm TechVision Research, says he can’t speak to how the law might protect consumers from a modern day Sony BMG rootkit, but “with the backlash we have seen for all types of non-transparent ways (spying, exploiting, etc.) companies are dealing with their customers, I think in the court of public opinion the response could be pretty substantial and, as happened recently with the EU acting (theoretically) because of [the NSA’s PRISM program], if the issue is egregious enough there could be legal or regulatory consequences. “

Do you trust Sony?

As for how customers might react today, we’ve all seen how quickly people turn to social media to take companies to task for any product or service shortcoming or any business shenanigans. Look no further than Lenovo, which earlier this year got a strong dose of negative customer reaction when it admittedly screwed up by pre-loading Superfish crapware onto laptops. That software injected product recommendations into search results and opened a serious security hole by interfering with SSL-encrypted Web traffic.

In terms of how security vendors now fare at spotting malware or other unsavory software, Schneier says “There’s always been that tension, even now with stuff the NSA and FBI does, about how this stuff is classified. I think [the vendors] are getting better, but they’re still not perfect… It’s hard to know what they still let by.”

Noted tech activist Cory Doctorow, writing for Boing Boing earlier this month, explains that some vendors had their reasons for not exposing the Sony rootkit right away. “Russinovich was not the first researcher to discover the Sony Rootkit, just the first researcher to blow the whistle on it. The other researchers were advised by their lawyers that any report on the rootkit would violate section 1201 of the DMCA, a 1998 law that prohibits removing ‘copyright protection’ software. The gap between discovery and reporting gave the infection a long time to spread.”

Reasons for hope though include recent revelations by the likes of Malwarebytes, which warned users that a malicious variety of adware dubbed eFast was hijacking the Chrome browser and replacing it, by becoming the default browser associated with common file types like jpeg and html.

Schneier says it’s important that some of the more prominent security and anti-virus companies -- from Kaspersky in Russia to F-Secure in Finland to Symantec in the United States to Panda Security in Spain -- are spread across the globe given that shady software practices such as the spread of rootkits are now often the work of governments.

“You have enough government diversity that if you have one company deliberately not finding something, then others will,” says Schneier, who wrote eloquently about the Sony BMG affair for Wired.com back in 2005.

LESSONS LEARNED – OR NOT -- FROM SONY ROOTKIT

The non-profit Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has been calling attention to the Sony BMG rootkit’s 10th anniversary, urging the masses to “Make some noise and write about this fiasco” involving DRM. The FSFE, seeing DRM as an anti-competitive practice, refers to the words behind the acronym as digital restriction management rather than the more common digital rights management.

In a blog post on FSFE’s website, the group states: “Despite the fallout of Sony's rootkit experiment, 10 years later restrictions on users' personal property are more prevalent than ever. Restrictions are commonly found in legitimately purchased ebooks, video game hardware, and all manner of proprietary software. It has even found ways into our cars and coffee machines.”

Even worse, as the recent scandal involving VW’s emissions test circumvention software shows, is that businesses are still using secret software to their advantage without necessarily caring about the broader implications.

The object lessons from the Sony BMG scandal are many, and might be of interest to those arguing to build encryption backdoors into products for legitimate purposes but that might be turned into exploitable vulnerabilities.

One basic lesson is that you shouldn’t mimic the bad behavior that you’re ostensibly standing against, as Sony BMG did “in at least appearing to violate the licensing terms of the PC manufacturers” TechVision’s Bonney says.

And yes, there is a warning from the Sony BMG episode “not to weaponize your own products. You are inviting a response,” he says.
http://www.networkworld.com/article/...ars-later.html





Copyright Office Rules: Yes, Security Researchers May Hack Cars (And A Couple Other Things) For Science
Kate Cox

Copyright law is surprisingly pervasive. It affects everything from computers to cars (and tractors). The law says you’re not allowed to circumvent DRM on anything for any reason… except for a big pile of things you actually legally can. Those exemptions get re-evaluated every three years, and today the new list is out.

The Copyright Office holds something called a Section 1201 rulemaking procedure every three years. At the end of all the hearings and proceedings, the Register of Copyrights releases a set of recommendations, which it’s technically up to the Librarian of Congress to accept or reject.

The Register did, the Librarian did, and now the full set of exemptions is out [80-page PDF]. In the end, it’s chock-full of recommendations that manage to affect basically everybody.

Things You May Do

• Education: College and university faculty and students, K-12 faculty and students, and libraries and museums continue to be able to circumvent DRM on “motion pictures” (TV and movies) for the purposes of using short sections of media for criticism, comment, and education.
• Cars: An exemption to permit DRM circumvention is made to cars’ computer systems except for telmatics (the “black box”) and entertainment systems “when circumvention is a necessary step undertaken by the authorized owner of the vehicle to allow the diagnosis, repair or lawful modification of a vehicle function.” The exemption explicitly prohibits alterations that would fall afoul of the EPA or DOT. So fixing your brakes if they’re broken: yes. Altering your emissions data: no.
• Device unlocking and jailbreaking: Mobile phone unlocking and jailbreaking continue to be permitted, and the exemptions now extend to other multi-function mobile devices, including tablets and wearables. Jailbreaking exemptions do also now extend to smart-TVs, so long as it’s only to install new software, but they do not extend to single-purpose devices like e-readers.
• Security research: For the purposes of “good faith security research,” researchers may hack cars, voting machines, and medical devices “where such activity is carried out in a controlled environment designed to avoid any harm to individuals or the public.” You can’t hack a medical device that’s being used, but you may take one to a lab and have at it in isolation.
• Video games: Plenty of games require server authentication to work… but over time, those servers keel over or get unplugged. Individuals may break DRM to get their own abandoned, legally purchased games to work locally for their own personal use, and that libraries and museums may do so for educational and archival purposes as well.

Don’t run out hacking your stuff willy-nilly just yet. To let other regulatory agencies have their say about what you may and may not do with your own stuff, most of the new exemptions don’t go into effect for another 12 months. You can take screenshots of DVDs for your film class now because you already could, but you can’t legally do security research on a pacemaker (that isn’t hooked up to anyone) for another year.

Things You May Not Do

• Space- or Format-Shift: Did you buy a bunch of Kindle books and then switch to a Nook? Tough cookies. The Register rejected an exemption for moving your stuff from one locked platform to another locked platform.
• Jailbreak gaming consoles: The only use-case for hacking your PlayStation or Xbox that anyone presented to the Copyright Office was for piracy, so they said no.
• Jailbreak e-readers: Nobody showed up to present a use-case for this one either, so the Register rejected it.

The EFF filed or co-filed many of the petitions requesting the exemptions, and spent months going through the legal processes and hearings to support them. “We’re pleased that the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office have expanded these legal protections to users of newer products like tablets, wearable computers, and Blu-Ray discs,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz said in a statement.

However, despite the victory, EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry pointed out the ridiculousness of the system. “It’s absurd that we have to spend so much time, every three years, filing and defending these petitions to the copyright office,” McSherry said. “Technologists, artists, and fans should not have to get permission from the government—and rely on the contradictory and often nonsensical rulings—before investigating whether their car is lying to them or using their phone however they want. But despite this ridiculous system, we are glad for our victories here, and that basic rights to modify, research, and tinker have been protected.”
http://consumerist.com/2015/10/27/co...s-for-science/





Senate Rejects All CISA Amendments Designed To Protect Privacy, Reiterating That It's A Surveillance Bill
Mike Masnick

In case you weren't already convinced that CISA is a surveillance bill masquerading as a cybersecurity bill, today the Senate rejected four separate amendments to the bill that attempted to better protect the privacy of Americans. Senator Wyden had an amendment to require the removal of personal information before information could be shared, which was voted down 55 to 41. Senator Heller had an amendment that was basically a backstop against the Wyden amendment, saying that if the Wyden amendment didn't pass, Homeland Security would be responsible for removing such personal information. That amendment also failed by a 49 to 47 vote. Senator Leahy had an amendment that would have removed FOIA exemptions in the bill (making it much less transparent how CISA was used). That amendment was voted down 59 to 37. Senator Franken then had an amendment that would have "tightened" the definition of cybersecurity threats, so that the shared information needed to be "reasonably likely" to cause damage, as opposed to the current "may" cause damage. And (you guess it, because you're good at this), it was also voted down by a 60 to 35 vote.

Meanwhile, Marcy Wheeler notes that the revised version of the bill by Senators Burr and Feinstein, which claimed to incorporate greater transparency requirements proposed by Senator Tester, actually takes away a lot of transparency and actually makes it more difficult for Congress to learn whether or not CISA is being used for domestic surveillance:

That Burr and DiFi watered down Tester’s measures so much makes two things clear. First, they don’t want to count some of the things that will be most important to count to see whether corporations and agencies are abusing this bill. They don’t want to count measures that will reveal if this bill does harm.

Most importantly, though, they want to keep this information from Congress. This information would almost certainly not show up to us in unclassified form, it would just be shared with some members of Congress (and on the House side, just be shared with the Intelligence Committee unless someone asks nicely for it).

But Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein want to ensure that Congress doesn’t get that information. Which would suggest they know the information would reveal things Congress might not approve of.


Once again, these kinds of actions really only make sense if CISA is being used to justify warrantless domestic surveillance. Which once again raises the question of why Congress is willing to move forward with such a surveillance bill. We just went through a whole process showing that the public is not comfortable with secret laws and secret interpretations that lead to surveillance. Why would they immediately push for a new secret law that expands surveillance and reject any and all attempts at protecting the privacy of the American public or any sort of transparency and accountability in how the bill is used?

The bill is positioned as a cybersecurity bill, but good luck finding a single computer security expert who actually thinks the bill is either useful or necessary. I've been trying and so far I can't find any.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...nce-bill.shtml

















Until next week,

- js.



















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