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Old 12-12-12, 08:54 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - December 15th, '12

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"If you don't buy records, then you're gonna be stuck with bullshit records, 'cause I ain't gonna keep giving you goddamn free-ass music." – Big Boi



































December 15th, 2012




Supreme Court Asked to Review $222K Landmark File-Sharing Case
David Kravets

Jammie Thomas-Rasset testifies in her first civil trial in 2007, while U.S. District Judge Michael Davis watches from the bench. Illustration: Cate Whittemore/Wired

Infamous file-sharer Jammie Thomas-Rasset asked the Supreme Court on Monday to review a jury’s conclusion that she pay the recording industry $222,000 for downloading and sharing two dozen copyrighted songs on the now-defunct file-sharing service Kazaa.

Thomas-Rasset, the first person to defend herself against a Recording Industry Association of America file-sharing case, said the damages were unconstitutionally excessive and were not rationally related to the harm she caused to the music labels.

“Put more plainly: In a civil case, Thomas–Rasset cannot be punished for the harm inflicted on the recording industry by file sharing in general; while that would no doubt help accomplish the industry’s and Congress’s goal of deterring copyright infringement, singling out and punishing an individual in a civil case to a degree entirely out of proportion with her individual offense is not a constitutional means of achieving that goal,” the petition said.

The Supreme Court has never heard an RIAA file-sharing case and has previously declined the two other file-sharing cases brought before it.

Thomas-Rasset’s case concerns an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in September that upheld a jury’s award against Thomas-Rasset.

The case dates back to 2007, and has a tortuous history involving a mistrial and three separate verdicts for the same offense — $222,000, $1.92 million and $1.5 million. Under the case’s latest iteration, a jury last year awarded the RIAA the $1.5 million, which the court reduced to $54,000, ruling that the jury’s award for “stealing 24 songs for personal use is appalling.”

The convoluted decision of the appeals court in September, however, found that the original $222,000 verdict from the first case should stand, and that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis of Minnesota should not have declared a mistrial in the first trial over a flawed jury instruction.

In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Thomas-Rasset argues that the Copyright Act, which allows damages of up to $150,000 per infringement, is unconstitutionally excessive. But the Obama administration, which weighed in on the case when it was in the appellate courts, said the large damages award was allowed because it “is reasonably related to furthering the public interest in protecting original works of artistic literary, and musical expression.”

The only other file-sharer to challenge an RIAA lawsuit at trial was Joel Tenenbaum, a Massachusetts college student, whose case followed Thomas-Rasset’s. The Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear his case in May, however, letting stand a Boston federal jury’s award of $675,000 against him for sharing 30 songs.

In the third RIAA file-sharing case against an individual to go before the Supreme Court’s justices, the high court declined to review a petition that would have tested the so-called “innocent infringer” defense to copyright infringement.

Generally, an innocent infringer is someone who does not know she or he is committing copyright infringement. Such downloaders get a $200 innocent-infringer fine.

Most of the thousands of RIAA file-sharing cases against individuals have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars. In 2008, the RIAA ceased a five-year campaign it had launched to sue individual file sharers and, with the Motion Picture Association of America, has since convinced internet service providers to begin taking punitive action against copyright scofflaws, including possibly terminating their service.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...s-rasset-riaa/





UK Record Industry Seeks to Financially Ruin Leaders of the Pirate Party
Cory Doctorow

Ever since the UK record labels got a court to order our national ISPs to censor The Pirate Bay, the UK Pirate Party has been offering a proxy that allows Britons to connect to the site and all the material it offers, both infringing and non-infringing.

The record industry has finally struck back. Rather than seeking an injunction against the proxy, or suing the party, it has individually sued the party's executives, seeking to personally bankrupt them and their families. It's an underhanded, unethical, and unprecedented threat to democracy -- essentially a bid to use their financial and legal might to destroy a political party itself.

There's a fundraiser, and I've given more than I can afford to it -- £500 -- because this is plain, old fashioned, corporate bullying. I don't always agree with everything the Pirate Parties do, and I'm not a member of the UKPP, but I'm glad the Pirate Party exists, and I believe that hosting a proxy to the Pirate Bay was a political act, and that the record industry has gone after the personal lives of the executive in order to terrorise people who organise against them. They mustn't be allowed to do this.

Instead of targeting just the Pirate Party, the BPI’s solicitors are now threatening legal action against six individual members. Aside from its leader Loz Kaye, the BPI also sent threats to four other members of the National Executive and the party’s head of IT.

“We had been anticipating legal action ever since I received an email from Geoff Taylor of the BPI. What has taken me aback is that this threat is personally directed. I simply can not see what the music industry think can be positively gained by threatening to bankrupt me and other party officers,” Kaye says.

Making the site’s members personally liable is the ultimate pressure, as they then have all their personal belongings – including their family homes – on the line. Kaye is disappointed with the BPI’s move, not least because the music industry group refused to negotiate the issue.

“Throughout, the party and I have been open to dialogue. Contrary to reports I offered to meet Geoff Taylor for discussion, but this has been rebuffed, at this point we are talking with our legal advisers and will respond to the solicitors in due course. The Pirate Party’s political position remains this – site blocking is disproportionate and ineffective.”

http://boingboing.net/2012/12/15/uk-...eks-to-fi.html





Reading Room at the New York Public Library

The Pirate Bay is the world’s most efficient public library
Zacqary Adam Green

The way media piracy works is that one person or group purchases a work, and then shares it with millions of other people. This supposedly deprives the author or artist of those millions of people’s money. One group has acquired over 50 million media items, and makes each of them available to approximately 20 million people — which must be a tremendous hit to creative professionals’ wallets. This notorious institution is called the New York Public Library.

It begs the question why every author, filmmaker, and musician isn’t up in arms about the New York Public Library’s rampant sharing, while there’s a ton of opposition to the sharing habits of BitTorrent peers who use The Pirate Bay. After all, The Pirate Bay’s community shares significantly less than the New York Public Library: just 1 million items in 2008 (and the collection certainly hasn’t grown 5000% since then). The reason that The Pirate Bay is offensive, and the New York Public Library is not, is because of its efficiency.

Before the New York Public Library can share an item with you, you first need to schlep all the way to 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. Then you have to walk around the massive building to find what you’re looking for. That is, if the item isn’t checked out. See, the New York Public Library has a peculiar system of storing their items: in finite, physical form. If you want to read a book or watch a film, there are only a few copies available. You can take an item home for a limited time (which forces other people to wait until you return it), but only if you live in New York State.

The Pirate Bay, on the other hand, requires you to type in a search term, click on a download button, and wait a little while. There’s no scarcity, no residency requirement, and you can do it from anywhere with Internet access. Significantly more efficient.

Either way, whether you read a library book or a torrented e-book, you no longer have to give the publisher any money. This has historically been okay, because in spite of everything, libraries haven’t killed publishing.

Physical public libraries — like the New York Public Library — are universally thought of as good for society. They provide free, open access to knowledge, culture, education, and even just entertainment to millions of people around the world. Anyone who demonizes the mission of these libraries is usually regarded as a wingnut, and not taken seriously. But it’s fairly mainstream to rail against filesharing sites like The Pirate Bay, Tuebl, and Take.fm. All these sites are doing is the same thing as brick-and-mortar libraries, but more effectively.

This is a comparison that really ought to have been pushed back when Napster was on the evening news. Filesharing sites and services are the most radically efficient public libraries that humanity has ever created. Never before has anything been better at giving the public open access to culture and knowledge. Mission accomplished. Why is this suddenly a bad thing?

If free and open access to all of human knowledge at the push of a button truly prevents our society’s beloved artists, authors, thinkers, and other creative people from putting food on their tables, then maybe it’s time to rethink how to put food on their tables.
http://falkvinge.net/2012/12/07/the-...ublic-library/





Punk Legend Shares Insight on File-Sharing
Nicole Gerspacher

Global music piracy loses the United States economy $12.5 billion every year.

That totals 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings lost and $422 million in federal tax revenues lost, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation.

Dead Kennedys guitarist and punk legend East Bay Ray visited Chico State Thursday to address what he considers to be misuse of music.

Anita Rivas, a music industry lawyer and Chico State’s record label and production program adviser, joined East Bay Ray and discussed, in talk-show fashion, the harmful effects of piracy and the influence “big tech” has on the music industry.

Big tech companies like Google, Pandora and MTV exploit and oppress musicians and their work, East Bay Ray said.

In 1985, the Dead Kennedys sang a song called “MTV — Get Off the Air,” and that sentiment hasn’t changed for East Bay Ray.

Big tech and recording artists are the equivalent of pimps and prostitutes, he said.

“Pimps are not cool, especially when they don’t pay their hookers,” East Bay Ray said, receiving applause and laughter from the audience.

There is a distinction between sharing a couple copies of a CD with friends or family and mass-producing someone’s content for the general public to earn money from others’ work, he said.

“The difference is that we do all the work and they get all the money,” East Bay Ray said.

There has been a 45 percent decrease in the number of independent musicians since 2002, he said.

The people who really have to worry about the piracy problem are future generations of creators, he said.

His warning resonated with Hugh Hammond, a senior music composition and recording arts major.

“It’s confusing. You want to get your music to people, but you don’t know how to do it so that it is fair to everyone,” he said. “I hope that we will all be able to figure it out.”

Big tech companies are able to control much of the music industry by gathering content, putting it on their websites and getting paid advertisements, East Bay Ray said. If caught, companies sometimes claim to be responsible hosts under the 1998 amendments to the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act. After promises of removing content and blaming users, the companies cash their checks from ads placed on the pages.

The amendments to the act protect the hosting websites from being sued for copyrighted material if a customer puts the material up, rather than the host.

Big tech companies are looking to make all the creative content free and to almost eliminate the copyright law all together, East Bay Ray said.

Google is the biggest offender of big tech exploitation, he said.

Rivas also blames the Internet giant.

“Google likes to pretend like they are our friends,” she said.

East Bay Ray considers Spotify, a music streaming application from Sweden, to be corrupt.

Lina Falk, a Swedish foreign exchange student involved with KCSC radio and SOTA Productions on campus, disagrees with East Bay Ray, and supports Spotify and what the program has to offer.

“How we view Spotify and how it is used in Sweden is that people really pay for the service,” Falk said.

The music industry can cut its losses to piracy by creating and offering a variety of music services online, she said.

“The situation is what it is, and you cannot just rewind it,” Falk said.

At the close of the night, Rivas and the punk musician received a standing ovation from the audience before East Bay Ray answered follow-up questions, posed for pictures and signed autographs for fans.
http://theorion.com/features/article...9bb30f31a.html





Big Boi: Music Piracy Produces 'Bullsh-t' Records

To hear Big Boi tell it, music these days is a beautiful thing — but it's also a transaction.
Todd Olmstead

At the core of our talk, in advance of the release of his second solo album, Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors, is the idea that first and foremost Big Boi loves music. But he also treats it like a business. At this point in his career, he doesn't need to make albums if people aren't buying them. Just don't come complaining to him when there's no more good music.

"If you don't buy records, then you're gonna be stuck with bullshit records, 'cause I ain't gonna keep giving you goddamn free-ass music," he says about piracy concerns.

It sounds like tough love, but you can tell he's (mostly) messing with you. Once he lists off all the different artists he's into, spanning decades and genres, you know that "bullshit records" mostly refers to records that aren't his. While he's clearly done some thinking about the issue, Big Boi isn't sweating it. "Some things you just can't control. The economy is fucked up, and some people don't have $9.99 or $13.99 to get a record. But hopefully they'll do the right thing."

Of course, while piracy has meant controversy for the music industry, there's also the other side: We live in an era of unrivaled access to basically any music one could ever want.

For the new record, that means Big Boi (real name: Antwan André Patton) worked with some unlikely guests, a trend you can expect to continue.

It's no surprise that fellow Atlanta artists Ludacris and T.I. show up on "In The A," but the album also features indie bands like Little Dragon, Phantogram and Wavves — a reflection of the web's connecting influence on broader groups of people. With Phantogram, for example, the musical relationship was born through social media.

"I actually got introduced to their music through a pop-up video ad, like, you know when you're closing the screens out on the computer?" he says. "The ad pops up and it was a Phantogram song, 'Mouthful of Diamonds.' I actually Shazam'd it. On my bigboi.com website I made it my jam of the week, and then Sarah [Barthel] from Phantogram contacted me on Twitter. This is the beauty of social networking."

From there, the two crossed paths while performing at Outside Lands in San Francisco. They spent seven days in Atlanta recording, a process that appears to have been fruitful. "There's songs that we've done that y'all ain't even heard yet. I'm 10 songs into my new record."

When asked to rattle off some artists he's discovered or been into lately, he opens an app and begins to list: Ornette, Sting, Norah Jones, Metallica, TV on the Radio, James Brown. He picks up steam: Billy Idol, SBTRKT, Nirvana, Bob Marley, Cypress Hill, Royksopp.

"I can go on and on and on," he says with a hint of pride. "I listen to everything."

Big Boi discovers new music via his favorite iPhone apps: Shazam, Soundhound and Songza. "When I'm on a flight and the plane lands and they're playing music, I Shazam that shit," he says. "Those are some of the best apps that are really pro-artists, because people can find your music. You might be in a restaurant, you just tap [one of those apps] and people can get turned on to your music."

For him, it's not the music that's changed. It's the process. "Now everything is so fast, it's instant. I could create a song tonight in the studio and put it out tonight. And that shit would be over every newspaper, every blog. It would be all over the world in less than a matter of minutes," he says.

Not that he needs blogs for help. Big Boi has become his own media company, steadily churning out content on platforms like YouTube and Soundcloud. But Big Boi that you see on Twitter and Instagram is all him, every day. "You're more connected to the fans directly. Social media is where you have to be social."
https://mashable.com/2012/12/10/big-boi-music/





Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style
Glyn Moody

A couple of months back, Mike wrote about how Psy's relaxed attitude to people infringing on his copyright helped turn Gangnam Style into one of the most successful cultural phenomena in recent years, and that includes becoming the most-viewed video on YouTube ever.

Ah yes, the maximalists will retort, this free-and-easy, laid-back approach is all very nice, but it doesn't put food on his table, does it? If you want to make a living from this stuff, you've got to enforce copyright to stop all those freeloaders ruining your business. Well, maybe not:

With one song, 34-year-old Park Jae-sang -- better known as PSY -- is set to become a millionaire from YouTube ads and iTunes downloads, underlining a shift in how money is being made in the music business. An even bigger dollop of cash will come from TV commercials.

From just those sources, PSY and his camp will rake in at least $8.1 million this year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of publicly available information and industry estimates.


The AP story quoted above goes on to give a detailed breakdown of where that money comes from. Interestingly, it's mostly from things not directly connected with either his music or video:

It is television commercials that are the big money spinner for the most successful of South Korea's K-pop stars. PSY has been popping up in TV commercials in South Korea for top brands such as Samsung Electronics and mobile carrier LG Uplus.

Chung Yu-seok, an analyst at Kyobo Securities, estimates PSY's commercial deals would amount to 5 billion won ($4.6 million) this year.


This is yet another great example of how artists can give away copies of their music and videos to build their reputations and then earn significant sums by selling associated scarcities -- in this case, appearances in TV commercials. Now, not every musician may want to take that route, but there are plenty of other ways of exploiting global successes like Gangnam Style -- none of which requires copyright to be enforced.
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/casest...am-style.shtml





Blank Media Tax May Expand to Include Cloud Storage
Matthew Humphries

Depending on where you are in the world, blank media may have a secondary tax applied to it. Germany is a good example, as consumers pay both a sales tax and commercial tax to compensate the recording industry for the negative impact blank media supposedly has on sales. That applies to such media as CDs, DVDs, external hard drives, and even USB flash drives.

It seems ludicrous that such a tax even be considered, let alone be imposed. Germans even suffered a 2,000 percent increase of that tax earlier this year, but the bad news doesn’t end there. An Austrian rights group called IG Autoren isn’t happy with such a tax covering just physical media, it wants cloud storage included, too.

At the moment, consumers in Austria only pay this tax on blank CDs and DVDs. IG Autoren wants to expand that to include the same range of media as Germany, but also feels that services like Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive etc. all fall under the blank media banner because they offer storage, and therefore should carry the tax. A tax consumers would have to pay on top of the existing price of each service.

Such a tax would not only make cloud services more expensive, it could threaten to remove the free tiers currently being offered, such as Dropbox’s 2GB account. As storage is offered, the tax would need to be paid regardless of how little there is available. It seems unlikely Dropbox or any other service provider would pick up the tab, so free tiers could disappear in countries adopting the tax.

For the moment, the threat of a cloud storage tax will only impact Austria, but if it gets accepted there then it could spread to other European countries. Consumers in general will obviously be opposed to this, as will cloud storage providers. There’s also a coalition fighting against such taxes that includes Apple, Dell, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony as members.

Let’s hope this cloud storage tax never sees the light of day. I’d also like to see proof blank media is to blame for lost sales and how cloud storage further impacts that.
http://gigaom.com/europe/dropbox-copyright-fee/





Patented Book Writing System Creates, Sells Hundreds Of Thousands Of Books On Amazon

Philip M. Parker, Professor of Marketing at INSEAD Business School, has had a side project for over 10 years. He’s created a computer system that can write books about specific subjects in about 20 minutes. The patented algorithm has so far generated hundreds of thousands of books. In fact, Amazon lists over 100,000 books attributed to Parker, and over 700,000 works listed for his company, ICON Group International, Inc. This doesn’t include the private works, such as internal reports, created for companies or licensing of the system itself through a separate entity called EdgeMaven Media.

Parker is not so much an author as a compiler, but the end result is the same: boatloads of written works.

Now these books aren’t your typical reading material. Common categories include specialized technical and business reports, language dictionaries bearing the “Webster’s” moniker (which is in the public domain), rare disease overviews, and even crossword puzzle books for learning foreign languages, but they all have the same thing in common: they are automatically generated by software.

The system automates this process by building databases of information to source from, providing an interface to customize a query about a topic, and creating templates for information to be packaged. Because digital ebooks and print-on-demand services have become commonplace, topics can be listed in Amazon without even being “written” yet.

The abstract for the U.S. patent issued in 2007 describes the system:

The present invention provides for the automatic authoring, marketing, and or distributing of title material. A computer automatically authors material. The material is automatically formatted into a desired format, resulting in a title material. The title material may also be automatically distributed to a recipient. Meta material, marketing material, and control material are automatically authored and if desired, distributed to a recipient. Further, the title may be authored on demand, such that it may be in any desired language and with the latest version and content.

To be clear, this isn’t just software alone but a computer system designated to write for a specific genre. The system’s database is filled with genre-relevant content and specific templates coded to reflect domain knowledge, that is, to be written according to an expert in that particular field/genre. To avoid copyright infringement, the system is designed to avoid plagiarism, but the patent aims to create original but not necessarily creative works. In other words, if any kind of content can be broken down into a formula, then the system could package related, but different content in that same formula repeatedly ad infinitum.

Parker explains the process in this nearly 10-minute video:

The success (and brilliance) of this system is that Parker designed the algorithms to mimic the thought process that an expert would necessarily go through in writing about a topic. It merely involves deconstructing content within a genre. He has some experience in this, as he has written at least three books the old fashioned way. It’s the recognition of how algorithmic content creation is (for the most part) that allows it to be coded as artificial intelligence.

A sampling of the list of books attributed to Parker is instructive:

- Webster’s Slovak – English Thesaurus Dictionary for $28.95
- The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats for $795
- The World Market for Rubber Sheath Contraceptives (Condoms): A 2007 Global Trade Perspective for $325
- Ellis-van Creveld Syndrome – A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients, and Genome Researchers for $28.95
- Webster’s English to Haitian Creole Crossword Puzzles: Level 1 for $14.95


Considering that a single book costs somewhere between $0.20 to $0.50 to produce (the cost of electricity and hardware), the prices shown are considerably profit, even if very few of them are sold.

In truth, many nonfiction books — like news articles — often fall into formulas that cover the who, what, where, when, and why of a topic, perhaps the history or projected future, and some insight. Regardless of how topical information is presented or what comes with it, the core data must be present, even for incredibly obscure topics. And Parker is not alone in automating content either. The Chicago-based Narrative Science has been producing sport news and financial articles for Forbes for a while.

So, what’s the next book genre Parker is targeting to have software produce? Romance novels.

Although a novel is a work of fiction, it’s no secret that certain genres lend themselves to formulas, such as romance novels. That may not make these works rank high for their literary value, but they certainly do well for their entertainment value. Somewhat suprisingly, romance fiction has the largest share of the consumer book market with revenue of nearly $1.37 billion in 2011.

But can artificial intelligence produce creative works on par with what a human can produce? Yes…eventually. Perhaps the better questions are how soon will it happen and how relevant will they be? The answers may be right on the horizon if Parker can churn out romance novels that are read by the masses. Frankly, any creative work produced by artificial intelligence will be “successful” if it reads like a human being wrote it, or more precisely, like a human intelligence is behind the work.

But books may be just the beginning.

As Parker notes in his video, the software doesn’t have to be limited to written works. Using 3D animation and avatars, a variety of audio and video formats can be generated, and Parker indicates that these are being explored. Avatars that read compiled news stories might become preferred, especially if viewers were allowed to customize who reads the news to them and how in-depth those stories need to be.

Content creation technology could converge with other developments such as automated video transcription to expand the content that can be pulled from. Language translators would aid not only in content previously produced all over the world, but audio and video in real-time as well. Additionally, with lifeblogging allowing people to capture everything they say or is said to them, those could be packaged into personal biographies. If you add big data and analytics into the mix, you could have some serious content creation capabilities, all performed by designated computers.

The future of content is increasingly becoming the stuff of science fiction, but we still have some years before content creation is entirely in the hands of software. But if you have any doubts about where we are headed, consider this: the first novel written by a computer has already been published four years ago.

To learn more about Parker and his perspective on automatic content creators, check out this 2008 interview:
http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/13...-and-counting/





Tor Network Used to Command Skynet Botnet

Other botnet operators might use Tor to hide their command and control servers in the future, researchers say
Lucian Constantin

Security researchers have identified a botnet controlled by its creators over the Tor anonymity network. It's likely that other botnet operators will adopt this approach, according to the team from vulnerability assessment and penetration testing firm Rapid7.

The botnet is called Skynet and can be used to launch DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, generate Bitcoins -- a type of virtual currency -- using the processing power of graphics cards installed in infected computers, download and execute arbitrary files or steal login credentials for websites, including online banking ones.

However, what really makes this botnet stand out is that its command and control (C&C) servers are only accessible from within the Tor anonymity network using the Tor Hidden Service protocol.

Tor hidden services are most commonly Web servers, but can also be Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Secure Shell (SSH) and other types of servers. These services can only be accessed from inside the Tor network through a random-looking hostname that ends in the .onion pseudo-top-level domain.

The Hidden Service protocol was designed to hide the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the clients from the service and the IP address of the service from the clients, making it almost impossible for the parties involved to determine each other's physical location or real identity. Like all traffic passing through the Tor network, the traffic between a Tor client and a Tor hidden service is encrypted and is randomly routed through a series of other computers acting as Tor relays.

Tor Hidden Services are perfect for a botnet operation, said Claudio Guarnieri, a security researcher at Rapid7 and creator of the Cuckoo Sandbox malware analysis system, in an email on Friday. "As far as I understand, there is no technical way neither to trace and definitely neither to take down the Hidden Services used for C&C."

Guarnieri published a blog post about the Skynet botnet on Thursday. He believes that the botnet is the same one described by a self-confessed botnet operator in a "IAmA" (I am a) thread on Reddit seven months ago. Reddit "IAmA" or "AMA" (ask me anything) threads allow people who perform various jobs or have various occupations to answer questions from other Reddit users.

Despite the wealth of information about the botnet offered by its creator on Reddit seven months ago, the botnet is still alive and strong. In fact, Rapid7 researchers estimate that the botnet's current size is of 12,000 to 15,000 compromised computers, up to 50 percent more than what its operator estimated 7 months ago.

The malware behind this botnet is distributed through Usenet, a system originally built at the beginning of the 1980s as a distributed discussion platform, but now commonly used to distribute pirated software and content, commonly known as "warez."

"We incidentally found it on Usenet and started digging there and realized the operator is automatically repackaging and uploading the malware for every new popular warez release," Guarnieri said. "It could be likely found on other file-sharing platforms too, but we have no proof at this point."

Content from Usenet is commonly downloaded by users and redistributed through other file-sharing technologies like BitTorrent.

The Skynet malware has several components: an IRC-controlled bot that can launch various types of DDoS attacks and perform several other actions, a Tor client for Windows, a so-called Bitcoin mining application and a version of the Zeus Trojan program, which is capable of hooking into browser processes and stealing log-in credentials for various websites.

While good for anonymity, Tor does have disadvantages for a botnet operation, such as increased latency and sometimes instability.

"Obviously they [the botnet operators] can't tunnel just everything through Tor," Guarnieri said. "If the botnet is performing some heavy, frequent and noisy communication, then it could be problematic."

However, if the goal is just for the infected machines to be able to retrieve commands from a server in a reasonable time without exposing its location, then Tor works well enough, he said. "I'm pretty sure more botherders will definitely replicate this design."

"This is a major reason for concern," said Bogdan Botezatu, a senior e-threat analyst at antivirus vendor Bitdefender, via email. "If a single botherder can stay anonymous for seven months by routing C&C traffic via TOR, then it will definitely stick with other botmasters."

That said, Botezatu believes that Tor might not be suitable for large botnets because the Tor network, which is already relatively slow, might not be able to handle a lot of concurrent connections.

The impact of botnets on the Tor network itself really depends on the scale of abuse, Guarnieri said. One feature of the Skynet botnet is that each infected machine becomes a Tor relay, which ironically makes the network larger and able to sustain the load, he said.

Botnet creators have recently implemented peer-to-peer solutions for command and control purposes rather than Tor-based ones, because they provide the same level of anonymity and increased resiliency without introducing the latency problems, Botezatu said. In addition, peer-to-peer implementations have already been well documented and tested, he said.

The Tor-based approach is not new, said Marco Preuss, head of the German global research and analysis team at antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab, via email. "In the past years several presentations and research papers mentioned this method for botnets."

"One of the most important disadvantages is the complex implementation -- errors lead to easy detection -- and also the speed is a drawback," Preuss said. Depending on how Tor is used in the botnet infrastructure, there might be solutions to detect and block the traffic, as well as to disable the botnet, he said.

"A single botnet of about ten thousand machines isn't a stringent problem for the global Internet, but, if things escalate, we're sure that node administrators will cooperate with ISPs and law enforcement to take down malicious traffic," Botezatu said. "After all, Tor has been designed for anonymity and privacy, not for cyber crime."

"One countermeasure that companies or ISPs could eventually enforce in their firewall is to drop all packets that originate from known TOR nodes, in order to minimize the amount of potentially malicious traffic they receive," Botezatu said. "Of course, they might also end up blacklisting a number of legit Tor users looking for anonymity."
https://www.computerworld.com.au/art...skynet_botnet/





BitDefender Launches Free 60-Second Virus Scanner [Updates]
Tim Brookes

BitDefender launched a new weapon for fighting viruses and malware on Wednesday with the release of their 60-second virus scanner for PCs. The software which comes in the form of a tiny 160KB Windows executable aims to scan your Windows machine for problems in record time while providing real-time cloud protection and alerts. According to the company the software can be run alongside users’ existing anti-virus software for added security.

That means there’s no need to disable your existing protection or worry about potential unwanted interactions, a common problem when running multiple security suites. The cloud-based nature of the scanner also makes it a viable option for those currently under attack from malware, particularly malicious code designed to disable “always on” scanner software.

The scanner works silently in the background and according to BitDefender has “virtually no impact” on a user’s system performance. The company hopes that users will be able to isolate problems with their current protection once they’ve tried the 60-second scanner:

“We expect a lot of people who use the scanner to find out that their existing antivirus solution isn’t catching everything it should,” said Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi in a blog post. The software works with all versions of Windows from XP with Service Pack 2 to the recently released Windows 8.

BitDefender is known for their range of quality affordable Internet security software, including BitDefender Internet Security which is available under the MakeUseOf Rewards scheme in exchange for 650 points. To find out more about this Reward as well as other freebies, check out MakeUseOf Rewards.

Download BitDefender 60-Second Scanner @ BitDefender.com
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/bitdefe...anner-updates/





Symantec Gets Into Cloud File Sharing with Norton Zone

Summary: Symantec is trying to differentiate its file sharing service from other cloud storage lockers with more impressive security specs.
Rachel King

The cloud storage market has been a hot space throughout 2012, and basically major tech company is trying to find a way in.

Given that anything cloud-based and high-end security should really go hand-in-hand, it makes perfect sense that Symantec is pitching its own angle.

Symantec has unveiled Norton Zone, a cloud-based file sharing service that is touted to enable users to safely access, sync and share photos, videos and documents from virtually any of their computers (PC or Mac) as well as Android and iOS devices.

Accessibility from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection on the most popular computing and mobile devices are the basic requirements for any cloud storage service these days. So all of the talk about real-time updates and seamless photo sharing on Facebook are essentially par for the course.

Thus, Symantec is doing what it should by resting on its strong suits and aiming to differentiate itself with more outstanding security specs.

For example, Symantec said that Norton Zone comes with "high-level, industrial-grade encryption," which should protect all files during transfer and while stored in secure data centers.

Furthermore, Symantec added that all data stored within Norton Zone is automatically backed up and replicated in a secured cloud, providing additional protection for important files -- even in the case of natural disasters.

Norton Zone is now available as a public and free beta version for consumers in U.S. English only. A fully-featured edition is expected to follow next year.
http://www.zdnet.com/symantec-gets-i...ne-7000008107/





Top 25 European Rising Stars 2012: YobiDrive
John

….YobiDrive: A Smart Choice for Cryptographic File Sharing on The Cloud

The Top 25 European Rising Stars is a special annual series by CloudTweaks, where we seek to celebrate new cloud startups that have demonstrated the strongest impact across the year. These have earned little or no press coverage nor loquacious claims but they are indeed rising. To authoritatively arrive at the top 25, we have applied a criteria pegged on critical parameters like the quality of management, current funding, valuable service provision, European based and professionalism in all respects.


In the face of the rise of the Smartphone as the major tool of communication and even for remote business interaction today, it was high time encryption technologies improved. There are upcoming cloud providers ready to meet this deficit. One such provider is YobiDrive, a Luxembourg startup that is leveraging on the way individuals and corporate entities exchange files cryptically. They can even choose on how they want to disburse the files, who can gain a key into the documentation stage, and who has the viability to access the finished product.

There are three approaches to YobiDrive in terms of:

1. Device-to-device harmonization
2. Cryptographic cloud storage
3. Core Services: File Sharing

Device-to-device Harmonization: From the homepage of YobiDrive, one gets to visualize how diverse gadgets, ranging from tablets to smart cellular devices, can interact privately. If the user is away from office, he or she only needs to unlock the company’s or private cloud to either view or work on a document. There is a similar model, albeit concentrating more on cryptography in Microsoft’s workspace, which envisions a way of letting people view content in its read-only format, but they cannot go into altering it if they have no authority. YobiDrive, does not concentrate as much on the above score as it does in ensuring that only an authorized ID unlocks private information using a different device. This is why the startup uses API technology to ensure that no matter how different a mobile gadget’s operational framework is from that of a computer, the latter being the source of the private data, the data remains foolproof against illegal tapping.

Cryptographic Cloud Storage: Going by the multi-tenancy option of the cloud, YobiDrive expands its file sharing drive into a fully-fledged cryptographic sending-and-receiving storage conduit. This deters other networks within a multiple-tenant cloud infrastructure from reading each other’s data that is always in perpetual motion. In the face of it, the startup has recognized the need for double-encrypting documents, in their finished file stage, so that when they are in transit, they do not spill some of their contents to hackers. This is courtesy of its key technology, alongside its drive-style remote storage. Of course even the drive is not averse to viral attacks, which makes the encryption precaution a little off the mark, for as Microsoft’s research team says, it is more about searching for “homomorphic encryption” and similar trials that the consolidation of existing crypto technology will finally succeed.

Core Services: File Sharing: The YobiDrive’s agility at file sharing is discernable in the ability to improve uptime and reduce the time a file spends on the network during the remission process. The software edifies a single click impetus, even when a file is in the documentation stage, right into a published format. Say, if one is working on a blog post on the current offers that his/ her company has in store, they can keep hitting the button, stage by stage, to save the publication instead of undergoing many stages before publishing. There is also an organizing icon from this provider that helps to profile the valid partners in an ongoing file exchange project. Each receives a key to the repository, so that the files can stay in an anonymous format that only the partners can unlock when need be. The accessibility limitation even moves into the world of equal partners: users can curtail the seeing of the work in progress until a certain time comes. Microsoft’s research lab, however, sees certain obstacles in that format meaning that the Internet as a browsing field, will initiate search with certain keywords that will allow the work to be available even in its encrypted form. Thus, in spite of trying the best to make file sharing a secure process by cloud security standards, YobiDrive can do more to boost this overlook.

Users on Google webmaster pages are already recommending the technology with some commenting on the software as being “fully elastic.” There are also overtones of how the storage solution adheres to S3 implementation guidelines, thus making its cloud suitability even greater.

Thus, YobiDrive qualifies into the Top 25 European Rising Stars because of the fact that it is fully-fledged in storage, cryptography and file sharing. There might be loopholes, here and there, but any way, encryption has always attracted diverse views. The Luxembourg startup is an offering of the EZC Group.
http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/12/t...012-yobidrive/





Alert! Be On Guard Against Microsoft Word Worms In Your Email
Mark Hachman

Until Microsoft discloses - and patches - a new Word vulnerability on Tuesday, anyone using Microsoft's Outlook email program and its Word word processor should be even more cautious than usual.

That's because one of Microsoft's security bulletins for December includes a "Critical" vulnerability for Microsoft Word, one of the few times Microsoft has attached the "Critical" tag to a Word issue.

Waiting For Patch Tuesday

Microsoft's standard practice is to give a heads-up on the number of vulnerabilities it plans to fix on "Patch Tuesday," the second Tuesday of every month. On that day, Microsoft releases the patches themselves, and discloses the vulnerabilities that they fix. (If it revealed the problems before providing the solutions, of course, black-hat hackers could exploit the hole.) So at this point, we don't know what exactly what problems the current, unpatched version of Word hides.

In October, however, Microsoft disclosed a hole in Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Word 2010 that allowed an attacker to take over a PC just by viewing an infected RTF file. That was a significant vulnerability; most modern attacks are triggered when a user views a Web page, or at least clicks a link. The October vulnerability was much more passive, and could be triggered just by idly scrolling down your inbox. Once your machine was infected, the attacker would have the same administrative rights as you do - and if you run as administrator, the attacker could completely control your machine.

Tuesday's vulnerability appears to be even more severe: It can target Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, as well the Microsoft Word Viewer and Compatibility Pack. As security reporter Fahmida Rashid notes, it's a good bet that the inclusion of "Word Viewer" means that the new vulnerability allows a similar, passive attack. But note that it does not include Office 2012, so if you own a Surface tablet with the latest Office version, you should be safe.

In total, there are seven updates, which will even ensnare Windows RT. The Windows RT update will be provided by Microsoft, either via the Windows Store, Microsoft Update or Windows Update, a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email.

How To Defend Yourself

At this point, Outlook/Word users can do several things to help mitigate the threat of any vulnerabilities.

First, always - always - allow Windows to download its approved patches. It's probably best to allow Windows to install them, too, although users who leave their PCs on, as I do, risk getting caught by an unexpected reboot. While this shouldn't be a problem for Word users, the inability of modern browsers to "save" inside a Web service can play havoc with your workflow. So it's up to you whether you want to install the patches automatically.

Second, turn your caution up a notch. At this point, most Web users have a finely honed sense of what is spam and what isn't, and are able to detect most phishing attempts (misspellings and malformed URLs are common clues). But for now, you'll have to try and detect whether or not an email is malicious from the subject line. Users and companies who rely a Web-based version of their email (like Google Apps) may have an advantage here.

Third, never run in admininstrator mode. Yes, not having admin rights can be a pain sometimes. But if an attacker can gain the same levels of administrative rights as you can, downgrading your own status to a user might help offer at least a bit of protection.

(Fourth: Get a Mac. There, are you happy?)

It's not clear that there are, in fact, any worms or attackers with live code exploiting this in the wild. But there almost certainly will be starting on Tuesday, when Microsoft reveals the exploit and the patch and attackers hope to catch complacent Windows users napping. Don't be one of them.
http://readwrite.com/2012/12/10/aler...-in-your-email





Elsevier Editorial System Hacked, Reviews Faked, 11 Retractions Follow

For several months now, we’ve been reporting on variations on a theme: Authors submitting fake email addresses for potential peer reviewers, to ensure positive reviews. In August, for example, we broke the story of a Hyung-In Moon, who has now retracted 24 papers published by Informa because he managed to do his own peer review.

Now, Retraction Watch has learned that the Elsevier Editorial System (EES) was hacked sometime last month, leading to faked peer reviews and retractions — although the submitting authors don’t seem to have been at fault. As of now, eleven papers by authors in China, India, Iran, and Turkey have been retracted from three journals.

Here’s one of two identical notices that have just run in Optics & Laser Technology, for two unconnected papers:

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.

A referee’s report on which the editorial decision was made was found to be falsified. The referee’s report was submitted under the name of an established scientist who was not aware of the paper or the report, via a fictitious EES account. Because of the submission of a fake, but well-written and positive referee’s report, the Editor was misled into accepting the paper based upon the positive advice of what he assumed was a well-known expert in the field. This represents a clear violation of the fundamentals of the peer-review process, our publishing policies, and publishing ethics standards. The authors of this paper have been offered the option to re-submit their paper for legitimate peer review.


Optics & Laser Technology has run eight such notices, which are identical to one that ran in the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications in August, except that the JMAA did not say the authors had been offered the option of resubmitting.

It’s unclear who wrote the fake reviews. The corresponding authors of two Optics & Laser Technology papers told us they had no idea.

We learned a bit more about what happened, though, when we saw correspondence between editor Andrea Cusano and the corresponding author of one of the papers.

Cusano told the author in an email that Elsevier had security problems last month.

…we were able to identify some fake reviewers and deactivate them [from] the system…

The reviews by these fake reviewers, not surprisingly, were done incorrectly, and were not up to the journal’s standards of quality. But the authors, Cusano said, were “innocent victims of this hacking problem,” so the journal retracted the papers, and decided to allow them to resubmit the manuscripts for new peer review. Cusano wrote in the email that his team

will receive a very honest review process in less than one month form the initial submission date.

Elsevier opted for something called the consolidated profile to avoid the problem in the future, Cusano wrote. And Elsevier tells Retraction Watch that “measures have been taken to prevent this from happening again.”

It’s unclear what the EES hacker’s goals were. It seems odd to hack the system to write a “well-written and positive referee’s report.” So far, Elsevier said, it has not seen a direct connection between the fake reviewers and the authors.

Update, 2:10 p.m. Eastern, 12/11/11: A few people, on Twitter and in the comments, have questioned whether this was really hacking, or just email spoofing. We had the same question when we were reporting this post, so we let Elsevier know that we had a journal editor calling this “hacking.” They didn’t suggest any clarifications or corrections.
https://retractionwatch.wordpress.co...ctions-follow/





Google Accidentally Transmits Self-Destruct Code to Army of Chrome Browsers
Robert McMillan

Google’s Gmail service went down for about 20 minutes on Monday. That was annoying, but not exactly unprecedented. These sorts of outages happen all the time. What was strange is that the Gmail outage coincided with widespread reports that Google’s Chrome browser was also crashing.

Late Monday, Google engineer Tim Steele confirmed what developers had been suspecting. He said that the crashes were affecting Chrome users who were using another Google web service known as Sync, and that Sync and other Google services — presumably Gmail too — were clobbered Monday when Google misconfigured its load-balancing servers.

Sync is essentially Google’s answer to Apple’s iCloud. It’s a software service built by Google to unshackle web surfers from their own desktops. It works in the background, shuttling information between the Chrome browser and Google’s servers, so that people users who log into Google can get at their bookmarks, extensions, and apps — no matter what computer they’re using to surf the web.

But on Monday, Steele wrote in a developer discussion forum, a problem with Google’s Sync servers kicked off an error on the browser, which made Chrome abruptly shut down on the desktop.

“It’s due to a backend service that sync servers depend on becoming overwhelmed, and sync servers responding to that by telling all clients to throttle all data types,” Steele said. That “throttling” messed up things in the browser, causing it to crash.

The problems were short-lived, but widespread. Over at Hacker News — a news discussion site that tends to attract Silicon Valley’s most knowledgeable software developers — a long thread quickly filled up with dozens of crash reports. “My Chrome has been crashing every ten minutes for the last half hour,” wrote one poster.

This may be a first. Bad webpage coding can often cause a browser to crash, but yesterday’s crash looks like something different: widespread crashing kicked off by a web service designed to help drive your browser.

Think of it as the flip side of cloud computing. Google’s pitch has always been that its servers are easier to use and less error-prone than buggy desktop software. But the Sync problem shows that when Google goes down, it can not only keep you from getting your e-mail — it can knock desktop software such as a browser offline too.

Chrome prides itself on “sandboxing” itself, so that a problem with a single webpage can only crash a tab in the browser, and not bring down the entire program. But that’s just what happened with Monday’s bug. It clobbered the entire browser.

“That’s definitely a big and unusual problem because if the browser shuts down, that’s a failure of the whole model of Chromium itself,’ says Kevin Quennesson, CTO of online photo service Everpix.

“When you bridge authentication and identity and the cloud to a desktop application, you then get occasionally these very weird failures,” says David Ulevicth, the founder of OpenDNS, a cloud-based infrastructure services company.

It’s the kind of issue that could pop up more often as developers work to build browsers such as Rockmelt that do more than simply surf the web, says Michael Mahemoff, a former Google Chrome team member who is now the founder of podcast app-maker Player FM. “People are trying to integrate more identity and these kind of sync service and social services,” he says.

It’s also something that cloud service providers are going to have to worry about more and more, as services such as Apple’s iCloud and Windows Live get more closely intertwined with our phones and PCs.

“As you centralize things like authentication and identity to one provider, then when that one provider has a hiccup the impact can be far-reaching,” says Ulevicth. “Imagine a scenario where you can’t even open your Android phone or you can’t get phone calls on Google Voice. it’s not just your browser.”
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise...12/google-bug/





Gmail Allows 10 GB File Sharing with Google Drive
Doug Gross

Frustrated that you can't share files the size of your entire music collection via e-mail? Google wants to help.

Gmail users can now send files of up to 10 GB using Google Drive, the Web giant's cloud-storage service.

That's 400 times bigger than files that can be shared in a regular e-mail, according to a blog post by Google's Gmail team.

And because the files are stored in the cloud, all recipients will always have the latest version of the file -- in the case of a document that's being amended over time, for example.

"So whether it's photos from your recent camping trip, video footage from your brother's wedding, or a presentation to your boss, all your stuff is easy to find and easy to share with Drive and Gmail," the post reads.

Drive, and before that Google Docs, already allowed users to share large files. But the new feature is more streamlined, letting them do so without leaving Gmail.

Launched in April, Google Drive offers users 5 GB of free storage, with each additional 25 GB going for $2.49.

The move is part of an ongoing effort by Google to synchronize its various services, from Gmail to social network Google Plus to the Android mobile operating system. The ability to sync with Gmail offers Google a built-in edge over standalone cloud storage tools like Dropbox.

"Should services like Dropbox be concerned? Sort of," wrote Ricardo Bilton of VentureBeat. "As the move shows, Google's core strength is in its ability to connect and integrate its various services -- even the unpopular ones -- into one cohesive product. This gives Drive a clear edge over competing standalone cloud services, so expect Google to leverage it as much as possible."

The file-sharing feature will be rolled out over the next few days, according to Google. Users must have opted in to Gmail's "Compose" tool in order to use it.

Google announced this year that Gmail has more than 425 million active users.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/28/tech/w...ive/index.html





The Success of Smartphones Comes at a Price

Increasing numbers of people are going online via a smartphone. In doing so, they might be helping to do away with a free – in every sense – internet
John Naughton

If a maven is, as Wikipedia maintains, "a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others", then Mary Meeker is definitely a maven. She started her professional career as a stockbroker at Salomon Brothers, but then morphed into an early version of a technology analyst at Morgan Stanley. Since this firm was the lead manager for the IPO of Netscape in August 1995, which triggered the first internet boom, one might say that she was present at the Creation.

As the boom gathered its frenzied pace, Meeker and a colleague published a slide presentation labelled "The Internet Report", which became the nearest thing the nascent information-starved industry had to a statistics bible and ensured Meeker's place in its hall of fame. Publication of the slide deck became an annual event.

Ms Meeker is now a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Silicon Valley's poshest venture capital firm, but she's still doing her thing. I've been wading through her latest "Internet Trends" report, which is an updated version of the one she published in May and has lots of intriguing statistics, some of which have pretty sobering implications.

We will get to the implications in a moment, but first let's consider some of the numbers. Meeker estimates that 2.4 billion people are now using the net, which is a shade over a third of the world's population. Overall, the number of internet users is growing at 8% a year, but in some countries (Iran, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Colombia, for example) the growth rates are much higher than that.

But it's when one sees how all these people access the net that the data leap into life. Meeker claims that the world now has 1.1 billion smartphone users, ie people who can access the internet and use the web via a handheld device. This trend is reinforced by other developments. A third of US adults now own a tablet or e-reader (up from 2% less than three years ago). And Apple's iPad is the fastest-selling mobile device of all time (which, in the internet world, means "until the next Big Thing"). There's a serious trend here.

The really staggering figures, however, are those relating to how people use their mobile devices. They already account for 13% of all internet traffic. This year, 24% of all online shopping on "black Friday" in the US was done via mobiles (up from 6% two years ago). And Meeker claims that in May this year mobile internet traffic in India overtook PC-based traffic.

What do these statistics mean? Well, basically they imply that the future's mobile. We're heading for a world in which most people will access the internet via handheld devices – phones and tablets. And this is a really big deal. On the one hand, it will make it easy for billions of people to integrate the net into their daily lives, with all the benefits that that can bring. On the other hand, it will greatly enhance the powers of corporations that few of us have any reason to trust.

Why? Well, mobile devices are radically different from PCs because they are essentially closed, tethered devices that are to a greater (Apple) or lesser (Android) extent controlled either by their manufacturers or those who supply their operating systems. Nothing goes on an Apple device, for example, that hasn't been explicitly authorised by Apple. Moreover, access to the net from a mobile device is also mediated by another set of corporate control-freaks: the mobile network operators (aka telcos).

So one implication of a mobile-dominated world is massive enhancement of the power of large corporations to control both the pace of innovation and what users do (and pay for) on the net. The consequences for innovation have been well articulated by scholars such as Jonathan Zittrain and Tim Wu and so need not detain us here.

The possibilities of telco control are only just becoming apparent – in Dubai of all places, where the World Conference on Information Technology is currently underway. There's been much understandable concern about threats to freedom of speech etc implicit in the conference, but many people see the biggest threat coming from a proposal by the telcos to meter and charge users for the internet content they relay through their electronic pipes.

In the early days of mobile phones, one network had a slogan: "The future's bright, the future's Orange." An updated version might be: "The future's mobile, the future's bleak."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...d-for-internet





$50 Android Smartphones Are Disrupting Africa Much Faster Than You Think, Says Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales
Natasha Lomas

What phone does Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales have in his pocket? An unlocked Android-powered 3G smartphone, made by Chinese mobile maker Huawei – which was selling for $85 on the streets of Kenya last year and now goes for $50.

While the majority of Africa’s mobile phones are more basic talk-plus-text feature phones — recent figures from analyst ABI Research suggest 3G connectivity accounts for 11 percent of the continent’s overall mobile subscriptions vs. GSM’s 62.7 percent – 300,000 of these $50 Android smartphones have been sold in Kenya, according to Wales and African carrier Safaricom’s CEO Bob Collymore. The pair were speaking at Vodafone’s Mobile for Good summit taking place in London today.

“What I always thought about mobile in Africa…is this [smartphone adoption] is coming in the future — in the future someday,” said Wales. “Well the someday’s happening faster than I ever realised.”

Wales’ own budget Android was brought back from Kenya by a friend and is now his personal smartphone. “The screen is a little smaller than the iPhone, it’s not quite as good but the battery lasts two days,” he joked.

The Wikipedia founder has been spending the past couple of years working on Wikipedia Zero – a project that’s aiming to broaden access to the online encyclopedia to those who don’t own a computer or can’t get access to 3G mobile data – but he says the pace of smartphone adoption in Africa is changing the digital landscape of the continent much faster than people think.

The pace caught Wikipedia by surprise. The not-for-profit organisation had been focusing its emerging markets’ efforts on India but is now paying a lot more attention to Africa, thanks to the growth in ownership of cheap, Android-powered handsets — like the one in Wales’ pocket.

“This phone actually woke my mind up,” said Wales, pulling the handset out of his pocket and holding it up. “This is what really got me energised to say let’s go back and take another look at Africa, because we had focused most of our attention on India with the view that it was ready for us to do things.”

“If you go and you take a look at the numbers [of smartphone adoption in Africa]… the upward trend — obviously it’s still a very small penetration – but that upward trend is there really strongly. If you look at the total bandwidth into Nigeria, for example, it’s skyrocketing.

“Things that are very hard for us to all imagine are going to happen much faster than we realise,” he added. “People are going to be coming online for the first time. There’s this vibrant community of young app developers growing in Kenya and Nigeria.

“It’s mind-boggling to think what the possibilities are — and I’m super excited about it.”
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/10/50-...s-jimmy-wales/





Your Money: The "Apple Tax" - America's Costly Obsession
Chris Taylor

With the "fiscal cliff" looming, taxpayers are wringing their hands about all sorts of things. Income taxes might rise, dividends might get walloped, lifetime gift-tax exemptions might get slashed.

But when it comes to immediate impact on their wallets, maybe they should be thinking about something else entirely: The Apple tax.

Americans are shelling out big bucks annually to outfit the entire household with Apple products. And they are spending hundreds - if not thousands of dollars - more each year for the unexpected Apple "taxes" -- add-ons that lock them into the Apple system: iTunes downloads for music, movies and games, along with subscriptions and accessories.

Then there are the replacement costs for lost or broken equipment. For a family with multiple children, each with their own technological needs, the total annual bill can get downright ugly -- like going over a familial "fiscal cliff."

Just ask Sam Martorana. A human-resources specialist for the airline WestJet, Martorana's Vancouver household consists of three people and no less than nine Apple products. Between himself, husband Ron, and stepson Evan, they own three MacBooks, two iPhones, two iPads, and two iPods.

"Oh my God, do I have to total it all up?" asks Martorana, 40. "It's so depressing. I'd say we spent at least $5,000 on all that stuff, including $700 in the past year alone. I totally have a weakness. I fell in love, and that was it."

Martorana is hardly alone in forking over so much money to the tech juggernaut. In 2011, the average amount U.S. households spent on Apple products was $444, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty.

That figure has been rising smartly every year. In 2010 it was $295. Back in 2007, it was only $150.

And we might only be seeing the beginning. If Apple rolls out its own HDTV, as expected, Huberty sees annual Apple spending by households doubling, to $888 by 2015.

Apple products are a must-have this holiday season. A Reuters-Ipsos poll finds that one-third of consumers are thinking about buying a tablet computer - and most of them want an iPad or an iPad mini. About one-quarter of those polled say they'll cut back on other holiday purchases this year to afford these pricey gadgets.

The analogy of an Apple tax might sound facetious, but think about it. Median U.S. household income was $50,054 in 2011, according to the Census Bureau. That means a sizable chunk of that is getting diverted to Apple headquarters in Cupertino.

Remember, this is not something that consumers are being forced to pay. They are dipping willingly into their own pockets, because they're essentially slaves to the devices.

"For so many children, the acquisition of an iPad, iPhone or iTouch has replaced the first bicycle or the first driver's license," says Paco Underhill, founder of consulting firm Envirosell and author of several books on consumer behavior including "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping."

"I have an image of the 9-year-old clutching his first phone like a teddy bear when he goes to sleep at night," he says. "I credit Apple with foresight to recognize what the connectivity process means to people. It's one of the few companies to understand that technology is no longer technology. It's an appliance."

Reno mom Jessica Torres is very familiar with those modern-day "appliances." In 2011 alone Torres' family splurged on a new iPhone, an iPad, an iMac, a MacBook, an iPod Touch (and bought her husband's mom an iPad for good measure).

With two daughters, age 3 and 9, Torres' purchases are likely to ramp up even more in years to come. "We easily spent over $5,000 last year on Apple products," says Torres, who runs the blog MyTimeAsMom.com. "We've sent them a lot of money over the years. I'm definitely an addict."

Customers like Torres are fueling Apple's eye-popping earnings, which were $8.2 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter. That was up from $6.6 billion a year earlier, and amazingly still qualified as a ‘miss,' which demonstrates just how high expectations are for the company.

"People spend more and more as the products are perceived to be better and better," says Michael Gartenberg, research director at technology consulting firm Gartner. "Aspirational products tend to make more family members want to own, and that's why we see Apple products on so many holiday wish lists that are crossing age, gender and other demographics."

As for Martorana, his family's indentured servitude to Apple looks like it will continue indefinitely. He is looking to replace his MacBook with a newer model within a year or so, which he guesses will cost at least another $1,300. While he loves the products unreservedly, he sees no way out of the annual Apple tax.

"With my MacBook, iPad and iPhone, everything is linked," says Martorana, who laments that Apple products are so popular that they never seem to go on sale. "All of my music and photos are in their iCloud. So I don't know if I'd even be able to switch to another product, even if I wanted to. Apple definitely has its hooks in me."

(The writer is a Reuters contributor. The opinions expressed are his own.)

(Editing by Lauren Young; Editing by Dan Grebler)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8B911120121210





Microwave Vies with Fiber for Fast Finance Transport

High-frequency traders are turning to legacy microwave technologies for faster communications
Joab Jackson

In the world of high-frequency trading, where being ahead of the competition by a few milliseconds can mean profits worth millions of dollars, finance firms are increasingly looking to decades-old microwave technologies for a competitive edge.

Such firms are finding that wireless microwave technology, despite being in use for more than half a century, can deliver data a few milliseconds faster than fiber-optic cable. As a result, the once-stagnant industry of microwave communications is finding itself in an "arms race" among vendors of new competitive offerings, said Mike Persico, CEO of financial exchange service provider Anova Technologies.

"If you want to transport a little bit of data very fast, physics tells you that you have to go through air. Fiber is just not a good idea. It will slow you down," explained Stéphane Ty , co-founder of Quincy Data, which provides microwave services to financial firms.

Ty was one of a number of speakers who discussed the increasing use of microwave technologies at the Quant Invest conference last week in New York.

For financial services firms, getting some piece of competitive intelligence a few milliseconds faster than their competitors can be worth the cost of securing a faster link. Stock trades can take less than a millisecond to execute.

Microwave technologies have been in use for point-to-point connections for decades by the military and by broadcast television stations. Point-to-point wireless microwave transmissions, which operate in the 1.0GHz to 30GHz part of the spectrum, require line of site, though signals can be repeated along the route. A good signal -- such as between two mountaintops -- can travel as much as 300 kilometers, or around 186 miles.

Microwave use has declined in the past few decades as fiber-optics communications has been able to offer greater bandwidth. These days, the largest microwave link can offer only 150Mbps, though work is being done to develop gigabit microwave technologies.

One advantage microwave still possesses, however, is speed of transmission. Electromagnetic waves travel faster through air than through glass. Light, an electromagnetic wave, can travel at 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second in a vacuum, and nearly that quickly through air. Light, however, can only travel at about 200,000 kilometers per second in even the clearest glass.

Another speed advantage microwave technologies offer is that their paths tend to be shorter, because signals can be beamed across the most direct path between two points. The length of fiber-optic routes tend to be elongated due to the inability to get right-of-way along the most optimum routes.

One new hot market for microwave providers is between New York and Chicago, both cities with many financial services firms. In 2010, Quincy Data had applied with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to secure a pathway between Chicago and New York. It found only one other provider that had also submitted a similar request. Since then dozens of other carriers have submitted requests to the agency. Quincy Data has been operational since July selling throughput between the two cities.

Based on the speed of light, the theoretical limit for sending information between New York and Chicago is 7.96 milliseconds. Right now, the state-of-the-art among microwave service providers is about 8.5 milliseconds, Persico said, noting how different providers are trying to secure the fastest rights-of-way and are developing technologies with the lowest latencies, all in an effort to offer the fastest sub-millisecond services for financial firms.

"We've been looking at [microwave technologies] for about a year now, in both Europe and the U.S.," said Ian Jack, head of the U.S. infrastructure business for the New York Stock Exchange, during a panel discussion on the topic. "We're looking at what the vendor community is doing and trying to leverage that as much as possible."

Performance is still a big factor, Jack said. Performance "is one of our big challenges as a potential buyer. If you look at the actual uptime for services, it's not brilliant. Every vendor has a new change, a revelation just around the corner, but we have yet to see that."

Rain can hamper performance with microwave technologies. So can low-lying clouds. "Interference can bring an entire network down, and you don't have that with fiber-optic networks," Persico said. He noted that, eventually, microwave technology vendors will compete more on how robust their networks are, once they offer approximately the same latency times.
http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wirele...ance-transport





WCIT – China And Russia Withdraw Bid For Greater Control Of Internet

Controversial proposals handed to the ITU on Friday have now been withdrawn
Tom Brewster

China, Russia and others have withdrawn controversial proposals at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) 2012 that would have given them greater control over the Internet, following a public backlash from dismayed onlookers.

A leaked document from WCIT had indicated a number of nations, also including the United Arab Emirates (UAE and Saudi Arabia, wanted to have more power over the Web’s laws and infrastructure. Much of the power over the working of the Internet currently lies with US bodies.

A spokesperson from the ITU confirmed to TechWeekEurope the proposals were now “off the table”. They were at a loss as to why the nation states, who handed their proposals to the ITU on Friday, had pulled out.

According to a source at the conference, the ITU is saying the document was never officially put forward.

Internet domain names © Dusit beboy Shutterstock 2012The conference, organised by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is seeking to revise the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which make up a treaty establishing international rules for telecommunications systems, last updated in 1988.

Negative press at WCIT

The leaked document, entitled ‘Proposals for the Work of the Conference’, indicated China, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and Egypt all wanted to be granted greater control over the Web. However, Egypt issued a statement over Twitter distancing itself from the proposals.

“Member States shall have the sovereign right to establish and implement public policy, including international policy, on matters of Internet governance, and to regulate the national Internet segment, as well as the activities within their territory of operating agencies providing Internet access or carrying Internet traffic,” read the document published by Wcitleaks.

The group of nations said member states should have equal rights to manage all naming, numbering and addressing on the Internet, which would indicate they want to see some of the power wrested from the US in terms of technical management of the Web.

The US currently decides on who runs the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN runs some of the key infrastructure of the Web, such as domain name assignment and is one of the most important bodies involved in the running of the Internet.

Attendees at the conference have until this Friday (14 December) to decide on what proposals will be accepted and made into international law. However, even when they are drafted into law, nation states will not be compelled to follow the rules, they will only be expected to enforce them in their own regions. Over 900 proposals have been put forward so far.

The conference has attracted plenty of negative press, as major organisations like the European Union and Google have launched campaigns raising concern over increased government control over the Web.

Last week, reports claimed the ITU website had come under attack, with more hits planned in the coming days. Hacktivist collective Anonymous has been vocal about its qualms with the meeting.

One of the biggest concerns surrounding the ITU conference is the lack of input from non-governmental sources. The Internet Society (Isoc) has been vocal about the need to represent citizens.

“Ultimately, one of the greatest benefits of the Internet is its potential to ensure that all citizens of the world have the same opportunities to participate in public life,” a blog post from Isoc read. “As we celebrate Human Rights Day on December 10, let’s seize this moment to remember the opportunities and challenges raised by the Internet for the ability of all stakeholders to have their voices heard.”

Campaigning group Avaaz launched a petition on Friday calling on the ITU to “reject any changes to current Internet regulations that would weaken or alter the free and open nature of the Internet”.

“We also demand that any proposed changes to current international Internet regulations be publicly debated, and subject to citizen input and approval.”
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news...speed=noscript





Draft Communications Data Bill to be Redrafted - No 10
BBC

No 10 says the PM remains committed to giving police and security services new powers to monitor internet activity, despite criticism of current plans.

The prime minister's spokesman said he accepted the criticism from MPs and peers of the draft Communications Data Bill and would re-write it.

Deputy PM Nick Clegg had threatened to block it unless there was a "rethink".

No 10 said bringing in new powers was a "government commitment" and everyone was "committed to fixing this problem".

He said: "We recognise this is a difficult issue. We will take account of what the committee said."

The deputy prime minister had earlier said he would block the draft Communications Data Bill and push for plans ensuring "the balance between security and liberty".

His comments came as a committee of MPs and peers criticised the bill's scope.

Civil liberties campaigners have described the proposals as a "snoopers' charter", but Home Secretary Theresa May insists they are vital for countering paedophiles, extremists and fraudsters.

The Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaderships agree on the need for new measures, but they disagree over their scope.

The plans in the draft bill include:

• Internet service providers having to store for a year all details of online communication in the UK - such as the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it was made.
• They would also be having to store for the first time all Britons' web browsing history and details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the internet and gaming, in addition to emails and phone calls
• Police not having to seek permission to access details of these communications, if investigating a crime
• Police having to get a warrant from the home secretary to be able to see the actual content of any messages
• Four bodies having access to data: the police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the intelligence agencies and HM Revenue and Customs

A report from the Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Bill, made up of MPs and peers, accepted a new law was needed to help police fight crime and tackle security threats organised online.

But it warned ministers would be able to demand "potentially limitless categories of data" unless the draft bill was amended.

It called for "safeguards" over the new powers to prevent abuse and accused the government of producing estimates of the cost of implementing the plans which were not "robust" enough.

The "net benefit figure" was "fanciful and misleading", it said.

The MPs and peers added that the draft bill paid "insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy" and went "much further than it need or should for the purpose of providing necessary and justifiable official access to communications data".

Mr Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the committee had raised "a number of serious criticisms - not least on scope, proportionality, cost, checks and balances, and the need for much wider consultation".

"It is for those reasons that I believe the coalition government needs to have a fundamental rethink about this legislation. We cannot proceed with this bill and we have to go back to the drawing board."

But he added: "The committee did not, however, suggest that nothing needs to be done. They were very clear that there is a problem that must be addressed to give law enforcement agencies the powers they need to fight crime. I agree.

"But that must be done in a proportionate way that gets the balance between security and liberty right."

'Secret notices'

In its report, the committee said the home secretary would be given "sweeping powers to issue secret notices to communications service providers, requiring them to retain and disclose potentially limitless categories of data".

But it added: "We have been told that she has no intention of using the powers in this way. Our main recommendation is therefore that her powers should be limited to those categories of data for which a case can now be made."

If these powers needed to be enhanced in future, this should be done with "effective parliamentary scrutiny", it said.

The home secretary wants the bill in place next year.

This bill wasn't dreamt up by Tory ministers in the coalition.

The previous Labour government came up with the first plans after the intelligence and security community said it needed modern tools to combat modern threats - threats organised online rather than through invisible ink messages left under park benches.

So the controversy is not about the bill's aim, but its scope - something we have seen in other pieces of security legislation since the coalition took office. Powers to hold terror suspects in their own home and the current bill to protect state secrets in courts were both cut back as part of coalition compromise. In each case ministers aimed to protect the primary purpose.

The question is whether this particular bill will be able to do its job if it goes through the same exercise - and that's why Nick Clegg will face claims of playing politics with security.

Security minister James Brokenshire told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was a "legitimate debate" to be had.

He added that he wanted to "rebalance" the bill, so that "it's properly reflecting the needs of the collective and the needs of the individual".

Mr Brokenshire also said: "If there were to be any extension, that would have to be through the full scrutiny of Parliament. We are saying very clearly that we accept that."

He added: "We know that we need to work this through the coalition."

For Labour, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government was "making a complete mess of a very important issue".

"It is important that the police and security services can keep up to date with modern technology, but this bill is too widely drawn, is unworkable and gives far too much power to the home secretary without proper safeguards."

She added: "It is astonishing that the Home Office have had so little discussion with the internet companies who need to deliver this legislation. The Government have been slipshod with this bill from the word go."

A Home Office spokesman said: "This legislation is vital to help catch paedophiles, terrorists and other serious criminals and we are pleased both scrutiny committees have recognised the need for new laws.

"We have now considered the committees' recommendations carefully and we will accept the substance of them all. But there can be no delay to this legislation. It is needed by law enforcement agencies now."

The Intelligence and Security Committee, which has sent a classified report on its findings to Prime Minister David Cameron, after speaking to the security services, called for more detail to be included in the draft bill.

It recommended that it be "future-proofed" to ensure extra powers are not added without scrutiny, adding that there had been "insufficient consultation" between ministers and internet providers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20676284





Compromise Emerges in Global Talks on Internet Oversight
Matt Smith and Joseph Menn

Hopes rose on Tuesday for a compromise agreement that would keep intrusive government regulation of the Internet from being enshrined in a global treaty.

As a 12-day conference of the International Telecommunication Union drew near its Friday closing, the chairman of the gathering in Dubai circulated a draft that sidelined proposals from Russia, China and other countries that have been seeking the right to know where each piece of Internet traffic comes from.

"The United States believes it is the basis for any further progress toward reaching an agreement at this conference," said U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer, who had led Western opposition to the earlier proposals.

The new draft was greeted positively by a broad swath of delegates to the conference and came as a surprise to many who had been frustrated by the deadlock gripping the event over the weekend.

Hamaoun Touré, ITU secretary-general, told Reuters he had hosted discussions between the opposing parties and weary delegates seemed eager to resolve their differences as talks drag into the early hours each night.

A majority of the more than 150 countries represented at the conference had been willing to officially extend the mission of the United Nations agency to the Internet, while the Americans, most Europeans and some other advanced economies wanted to limit the ITU to oversight of international phone calls and other means of communication.

The issue is coming to a head now because the ITU is revamping its treaty for the first time since 1988, before the World Wide Web took shape and became an economic, cultural and political force usually free from international oversight.

The compromise-in-progress would move most Internet elements from the treaty itself to a separate, U.N.-style "resolution" that is not binding on the countries, delegates said.

A few matters that could govern the Internet remain in the main document and will be debated Wednesday, said Markus Kummer, vice president of the Internet Society, one of several nongovernmental groups that are involved in setting standards now and that sounded alarms about the Dubai conference.

Among the remaining provisions in the draft is a tentative assertion that countries could choose to "manage the naming, numbering, addressing and identification resources used within their territories for international telecommunications."

That could be interpreted as including the right to assign Web addresses, which is currently controlled by ICANN, a United States-based nonprofit under contract to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"The Internet space as such isn't mentioned, but there are a few provisions that might go a little bit into the Internet space and that we need to look at carefully," Kummer said.

The nonbinding resolution, meanwhile, was further softened to allude to the roles of parties from outside government.

"All governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance and for ensuring the stability, security and continuity of the existing Internet and its future development and of the future Internet, and that the need for development of public policy by governments in consultation with all stakeholders is also recognized," the draft states.

Most of the talks have been behind closed doors, and so far the key debate on whether the ITU has a mandate to set Internet-related regulations has not been held in public.

Conference Chairman Mohamed al-Ghanim, director-general of the United Arab Emirates' telecom regulator, has opted to hand over the more controversial issues to private sub-groups.

Open sessions are instead devoted to relatively minor issues, with much of Tuesday's final debate spent squabbling over when the next summit should be held.

When asked if member states had formed an agreement over the terms in which the Internet was referred to in the treaty, Touré said, "of course," but declined to give further details, saying it had yet to be formally approved.

Touré said the treaty would "absolutely not" cover Internet governance, but admitted some references to the Internet were likely to be included in the final text, which may be too much for the United States.

"It's normal to mention the Internet, it's not taboo, because we're all stakeholders of this Internet world," said Touré. "The Internet is one of the biggest issues here, so for me it was important that we resolve this issue. By Thursday we should be ready."

Though the Western camp was happy with Tuesday's negotiations, some of its opponents remained unappeased. A Russia-led coalition resubmitted a previously shelved proposal that calls for sweeping new governmental powers over the Internet.

The revised submission, now co-signed by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan, Bahrain, Iraq and the UAE, says countries should be able to block some Internet locations and take control of address allocation. The proposal also wants to allow states to track and direct Internet traffic and provides a definition of spam so broad it could potentially apply to almost any emailed message, which opponents warn could be used to curb online freedom of expression.

But this proposal has yet to be debated in the public sessions, and its recommendations may have little chance of being approved, especially following Touré's insistence that the treaty would not deal with Internet governance.

"The end result is very unlikely to have anything in it that would justify the amount of fear-mongering that led up to the conference," said Kieren McCarthy, a former ICANN official who runs .Nxt, an information service that specializes in Internet policy.

"But at the same time, there were several concerted efforts to increase government control over the Internet, so it's hard to tell what would have happened if people hadn't been so vociferous."

(Reporting by Matt Smith in Dubai and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by M.D. Golan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8BB00X20121212





Internet Porn: Automatic Block Rejected
BBC

A young girl browses the internet Campaigners say it is too easy for children to access explicit adult content

Ministers have rejected plans to automatically block internet access to pornography on all computers, saying the move is not widely supported.

A public consultation found 35% of parents wanted an automatic bar while 15% wanted some content filtered, and an option to block other material.

But the government says internet providers should encourage parents to switch on parental controls.

Claire Perry, the MP who led the campaign, said she was "disappointed".

The NSPCC said parents' voices were not being heard.

There were more than 3,500 responses to the 10-week consultation - which included those from members of the public, academics, charities and communication firms as well as 757 from parents.

Respondents were asked to answer "yes", "no" or "maybe" to three separate questions about how internet service providers (ISP) could play a role in limiting access.

An automatic block would mean users would have to actively request that pornographic content was made available by their ISP.

Mrs Perry, the Conservative MP for Devizes in Wiltshire, led the campaign and handed over a petition to Downing Street containing more than 115,000 names.

She chaired the cross-party Independent Parliamentary Inquiry on Online Child Protection which concluded in April that government and ISPs needed to do more to keep children safe online.

She told BBC News she was "obviously disappointed that the opt-in option has been rejected" but she added: "Clearly that was not the preferred choice of the 3,500 people who responded to the consultation and we have to base policy on what's been received not what we want."

'Sea change'

She said she was pleased internet service providers would have to actively encourage and prompt parents to switch on filters which will block adult sites to children and verify the age of the person setting up the controls.

She said the exercise had helped to obtain a "sea change in attitude" from ISPs.

The report said there was "no great appetite among parents for the introduction of default filtering of the internet by their ISP - only 35% of the parents who responded favoured that approach".

Some 13% said they favoured "a system where you are automatically asked some questions about what you want your children to be able to access".

And 15% answered "yes" to a system that combined the previous two approaches where some harmful content, such as pornography, was automatically blocked but parents were also asked about what other content their children could access.

The NSPCC said the figures showed that half of the parents who took part in the consultation wanted some sort of automatic block on online pornography.

But the report said an automatic ban - or "opt-in" - approach could lead parents into a "false sense of security" because it could not filter "all potentially harmful content".

'Over-blocking' risk

It also did not "deal with harms such as bullying, personal abuse, grooming or sexual exploitation which arise from the behaviour of other internet users".

It added: "There is also a risk from 'over-blocking' - preventing access to websites which provide helpful information on sexual health or sexual identity, issues which young people may want information on but find difficult to talk to their parents about."

About 70% of the 78 voluntary and community sector organisations that responded answered "yes" to an automatic block while a strong majority of respondents from all other groups answered "no".

While a large majority of the 77 information and communication businesses questioned were against all forms of control, they gave most support (about 18%) to the second approach, in which parents decide what they want their children to access on the internet.

The report found that, taking respondents as a whole, the majority were against all forms of control with more than 80% answering no to each of the three questions.

It praised the the four main ISPs - BT, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Sky - for signing up to a code of practice, offering customers a choice of whether to apply filters, but said providers should go further and actively encourage parents to turn them on.

'Right direction'

The NSPCC said that while the government's response was "a step in the right direction in making the internet safer for children" it was "disappointing" it had not gone further.

"The best option to protect children is for adult content to be automatically blocked by internet service providers," head of corporate affairs Alan Wardle said.

"Hardcore pornographic videos are just a few clicks away and a quarter of children have been sent unsolicited sexual material online."

He said it was vital new measures were rolled out to new and existing customers "quickly".

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, which is opposed to default filtering, said: "This is a positive step that strikes the right balance between child safety and parental responsibility without infringing on civil liberties and freedom of speech.
"The policy recognises it is parents, not government, who are responsible for controlling what their children see online and rightly avoids any kind of state-mandated blocking of legal content."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20738746





New Airwave-Sharing Scheme Will Launch a Wireless Revolution

A policy change means that sections of spectrum can be “checked out” for different purposes at specific locations.
David Talbot

Aiming to boost wireless bandwidth and innovation, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is poised to recommend the biggest regulatory change in decades: one that allows a newly available chunk of wireless spectrum to be leased by different companies at different times and places, rather than being auctioned off to one high bidder.

The step “is a critical milestone,” said David Tennenhouse, Microsoft’s vice president of technology policy, adding that it will not only release more spectrum but also enable “dynamic spectrum sharing that is particularly well suited for absorbing growing wireless data traffic.”

Cisco Systems estimates that mobile data traffic will grow by a factor of 18 by 2016, and Bell Labs predicts it will increase by a factor of 25. Many more airwaves could eventually be shared with the help of cognitive radios, which sense available frequencies and shift between them.

The move will open up a piece of spectrum in the 3.550 to 3.650 gigahertz band now used by radar systems. The move in effect allocates spectrum for another Wi-Fi—a technology that has had tremendous impact. But it is the sharing approach that represents a dramatic change in unleashing bandwidth.

The new rule—technically a “notice of proposed rulemaking,” followed by a regulation-writing process—is scheduled to be voted upon on Wednesday by the FCC. A commission spokesman did not discuss its details, saying they would be released after the vote, but experts familiar with them described them to MIT Technology Review.

Under the proposed rule, wireless carriers, corporate offices, or researchers could reserve pieces of that spectrum in different regions and at different times—a system managed by a central database. The approach guarantees that the spectrum will be available and not subject to interference in certain areas by a crush of new users, as might happen if the new chunk of spectrum were made available with no regulation at all.

Although the checked-out spectrum might be free of charge at first, eventually, depending on the level of demand, a pricing system could be implemented. In theory, this could allow a wireless carrier to pay for priority access in rare cases of extremely high demand. This would give it the right to temporarily evict another party—such as an academic lab, which might be willing to tolerate short-term interruptions in exchange for low- or no-cost access to the spectrum.

Whatever the details, the move spells the beginning of the end of a system in which spectrum is either exclusively owned by a private company, walled off for government and military use, or unlicensed and crowded.

“It’s very different—this is going to allow for people to get low-cost access to the spectrum, to support new types of wireless devices,” said one wireless researcher familiar with the approach. “Initially, you might not pay anybody. But as spectrum becomes more cluttered, you may have to pay something to get access to it.”

Under the new approach, a startup that wants cheap spectrum to test a breakthrough idea would no longer have to rely on cluttered unlicensed bands—such as the “garbage bands” that handle baby monitors and garage-door openers—to experiment with its idea in the real world. Rather, it could use a slice of choice spectrum at zero or low cost—and for a short time period if desired. With the changes expected tomorrow, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski will be following through on earlier pledges to implement recommendations of an advisory report whose authors include Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. The report said spectrum sharing could provide thousands of times the current capacity by reducing inefficiencies (see “The Spectrum Crunch That Never Really Was” and “Spectrum of Issues”) and explained how that could be done by spectrum sharing in a system managed by a database.

Genachowski said in September that the commission would open up some spectrum and promised a “a major innovation in spectrum policy that will in turn enable innovations in wireless applications throughout the economy, including energy, health care, education, and other uses yet to be discovered.”

“This is awesome,” said Vanu Bose, CEO of Vanu, a wireless company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bose served as a technical advisor on the report. He added that the move “will set the groundwork for spectrum sharing in general” but held off on discussing the notice further until after its release.

Already, in some settings, most mobile operators employ Wi-Fi—using 2.4 gigahertz and 5 gigahertz unlicensed bands—to supplement 3G and 4G coverage in “hot spots” like train stations and stadiums.

Dipankar “Ray” Raychaudhuri, head of the wireless research lab at Rutgers University, said the rule might allow the broader use of spectrum-sharing technologies that have long been reserved for research labs. He added that it isn’t clear how the major carriers will use the new system. “There is still some debate about whether operators will embrace the idea of sharing small cell bands, even though it is a supplementary service and doesn’t have to be as reliable” as a major base station, he said.

In some ways, the move resembles what the FCC did when it opened up so-called “white spaces”—unused bands between TV channels (see “Wi-Fi via White Spaces” and “White Spaces Finally Open for Business”). In both cases, the availability of spectrum is to be managed via a centralized database.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news...ss-revolution/





FreedomPop Preps Open Wi-Fi, Launches Free Home Internet Challenging ISPs

Getting hosed by your Internet service provider may seem as inevitable as death and taxes, but a new startup aims to change that.
Tomio Geron

Startup FreedomPop, which is backed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, DCM and Mangrove Capital, provides cheaper Internet access and the ability for people to share access with others on its network. In exchange for sharing their Internet access, they get credits for more free Internet access. The company has the potential to be as disruptive to the broadband industry as Skype is to voice. FreedomPop has a service for sharing and receiving mobile Internet access through its iPod Touch cases (iPhone coming soon). The $99 cases run on WiMAX and turn an iPod touch into an Internet device. There’s also a 4G mi-fi router and a 4G USB dongle for laptops. Almost 40% of users earn some amount of free credits on FreedomPop.

FreedomPop also plans to release a new “open Wi-Fi” local-sharing Internet service through its devices, CEO Stephen Stokols exclusively told FORBES. This new feature will enable FreedomPop devices to share their broadband access to others nearby by using two SSIDs. This is in addition to people sharing their Internet access virtually to anyone on the network. When FreedomPop turns this feature on through a software update, anyone nearby can log onto that broadband device through one of the SSIDs.

Stokols believes this service will disrupt others such as FON, another free Wi-Fi startup. That’s because FON cuts deals with large telecommunications providers such as BT, while FreedomPop doesn’t need to. FON users do not share the majority of their access, because they are home users where others in residential areas do not need access as much, he says. But FreedomPop users can share their access in any public place. FreedomPop could also be disruptive to others such as Boingo Wireless, because why would people pay high fees for Internet access at the airport when they can get free (or nearly free) access through FreedomPop?

FreedomPop is now also entering the home market, with a free home broadband product called FreedomPop Hub Burst that uses Clearwire WiMax, the company is announcing today. FreedomPop is now accepting orders and expects to ship its home modem next month. The service is faster than DSL but slower than cable. Stokols says the service will disrupt incumbents like Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Users get free service of 1 gigabyte per month but they can “earn” unlimited free access by adding friends to their network or participating in partner promotional offers. That amount of data is fine for 70% of users, says Stokols, the former CEO of digital video company Woo Media and vice president at British Telecom.

The service is designed for people who do not use a massive amount of data–that is, don’t stream Netflix or other video–but mostly use email or other “lighter” services. For users who want more data, they can pay $10 per month, which is still much cheaper than a typical $50 from DSL or cable. Or they can pay as they go, like Skype credits. The thinking behind this service is that many companies such as Comcast charge consumers $50 per month for Internet access when they use just a fraction of their service. Instead consumers should pay much less, Stokols says.

Why share your Wi-Fi? If you can share (or rent) your house or car on collaborative consumption sites like Airbnb, RelayRides or Getaround, why not share some of your Wi-Fi access in exchange for more access?

Launched about two months ago, FreedomPop hit cash flow positive last month. It now gives away about 300,000 megabytes of access per day. “What Skype did to voice, we want to do for broadband,” says Stokols.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomioger...ing-on-boingo/





FCC Taking Beating For Plans to Gut Media Consolidation Rules

As Free Press runs petition campaign to gain attention
Karl Bode

The FCC is being slammed by everyone from consumer advocacy outfits to former FCC staffers for their latest stance on media consolidation. The FCC is preparing to relax long-standing rules that limit corporations from owning radio, television stations and newspapers in the same market. Under the weaker rules, one company could now own your town's ISP, all of its newspapers, up to 2 TV stations and up to 8 radio stations.

Consumer advocates have rather correctly observed that this limits the quality and diversity of the news and information a community receives, consumer group Free press running a campaign the last few weeks gathering signatures for a petition to thwart the FCC's plan. In an interview with Bill Moyers, Craig Aaron of Free Press ponders why a President who supported these rules would support an FCC trying to eliminate them:

Well, that’s the $64 million question. Barack Obama as a senator was one of the leading voices against the exact same rules that his FCC chairman is pushing forward now. He wrote op-eds, he co-sponsored legislation to throw out these exact same rules, legislation that passed in the Senate. And yet, his own FCC chairman, his appointee, is suddenly in a huge rush to get this deal done, and if these reports are to be believed, they’re going to try and do this by Christmas, before the end of the year.

In a blog post, former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps laments the FCC's decision, and blames a government culture that's addicted to M&A's, and no longer serves the public:

The public sector is at least equally culpable because government—especially the FCC where I served for more than a decade—blessed just about every media merger and acquisition that came before it. Then it proceeded, over the better part of a generation, to eviscerate almost all of the specific public interest guidelines that had been put in place over many years to ensure that the people’s airwaves actually serve the people.

The upcoming FCC vote, which will be conducted behind closed doors, is being justified by the FCC as a way to help struggling newspapers like the Chicago Tribune, which the agency argues can only survive if they can get funds from larger companies currently prevented from buying them. Though consumer advocates would like to know why exactly the Tribune needs government saving, and why at such a steep cost?
https://secure.dslreports.com/showne...n-Rules-122310





Seattle is the Latest City to Go Around ISPs to Get a Gigabit Network
Stacey Higginbotham

Seattle will join Chicago, Kansas City, Bruistol, Tenn. and other cities with its very own gigabit broadband network. The proposed plan would see a mix of fiber-to-the-home, mobile broadband and gigabit point-to-point wireless services. The city will partner with Gigabit Squared to make it happen.
seattle

Seattle has teamed up with Gigabit Squared, a startup that wants to invest $200 million in building gigabit broadband networks in six college towns around the country, to build a gigabit network. Seattle, which has its own city-owed dark fiber network, and Gigabit Squared have signed a Memorandum of Understanding and a Letter of Intent that will allow Gigabit Squared to begin raising the capital needed to conduct engineering work and to build out the demonstration fiber network.

There are three parts to the network, a fiber-to-home element that will reach 50,000 homes in 12 Seattle neighborhoods. The network will also take advantage of point-to-point wireless, which companies such as WebPass are using, as well as offer some kind of mobile broadband service as well. From the release:

To provide initial coverage beyond the 12 demonstration neighborhoods, Gigabit Seattle intends to build a dedicated gigabit broadband wireless umbrella to cover Seattle providing point-to-point radio access up to one gigabit per second. This will be achieved by placing fiber transmitters on top of 38 buildings across Seattle. These transmitters can beam fiber internet to multifamily housing and offices across Seattle, even those outside the twelve demonstration neighborhoods, as long as they are in a line of sight. Internet service would be delivered to individual units within a building through existing wiring. This wireless coverage can provide network and Internet services to customers that do not have immediate access to fiber in the city.

This will be Gigabit Squared’s second fiber commitment under an arrangement it has with the Gig.U project headed by Blair Levin. Levin, who led the efforts to write the National Broadband Plan, formed Gig.U to make sure the U.S. maintains a competitive edge in broadband infrastructure. His idea is to build gigabit networks in U.S. college towns so students and researchers can keep up with the broadband speeds that other countries are developing.

Gigabit Squared’s first commitment was in Chicago, which it announced in October. Chicago had already announced a plan to dig trenches for fiber-to-the-home service as part of an upgrade to the city’s utilities, so Gigabit Squared probably saw a willing municipal partner and jumped.

What’s fascinating about all of these models is that they are bypassing traditional ISPs, such as the telcos and cable firms to build out city-specific programs where the municipality and a private company work together to build out the network. Google took this same approach in Kansas City when it chose that town for its Google Fiber deployment. And lest other municipalities feel left out (ahem, Austin!!) Google said this week that it would expand Google Fiber to more cities, while Gigabit Squared still has four more towns left if it follows its original plan.
http://gigaom.com/2012/12/13/seattle...gabit-network/





The Redbox Verizon Movie Service Is Almost Ready to Take On Netflix
Peter Kafka

Here comes the next video service that wants to take on Netflix: Redbox and Verizon are finally ready to launch their long-awaited joint venture.

Well, almost ready: “Redbox Instant by Verizon” will go into an invitation-only beta launch this month, and the official push won’t start until next year.

Still, this means the company is officially unveiling its offering. Which is exactly what we told you it would be: A service that’s supposed to offer some streaming video, a la Netflix, and some movies via DVD, a la the old Netflix and the curent RedBox. And the ability to buy and rent individual movies online, like iTunes and Amazon.

The basic offer: $8 a month for a selection of streaming movies and the ability to rent up to 4 DVDs a month from Redboxes’ kiosks, plus an online store where you can buy or rent newer movies.

If you don’t want to or can’t use the Redbox kiosks you can go for a streaming-only option for $6. If you want to rent Blu-ray discs, that’s $9 a month.

Like Netflix and Amazon, Redbox has a deal with Epix, which means you’ll get newish movies like Thor, along with some big titles like the Hunger Games, after they’ve been available for rental and on pay TV. It also has a similar deal for older movies from Warner Bros., which hasn’t cut deals with Netflix or Amazon (yet).

But the JV won’t have the deeper catalog titles its competitors have built up. And it’s pretty much ignored the TV titles that Netflix in particular has concentrated on in recent years.

On the other hand, it will have an online store where you can rent and buy movies, which Netflix doesn’t offer — because, says CEO Reed Hastings, everyone else does. Though this store will be different than ones run by other online retailers like Amazon and iTunes: For whatever reason, the company hasn’t signed on all of the studios, so there will be notable gaps from the likes of Disney and Sony.

So basically: Costs about the same as Netflix, without some of the stuff people like about Netflix, with other stuff Netflix doesn’t have.

Is that compelling enough to take market share away from Hastings? We’ll have to wait some time to see, but it’s worth noting that Amazon and Hulu, which have been at this for a while, have yet to make a real dent.

In the meantime, the most interesting thing about Redbox Instant is what it could be, one day, if Verzion wants to push it.The service isn’t confined to Verizon’s fiber or wireless footprint, which means it could truly make it a national video service, if it wants to commit the resources. So far this looks more like a toe in the water than anything else.
http://allthingsd.com/20121211/the-r...ke-on-netflix/





Analysis: In Pixel Wars, LCD Has Staying Power, Refuses to Die
Miyoung Kim

Liquid-crystal display (LCD) screens were expected to slowly fade and die, giving way to lighter, thinner and tougher organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels in everything from smartphones to televisions.

But LCD is refusing to go quietly as its picture quality keeps getting better. At the same time, the major backers of credit card-thin OLED panels - led by Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics Inc - are struggling to make the technology cheap enough to mass produce. The two South Korean firms this year showcased 55-inch OLED TVs, but priced at around $10,000 - 10 times that of an LCD equivalent - they have yet to reach store shelves.

OLED displays, used on Samsung's Galaxy S and Note smartphones, have been touted as the future display model to replace LCDs across the consumer electronics spectrum - from TVs to computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. OLED is more energy efficient and offers higher contrast images than LCD, and is so thin that future mobile devices will be unbreakable, and will be able to be folded or rolled up like a newspaper.

But OLED panel makers such as Samsung Display and LG Display have yet to address major manufacturing challenges to lower costs to compete against LCD panels.

At the same time, LCD panels, which are used on 9 of every 10 television sets, are still evolving and show no sign of giving way in this latest battle to set the global standard - less than a decade since LCD effectively killed off plasma screens.

"OLED still has a long way to go to become a mainstream display, as it has to become bigger and improve picture quality," said Chung Won-seok, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities. "The use of OLEDs will continue to be confined to small displays at least for the next 2-3 years. Its usage as a mainstream TV panel is only likely in 2014, but even then there's a possibility of intense competition with LCD TVs as that technology keeps improving."

According to DisplaySearch, it will take another four years for OLED screens to capture less than a tenth of the global TV screen market.

PIXEL WAR

Far from fading, LCD panels now offer better picture quality - up to four times better than OLED - and use less power, creating robust demand from smartphone and tablet makers.

As has often been the case, Apple Inc moved the goalposts by upgrading the display resolution for its iPhone and iPad, still the high-end LCD market's gold standard, prompting rivals to upgrade their display panel qualifications. Analysts at Macquarie predict Apple will adopt high-resolution screens for the MacBook Air and iMac monitor next year, accelerating the industry's shift to high-resolution displays.

"It's only a matter of time (before) other high-end notebook companies such as Sony Corp, Toshiba Corp and Samsung upgrade their screens to high-resolution to compete with Apple's MacBook series," Macquarie analyst Henry Kim wrote in a recent client note.
Rivals are taking note.

Taiwan's HTC Corp has introduced the Droid DNA smartphone with a 440 pixel per inch (ppi) density - the sharpest smartphone screen yet, with far higher resolution than the iPad's 330 ppi and the iPhone 5's 326 ppi. Samsung's Galaxy S III, which uses an OLED screen, has 306 ppi density.

"The pixel war is an absolute bonanza for LCD makers," said Kim Byung-ki, analyst at Kiwoom Securities. "Manufacturers from LG Display to Samsung, Sharp Corp, AU Optronics Corp and Chimei (Innolux) all will gradually convert their traditional lines into more high-end product fabs, and that will curtail supply and boost profitability."

These higher-resolution panels cost more than double the commodity-type LCD screens, boosting panel producers' profits. Even Samsung, the standard bearer for OLED panels and also a major LCD manufacturer, is actively promoting LCD screens for tablets and laptops over OLED, said a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to talk to the media so didn't want to be named.

Sharper resolution LCD TV screens also mean OLED is struggling to make inroads in that market.

Both Sony and LG Electronics now sell ultra HD (high definition) LCD sets that boast four times the picture quality of HD TVs. The two firms, which are selling 84-inch TVs, aim to reduce that size to cater for more popular smaller sets.

IN TIGHT SUPPLY?

To squeeze more pixels per inch, panel makers are upgrading their thin-film transistor (TFT) panel production facilities to new IGZO or LTPS processing technologies that require almost twice as many processing steps and which suffer higher faulty product rates and lost output.

Japan's Sharp is the frontrunner in IGZO technology, which uses indium gallium zinc oxide instead of amorphous silicon, in panel manufacturing. LG Display, a major supplier to Apple, is investing 1.2 trillion won ($1.1 billion) by end-2013 in its production of low-temperature poly silicon (LTPS) panels - a technology used to make screens for the iPhone and iPad.

While new technologies can be game-changers, these panels are not simple to produce, limiting availability and driving up manufacturing costs. Some warn of an LCD supply shortage.

"The LCD industry is improving more strongly than expected and panels are likely to be in short supply from 2013, as manufacturers upgrade their lines to increase high-end products. This requires more processing time and steps, reducing total output," said Kim Dong-won, an analyst at Hyundai Securities.

Converting a line to IGZO and LTPS processing can cut LCD output by 30-70 percent, according to BNP Paribas.

As LCD prospects improve, LG Display, the world's top LCD maker, swung to a quarterly profit in July-September, ending a run of seven straight quarterly losses.

LG Display is expected to continue its solid performance, as Apple buys fewer parts from rival Samsung and moves more to high-end displays on a wider range of its products. LG Display shares have risen by around a third in 3 months, double Samsung's gains. In Taiwan, AU Optronics shares are up 41 percent over that same period and Chimei is up 45 percent. Shares in cash-strapped Sharp hit a 2-month high on Wednesday after the company secured an up to $120 million cash injection from Qualcomm Inc, which will help it fund development of its IZGO technology.

As the global TV market is forecast to shrink 1-2 percent next year, panel makers with higher exposure to the booming mobile markets will lead a recovery, say analysts, though some caution that shares may be rising too fast.

"LG Display and its peers are actually sowing the seeds of the next cycle downturn by doing what they always do - wherever they see a profit opportunity, they focus on it, adding capacity and dissipating the excess returns," said Stanford Bernstein analyst Alberto Moel. ($1 = 1083.1000 Korean won)

(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8B915C20121210





What’s Facebook’s Responsibility When the Nation Seeks to Lynch Someone on Only a Name?
David Holmes

This morning, a mass shooting occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut where 26 people were reportedly killed, including 20 children. Once police initially identified the suspect of this unspeakable tragedy as 24-year-old Ryan Lanza, the race was on for citizen and professional journalists to scour social networks for photos, Tweets, and status updates from the suspect. (We can only assume this digital manhunt was intended to offer insight into what kind of person would do such a thing, even though such questions always go unanswered).

As it turned out, a Ryan Lanza hailing from Newtown, CT who looked around 24-years-old had a Facebook page. As links to the page circulated around Twitter, professional news organizations caught on: Slate Tweeted a link to the page with the comment, “CNN names suspect as Ryan Lanza the likely FB page.” (Slate later retracted the Tweet). Buzzfeed published Lanza’s Facebook picture with the irresistible headline, “First Possible Photo of Suspected Sandy Hook Shooter” (the page has been removed, but the URL is still live). Meanwhile, Gawker hedged their bets slightly with the headline, “Is this Ryan Lanza, the Connecticut school shooter?” (Gawker also changed its story, but proof of the original headline is still in the URL). And it wasn’t just new media outlets. According to Reuters’ Matthew Keys, an anchor for WCBS-TV in New York said, “That is the face of the young man, Ryan Lanza,” as the station flashed the Facebook photo.

I think you know where this is going: The Ryan Lanza whose name and face was suddenly plastered all over social networks and television screens was not the same Ryan Lanza killed at the scene and identified by police as the suspected shooter. And now, astoudingly, police have revealed that the shooter’s name is actually Adam Lanza, not Ryan Lanza.

Although the Ryan Lanza who was unfairly “doxxed” this morning had a private profile, his Facebook friend Andrew Fletcher began publishing screenshots of his Wall where Lanza proclaimed his innocence:

The press didn’t make things better by spreading the Facebook profile prematurely, and there’s a lively, nuanced discussion about that taking place on Twitter and elsewhere. But even if the press hadn’t dropped the ball so colossally, it’s likely that the hate pages would still have propagated. It no longer takes press credentials to broadcast a rumor to a billion people. With that in mind, do platforms like Facebook which enable these broadcasts have a responsibility to curb rumor-inspired hatred? Should Facebook have locked profiles belonging to people named Ryan Lanza so only the user could post content to the wall? And should Facebook be more proactive in removing (at least provisionally) hate groups like the ones listed above?

Okay, before you start crying foul about free speech and the 1st amendment, it’s not like this would be the first time a platform has momentarily suspended activity to allow time for rumors to be debunked. In October, after unsubstantiated rumors that Microsoft planned to buy Netflix drove Netflix’s stock up, Nasdaq halted trading of the company. And that’s hardly the first time Nasdaq has halted a stock to address a rumor. Nasdaq rules dictate that it “may implement a temporary trading halt to allow for even dissemination of the information. A trading halt provides the public with an opportunity to evaluate material information and consider it in making investment decisions.” Sounds like a sound policy. If a platform is willing to suspend activity to protect a company’s market share from momentary panic, why isn’t the same courtesy extended when someone’s reputation and livelihood is at stake?

For Facebook to suspend profiles, even temporarily, in situations like this, is probably taking things too far. After all, when the press is doing its job, social networks can be helpful tools for verifying information. Fast Company’s social media editor Anjali Mullany wrote on Twitter that she doesn’t see the point of blocking profiles. “To prevent the press from looking for info? That seems wrong… I think the greater responsibility lies with the press not tripping over itself to be first in an unhelpful way.”

But what about an alert sent to every Facebook user named Ryan (or now Adam) Lanza that says, “Hey you might encounter a lot of hate thrown your way today, so you may want to update your profile page or privacy settings accordingly”? Or for those with private accounts, “Here’s how you can post a public message if you’d like to say something.” It would avoid the slippery slope of censorship while giving potential victims of misdirected hate a chance to preemptively defend themselves.

Yes, we can blame the press or blame human nature or blame the mob mentality for Internet rumors. But Facebook arguably wields more power to inform or misinform when it comes to identities than any single press outlet. And when you host discussions for one billion users, you might want to take responsibility when people use your platform to ignite a digital lynch mob, especially when all it takes is 10 minutes to save someone’s reputation.
http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/14/wha...n-only-a-name/





Augmented Reality Game Gets Player Arrested: The First Of Many?
Cormac Foster

Ingress, the Alternate/Augmented Reality (AR) game from Google's Niantic Labs, is a major evolution of mobile gaming. Apparently, it's also a good way to get arrested.

According to a post on Reddit (I know, I know – but stay with me on this), an Ingress player in Ohio was detained by police for his in-game actions. Specifically, he was "hacking a portal" near a police station. His phone had technical difficulties, which led him to linger by the portal/police station for a bit, catching the eye of local law enforcement and leading to the detention.

After the original post, other Ingress players responded with similar stories. One aroused suspicions by wandering around an empty parking lot at night. Another, trying to hack a portal next to an air traffic control station, had to run from the local sheriff. A third was called in for questioning after hacking a portal outside of a "high-traffic drug area."

It's In The Game

As Dan Rowinski mentioned in his earlier post, there's plenty of "creep" factor built into the game. In fact, much like geocaching (Ingress' non-digital ancestor), lurking in strange and hard-to-get-to places at odd hours is kind of the point.

Getting detained (as many Redditors pointed out, the poster wasn't technically arrested) probably adds to the intrigue, and certainly gives a player a certain amount of street cred. It could also call into question the boundary between the First Amendment and public safety.

Legal, But Risky

All of Ingress' portals are on public land. There's no law against walking past a police station, post office or airport. There are, however, very legitimate safety concerns held by the people charged with protecting those facilities and keeping an eye out for potential risks.

As one law enforcement professional joked, "I hope they don't put one of those in front of the White House." In fact, there are apparently a bunch of portals in front of the White House, embassies and other sites that could be high-interest targets for vandalism or worse.

At least Ingress doesn't require players to dig up or bury physical objects, a phenomenon that has caused some high-profile problems in the geocaching community. Still, as similar games take off (and they will), we're going to see more friction between gamers and law enforcement, particularly in full AR environments that use cameras. In addition to trespassing and loitering violations, there's greatly increased potential for distraction, perhaps leading gamers to injure themselves or others. It's all the danger of texting - plus headphones - with the added possibility of being labeled a terrorist by overzealous cops.

The Future

By all accounts, Niantic labs has been responsible about these issues. The game doesn't encourage trespassing or dangerous behavior, like using your phone in a car. Other developers may not feel the same sense of duty, or their goals may encourage "creative" players to take unnecessary risks.

If enough negligence, trespassing, and pubic nuisance suits (and maybe some claims of police harassment) hit the courts, we'll eventually wind up with legislation governing the balance between gameplay and public safety. We might see an increase of no-device buffer zones around sensitive areas, or certain games limiting accounts to only users of age to accept legal responsibility for their actions. There could even be outright bans on AR games in certain areas.

Until then, it's up to game developers to police themselves and players to stay smart. One dumb move could lead to a ton of regulation that could really spoil everyone's fun.
http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/augm...-first-of-many





Editorial: If Barrett Brown's Guilty, Then So Am I
Paul Wagenseil

Dallas writer Barrett Brown, who was involved with the "hacktivist" movement Anonymous until earlier this year, was indicted last Tuesday (Dec. 4) on 12 counts related to possession of stolen credit-card numbers.

The indictment alleges that Brown possessed at least 10 stolen credit-card numbers and card-verification values (CVVs), and also shared a link to a document that contained thousands more stolen credit-card numbers. He faces 45 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

However, the indictment does not allege that Brown himself stole the credit-card numbers or that he profited from having them. It states that merely possessing the numbers shows "intent to defraud."

What Brown actually did was post a link to a "data dump" of stolen information, including credit-card numbers, on his own Internet Relay Chat forum. He also had one or more text files containing about 10 stolen credit-card numbers on his own computer.

If that's the case, then dozens of technology journalists, including possibly this writer, as well hundreds of technology researchers, might be considered just as guilty as Brown.

Many online news reports include links to websites where politically motivated hackers post their manifestos, and those manifestos in turn often contain links to file-sharing sites that house stolen data.

Are journalists who post those links trafficking in stolen goods?

Because of those manifestos, data dumps themselves are easy to find, copy and analyze. To security researchers, they provide a good look at how bad digital security can be. To journalists who cover digital security, they are primary sources for news stories.

Are researchers and journalist who possess copies of the data dumps guilty of "intent to defraud," even if they never plan to use the information for ill-gotten gain?

The Stratfor connection

Last week's indictment stems from the December 2011 hack into servers belonging to Stratfor Global Intelligence (formerly Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), an Austin, Texas, firm that consults corporations and government agencies on geopolitical matters.

Hackers working with the Anonymous offshoot AntiSec (which included a government informant) broke into Stratfor's servers looking for evidence to support their suspicions that the firm was operating as a private spy agency.

AntiSec copied everything it could access in Stratfor's servers and posted the information online. There was a lot of it — approximately 860,000 email addresses and encrypted passwords, 68,000 unencrypted credit-card numbers and 50,000 telephone numbers, most of them belonging to subscribers of Stratfor's email newsletter.

But the real find was 5 million internal company emails, which Wikileaks later posted online, again as part of an attempt to prove that Stratfor was deeply involved with secret governmental and corporate skullduggery.

(Disclosure: This writer subscribed to Stratfor's emailed newsletter for several years and still finds the company's analyses informed and insightful.)

"Stratfor was not breached in order to obtain customer credit-card numbers, which the hackers in question could not have expected to be as easily obtainable as they were," Brown wrote in an online posting after the breach was revealed. (Stratfor had unwisely stored the card numbers in plain text.) "Rather, the operation was pursued in order to obtain the 2.7 million e-mails that exist on the firm's servers."

The AntiSec hackers said at the time that they used some of the stolen credit-card data to make donations to the Red Cross, Save the Children, WikiLeaks and other charities. That was never fully confirmed, but some people on the Stratfor email list were tricked into seeing Rick Astley videos.

Brown is not accused of taking part in the Stratfor hack. By his own admission, he's not technically skilled.

But he did learn of it before it was publicly disclosed, and sent out tweets promising that something big was about to be revealed.

Once AntiSec made the data breach public on Christmas Day 2011, Brown, as he had done before, became the public face of Anonymous, explaining the group's methods and motivations to the media without claiming to be part of it.

The alleged crimes

"On or about December 25, 2011," last week's indictment states, "defendant Barrett Lancaster Brown … did knowingly traffic in more than five authentication features knowing that such features were stolen and produced without lawful authority."

Specifically, "Brown transferred the hyperlink 'http://wikisend.com/download/597646/stratfor_full_b.txt.gz' from the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel called '#AnonOps' to an IRC channel under Brown's control called '#ProjectPM.'

"Said hyperlink provided access to data stolen from the company Stratfor Global Intelligence, to include in excess of 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders' identification information, and the authentication features for the credit cards known as the Card Verification Values (CVV), and by transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor Global Intelligence and the card holders."

For this, Brown was indicted on one count of trafficking in stolen authentication features. According to the press release by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas, the count carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

Brown is also alleged to have possessed "at least 15 ... unauthorized access devices," i.e., "stolen credit card account numbers" and CVVs. According to the indictment, that constitutes access device fraud, which could bring 10 years in prison.

Brown was also indicted on 10 separate counts of aggravated identity theft, each of which carries a mandatory two-year sentence and a possible $250,000 fine.

The identity-theft charges stem from the allegation that Brown "knowingly transferred and possessed without lawful authority the means of identification" of 10 separate individuals identified in the indictment only by their initials and cities of residence.

Brown allegedly possessed those 10 individuals' names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, Stratfor usernames, credit-card numbers and CVVs — just as would anyone else who had downloaded and examined the data dumps that were posted online.

Pressure to talk?

To someone versed in digital security, the government's case against Brown sounds weak. But to the average American juror, the indictment could make it sound like Brown's a master cybercriminal, the equivalent of the Russian crooks who steal millions from American bank accounts every year.

The U.S. government seems to be cracking down on nuisances like Brown just as ardently as it does on online organized crime. Prosecutors may be exploiting the general public's lack of understanding of digital security in order to bring charges for trivial or non-existent offenses.

The technology is ahead of the law by a generation or two, and there's no easy way to fix that problem.

Just last month, "gray hat" hacker Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer was convicted of conspiracy to hack into a computer and of personal-information fraud, even though all he did was show a reporter data that a friend had collected from a publicly accessible website.

Brown never tried to sell the information he had, which might have netted him a few dollars in underground criminal bazaars. Auernheimer's information, a collection of email addresses, might have been of interest to spammers or online marketers, but he made no attempt to sell it either.

Perhaps the government feels emboldened by the Auernheimer conviction. Perhaps prosecutors plan to use Brown's indictment to pressure him into giving up what he knows about Anonymous. (Brown has been jailed since September for allegedly threatening an FBI agent.)

What is clear is that federal prosecutors seem to be stretching the definition of digital-information crimes to include a wide range of activities that would, in the physical world, be considered lawful.

In the real world, it's not a criminal offense to know a stranger's name, address or license-plate number. It's not a crime to find and pick up a credit card that someone else dropped in the street.

In the physical world, you don't actually commit a crime until you take action by stealing the stranger's car, breaking into his house or using his credit card.

But according to Barrett Brown's indictment, merely knowing the digital equivalents of these items is enough to send you to prison for 45 years.
http://www.technewsdaily.com/15852-b...editorial.html





Public Buses Across Country Quietly Adding Microphones to Record Passenger Conversations
Kim Zetter

Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet.

The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases, according to the Daily, which obtained copies of contracts, procurement requests, specs and other documents.

The use of the equipment raises serious questions about eavesdropping without a warrant, particularly since recordings of passengers could be obtained and used by law enforcement agencies.

It also raises questions about security, since the IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a built-in web server, and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city.

The RoadRecorder 7000 surveillance system being marketed for use on public buses consists of a high-definition IP camera and audio recording system that can be configured remotely via built-in web server.

According to the product pamphlet for the RoadRecorder 7000 system made by SafetyVision, “Remote connectivity to the RoadRecorder 7000 NVR can be established via the Gigabit Ethernet port or the built-in 3G modem. A robust software ecosystem including LiveTrax vehicle tracking and video streaming service combined with SafetyNet central management system allows authorized users to check health status, create custom alerts, track vehicles, automate event downloads and much more.”

The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus.

Cities that have installed the systems or have taken steps to procure them include San Francisco, California; Eugene, Oregon; Traverse City, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Baltimore Maryland; Hartford, Connecticut; and Athens, Georgia.

San Francisco transit authorities recently approved a $5.9 million contract to install an audio surveillance system on 357 buses and vintage trolley cars, paid for in full with a grant from DHS. The contract includes the option to expand the equipment to an additional 600 vehicles.

Concord, New Hampshire also used part of a $1.2 million economic stimulus grant to install its new video/audio surveillance system on buses, according to the Daily.

Transit officials say the systems will help improve the safety of passengers and drivers and resolve complaints from riders. But privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings.

In Eugene, Oregon, the Daily found, transit officials requested microphones that would be capable of “distilling clear conversations from the background noise of other voices, wind, traffic, windshields wipers and engines” and also wanted at least five audio channels spread across each bus that would be “paired with one or more camera images and recorded synchronously with the video for simultaneous playback.”

In 2009, transit officials in Baltimore, Maryland, backed down briefly from plans to install microphones in buses in that city after civil liberties groups complained that the systems would violate wiretapping laws and constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure. Transit authorities then asked the state’s attorney general to weigh-in on whether the systems violated wiretapping laws. After the attorney general indicated that signs warning passengers of the surveillance would help combat any legal challenges, transit officials pressed forward with their plans last month and announced the installation of an audio recording system on 10 public buses. The city plans to roll out the system on at least 340 additional buses.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...-surveillance/





The Hum that Helps to Fight Crime

A hum that comes from mains electricity has allowed forensic scientists to establish whether recordings are genuine
Rebecca Morelle

A rape victim has come forward to the police. She says she has confronted her attacker and has secretly recorded him admitting his guilt.

A suspected terrorist has been taped planning a deadly attack, and the police want to use this evidence in court. Or someone has been captured on CCTV threatening an assault.

Increasingly, recordings like these are playing a role in criminal investigations.

But how can the police be sure that the audio evidence is genuine, that it has not been tampered with or cleverly edited?

Forensic scientists have come up with the answer: they can authenticate these recordings with the help of a hum.

Electric find

For the last seven years, at the Metropolitan Police forensic lab in south London, audio specialists have been continuously recording the sound of mains electricity.

It is an all pervasive hum that we normally cannot hear. But boost it a little, and a metallic and not very pleasant buzz fills the air.

"The power is sent out over the national grid to factories, shops and of course our homes. Normally this frequency, known as the mains frequency, is about 50Hz," explains Dr Alan Cooper, a senior digital forensic practitioner at the Met Police.

Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source, be it plug socket, light or pylon, will pick up this noise and it will be embedded throughout the audio.

This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings. But for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime.

While the frequency of the electricity supplied by the national grid is about 50Hz, if you look at it over time, you can see minute fluctuations.

"It's because the supply and demand is unpredictable," says Dr Cooper.

If millions of people suddenly switch on their kettle after watching their favourite soap, the demand for electricity may outstrip the supply, and the generators will pump out more electricity, and the frequency will go up.

"But when supply is greater than demand, the generators will slow down and the frequency will go down," explains Dr Cooper.

"The grid operators will try and compensate for this, but you can sometimes see some very significant fluctuations."

Silent witness

A decade ago, a Romanian audio specialist Dr Catalan Grigoras, now director of the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado, Denver, made a discovery: that the pattern of these random changes in frequency is unique over time.

By itself, this might be an interesting electrical curiosity. But when you take into account that most digital recordings are also embedded with this hum, it becomes a game changer.

Comparing the unique pattern of the frequencies on an audio recording with a database that has been logging these changes for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year provides a digital watermark: a date and time stamp on the recording.

Philip Harrison, from JP French Associates, another forensic audio laboratory that has been logging the hum for several years, says: "Even if [the hum] is picked up at a very low level that you cannot hear, we can extract this information."

It is a technique known as Electric Network Frequency (ENF) analysis, and it is helping forensic scientists to separate genuine, unedited recordings from those that have been tampered with.

Dr Harrison said: "We can extract [the hum] and compare it with the database - if it is a continuous recording, it will all match up nicely.

"If we've got some breaks in the recording, if it's been stopped and started, the profiles won't match or there will be a section missing. Or if it has come from two different recordings looking as if it is one, we'll have two different profiles within that one recording."

In the UK, because one national grid supplies the country with electricity, the fluctuations in frequency are the same the country over. So it does not matter if the recording has been made in Aberdeen or Southampton, the comparison will work.

Elsewhere around the world, it is slightly more complicated because some countries can have two or more grids. But in these cases, all it takes is for the hum to be continuously logged on each power system and for a recording to be compared against each of them.

Dr Harrison said: "This has really been a key tool in the box to help us with this kind of work."

Crucial in court

Recently, Dr Cooper was called as a witness on ENF in court for the first time.

A gang were accused of selling weapons, and undercover police had recorded an arms deal. But the defence claimed that the police had tampered with the recording and had edited together several separate recordings together to make their case.

Dr Cooper said: "The defence made the allegations and we were asked if we could authenticate the recordings.

"We carried out various forms of analysis, including the mains hum frequency analysis and we found some good quality signals, and that the alleged date and times of the recordings matched with the extracted data from the recordings themselves."

The analysis revealed that the recordings had not been tampered with - and this proved crucial to the trial. The trio - Hume Bent, Carlos Moncrieffe and Christopher McKenzie - were found guilty and jailed for a total of 33 years for being involved in the supply of firearms.

The Met Police were the first to automate the system, and Dr Cooper says the technique is now starting to be used widely by this force, as well as others around the world. But even with advances like this, he admits there are always new challenges ahead.

He says: "Digital forensics is constantly in flux, and the technology is changing every day. Every time a new format comes out, we need to be able to extract the data from those recordings and find different techniques to find out more about them"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20629671





Selling Flak Jackets in the Cyberwars
Gerry Shih

When the Israeli army and Hamas trade virtual blows in cyberspace, or when hacker groups like Anonymous rise from the digital ether, or when WikiLeaks dumps a trove of classified documents, some see a lawless Internet.

But Matthew Prince, chief executive at CloudFlare, a little-known Internet start-up that serves some of the Web's most controversial characters, sees a business opportunity.

Founded in 2010, CloudFlare markets itself as an Internet intermediary that shields websites from distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks, the crude but effective weapon that hackers use to bludgeon websites until they go dark. The 40-person company claims to route up to 5 percent of all Internet traffic through its global network.

Prince calls his company the "Switzerland" of cyberspace - assiduously neutral and open to all comers. But just as companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have faced profound questions about the balance between free speech and openness on the Internet and national security and law enforcement concerns, CloudFlare's business has posed another thorny question: what kinds of services, if any, should an American company be allowed to offer designated terrorists and cyber criminals?

CloudFlare's unusual position at the heart of this debate came to the fore last month, when the Israel Defense Forces sought help from CloudFlare after its website was struck by attackers based in Gaza. The IDF was turning to the same company that provides those services to Hamas and the al-Quds Brigades, according to publicly searchable domain information. Both Hamas and al-Quds, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are designated by the United States as terrorist groups.

Under the USA Patriot Act, U.S. firms are forbidden from providing "material support" to groups deemed foreign terrorist organizations. But what constitutes material support - like many other facets of the law itself - has been subject to intense debate.

CloudFlare's dealings have attracted heated criticism in the blogosphere from both Israelis and Palestinians, but Prince defended his company as a champion of free speech.

"Both sides have an absolute right to tell their story," said Prince, a 38-year old former lawyer. "We're not providing material support for anybody. We're not sending money, or helping people arm themselves."

Prince noted that his company only provides defensive capabilities that enable websites to stay online.

"We can't be sitting in a role where we decide what is good or what is bad based on our own personal biases," he said. "That's a huge slippery slope."

Many U.S. agencies are customers, but so is WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization. CloudFlare has consulted for many Wall Street institutions, yet also protects Anonymous, the "hacktivist" group associated with the Occupy movement.

Prince's stance could be tested at a time when some lawmakers in the United States and Europe, armed with evidence that militant groups rely on the Web for critical operations and recruitment purposes, have pressured Internet companies to censor content or cut off customers.

Last month, conservative political lobbies, as well as seven lawmakers led by Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, urged the FBI to shut down the Hamas Twitter account. The account remains active; Twitter declined to comment.

MATERIAL SUPPORT

Although it has never prosecuted an Internet company under the Patriot Act, the government's use of the material support argument has steadily risen since 2006. Since September 11, 2001, more than 260 cases have been charged under the provision, according to Fordham Law School's Terrorism Trends database.

Catherine Lotrionte, the director of Georgetown University's Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and a former Central Intelligence Agency lawyer, argued that Internet companies should be more closely regulated.

"Material support includes web services," Lotrionte said. "Denying them services makes it more costly for the terrorists. You're cornering them."

But others have warned that an aggressive government approach would have a chilling effect on free speech.

"We're resurrecting the kind of broad-brush approaches we used in the McCarthy era," said David Cole, who represented the Humanitarian Law Project, a non-profit organization that was charged by the Justice Department for teaching law to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. The group took its case to the Supreme Court but lost in 2010.

The material support law is vague and ill-crafted, to the point where basic telecom providers, for instance, could be found guilty by association if a terrorist logs onto the Web to plot an attack, Cole said.

In that case, he asked, "Do we really think that AT&T or Google should be held accountable?"

CloudFlare said it has not been contacted about its services by the U.S. government. Spokespeople for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, told Reuters they contracted a cyber-security company in Gaza that out-sources work to foreign companies, but declined to comment further. The IDF confirmed it had hired CloudFlare, but declined to discuss "internal security" matters.

CloudFlare offers many of its services for free, but the company says websites seeking advanced protection and features can see their bill rise to more than $3,000 a month. Prince declined to discuss the business arrangements with specific customers.

While not yet profitable, CloudFlare has more than doubled its revenue in the past four months, according to Prince, and is picking up 3,000 new customers a month. The company has raked in more than $22 million from venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates, Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners.

Prince, a Midwestern native with mussed brown hair who holds a law degree from the University of Chicago, said he has a track record of working on the right side of the law.

A decade ago, Prince provided free legal aid to Spamhaus, an international group that tracked email spammers and identity thieves. He went on to create Project Honey Pot, an open source spam-tracking endeavor that turned over findings to police.

Prince's latest company, CloudFlare, has been hailed by groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists for protecting speech. Another client, the World Economic Forum, named CloudFlare among its 2012 "technology pioneers" for its work. But it also owes its profile to its most controversial customers.

CloudFlare has hosted 4Chan, the online messaging community that spawned Anonymous. LulzSec, the hacker group best known for targeting Sony Corp, is another customer. And since last May, the company has propped up WikiLeaks after a vigilante hacker group crashed the document repository.

Last year, members of the hacker collective UgNazi, whose exploits include pilfering user account information from eBay and crashing the CIA.gov website, broke into Prince's cell phone and email accounts.

"It was a personal affront," Prince said. "But we never kicked them off either."

Prince said CloudFlare would comply with a valid court order to remove a customer, but that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has never requested a takedown. The company has agreed to turn over information to authorities on "exceedingly rare" occasions, he acknowledged, declining to elaborate.

"Any company that doesn't do that won't be in business long," Prince said. But in an email, he added: "We have a deep and abiding respect for our users' privacy, disclose to our users whenever possible if we are ordered to turn over information and would fight an order that we believed was not proper."

Juliannne Sohn, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted computer crimes, said U.S. law enforcement agencies may in fact prefer that the Web's most wanted are parked behind CloudFlare rather than a foreign service over which they have no jurisdiction.

Federal investigators "want to gather information from as many sources as they can, and they're happy to get it," Sussmann said.

In an era of rampant cyber warfare, Prince acknowledged he is something of a war profiteer, but with a wrinkle.

"We're not selling bullets," he said. "We're selling flak jackets."

(Reporting By Gerry Shih in San Francisco and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Jonathan Weber and Claudia Parsons)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8BC0OB20121213





A Vault for Taking Charge of Your Online Life
Natasha Singer

“YOU are walking around naked on the Internet and you need some clothes,” says Michael Fertik. “I am going to sell you some.”

Naked? Not exactly, but close.

Mr. Fertik, 34, is the chief executive of Reputation.com, a company that helps people manage their online reputations. From his perch here in Silicon Valley, he views the digital screens in our lives, the smartphones and the tablets, the desktops and the laptops, as windows of a house. People go about their lives on the inside, he says, while dozens of marketing and analytics companies watch through the windows, sizing them up like peeping Toms.

By now many Americans are learning that they are living in a surveillance economy. “Information resellers,” also known as “data brokers,” have collected hundreds to thousands of details — what we buy, our race or ethnicity, our finances and health concerns, our Web activities and social networks — on almost every American adult. Other companies that specialize in ranking consumers use computer algorithms to covertly score Internet users, identifying some as “high-value” consumers worthy of receiving pitches for premium credit cards and other offers, while dismissing others as a waste of time and marketing money. Yet another type of company, called an ad-trading platform, profiles Internet users and auctions off online access to them to marketers in a practice called “real-time bidding.”

As these practices have come to light, several members of Congress, and federal agencies, have opened investigations.

At least for now, however, these companies typically do not permit consumers to see the records or marketing scores that have been compiled about them. And that is perfectly legal.

Now, Mr. Fertik, the loquacious, lion-maned founder of Reputation.com, says he has the free-market solution. He calls it a “data vault,” or “a bank for other people’s data.”

Here at Reputation.com’s headquarters, a vast open-plan office decorated with industrial-looking metal struts and reclaimed wood — a discreet homage to the lab where Thomas Edison invented the light bulb — his company has amassed a database on millions of consumers. Mr. Fertik plans to use it to sell people on the idea of taking control of their own marketing profiles. To succeed, he will have to persuade people that they must take charge of their digital personas.

Pointing out the potential hazards posed by data brokers and the like is part of Mr. Fertik’s M.O. Covert online profiling and scoring, he says, may unfairly exclude certain Internet users from marketing offers that could affect their financial, educational or health opportunities — a practice Mr. Fertik calls “Weblining.” He plans to market Reputation.com’s data vault, scheduled to open for business early next year, as an antidote.

“A data privacy vault,” he says, “is a way to control yourself as a person.”

Reputation.com is at the forefront of a nascent industry called “personal identity management.” The company’s business model for its vault service involves collecting data about consumers’ marketing preferences and giving them the option to share the information on a limited basis with certain companies in exchange for coupons, say, or status upgrades. In turn, participating companies will get access both to potential customers who welcome their pitches and to details about the exact products and services those people are seeking. In theory, the data vault would earn money as a kind of authorization supervisor, managing the permissions that marketers would need to access information about Reputation.com’s clients.

To some, the idea seems a bit quixotic.

Reputation.com, with $67 million in venture capital, is not making a profit. Although the company’s “privacy” products, like removing clients’ personal information from list broker and marketing databases, are popular, its reputation management techniques can be controversial. For instance, it offers services meant to make negative commentary about individual or corporate clients less visible on the Web.

And there are other hurdles, like competition. A few companies, like Personal, have already introduced vault services. Also, a number of other enterprises have tried — and quickly failed — to sell consumers on data lockers.

Even so, Mr. Fertik contends Reputation.com has the answer. The company already has several hundred thousand paying customers, he says, and patents on software that can identify consumers’ information online and score their reputations. He intends to show clients their scores and advise them on how to improve them.

“You can’t just build a vault and wish that vendors cared enough about your data to pay for it,” Mr. Fertik says. “You have to build a business that gives you the lift to accumulate a data set and attract consumers, the science to create insights that are valuable to vendors, and the power to impose restrictions on the companies who consume your data.”

THE consumer data trade is large and largely unregulated.

Companies and organizations in the United States spend more than $2 billion a year on third-party data about individuals, according to a report last year on personal identity management from Forrester Research, a market research firm. They spend billions more on credit data, market research and customer data analytics, the report said.

Unlike consumer reporting agencies, which compile credit reports, however, business-to-business companies that calculate consumer valuation scores, or collect and sell consumer marketing data, are not required by federal law to show people the records the companies have about them or allow them to correct errors in their own files.

Marketing industry groups argue that regulation is unnecessary. They say Web sites have privacy policies to explain what data they and their business partners collect. They add that third-party data collectors do not know Internet users’ real names and compile consumers’ online marketing records under customer code numbers. Besides, they say, Internet users who are uncomfortable with seeing ads based on data-mining about themselves may use an industry group’s program, Your Ad Choices, to opt out of receiving customized pitches.

As the popular conversation shifts from practices like privacy policies and opt-outs to ideas like consumer empowerment and data rights, however, marketing industry efforts have not kept pace with changing public attitudes, analysts say.

“Consumers are leaving an exponentially growing digital footprint across channels and media, and they are awakening to the fact that marketers use this data for financial gain,” Fatemeh Khatibloo, an analyst at Forrester, wrote in the report. “This, combined with growing concerns about data security, means that individuals increasingly want to know when data about them is being collected, what is being stored and by whom, and how that data is being used.”

A variety of industries could respond by providing services that offer consumers greater control, she wrote. These might include online companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google that already house certain categories of data for consumers; social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn; data vaults like Personal, which allow consumers to store and manage certain kinds of data; and companies like Reputation.com whose business model already relies on customers willing to pay for data privacy.

In a phone interview last month, Ms. Khatibloo described how such an ecosystem might work.

Consumers could choose a variety of companies or institutions to house and manage different categories of their information. They might select a financial institution as the gatekeeper for their financial data, a medical center to manage their health data, and a consumer data locker as their retail manager. Then, when a person is ready to buy a car, she could authorize her personal vault to share relevant financial and insurance information with a car dealer. Or a person might allow his home insurer to survey his retail data vault for purchases every month and automatically increase his insurance coverage if he buys expensive items like a home entertainment system, she said.

“What is necessary to make that happen,” Ms. Khatibloo said, is “an inflection point of consumers adopting technology that makes it more valuable for marketers to come to them directly for their data.”

Marketers and information resellers will also have to acknowledge that consumers have some rights to information collected about them, she said. If the industry does not update its data capture practices, legislators and regulators are likely to mandate public data access, she said.

With increasing complaints by consumer advocacy groups and investigations by the news media, the surveillance economy is attracting greater government scrutiny. Two separate efforts in Congress are now examining practices by third-party consumer data collectors. Regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and researchers at the Government Accountability Office are also investigating. In a report this year, the F.T.C. recommended that Congress pass a law giving consumers the right to have some access to the records data brokers compile about them.

“We have a right, I think, to all of the data we have a hand in generating,” Ms. Khatibloo said. “I have the right to know who is tracking me online, who is looking at my behavior as I move from site to site, what data they are collecting, all of these.”

MR. FERTIK, blue marker in hand, sketches his vision of a data vault on a white board in a conference room at Reputation.com’s headquarters. “The problem is you don’t own your data,” he says. “Now, imagine owning your data.”

He sketches a silo and labeles it “data privacy vault.” To the left of the silo, he draws an arrow saying “IN: data about people.” To the right of the vault, he draws another arrow which says “OUT: data to vendors.”

It is a system he has previously described at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; at Harvard Law School; at the Aspen Institute. He points to the diagram.

“This is the future. Let me demystify it. This is not difficult technology,” he says. “It’s a database where you put your data, or we put it for you, and there are some rules as to how it is externalized or shared.”

Mr. Fertik’s thinking on consumer privacy developed in part from what he called his Upper West Side, civil rights, “Jewish, lefty, pinko” upbringing and his Dalton, Horace Mann, Harvard College, Harvard Law School education. The result, Reputation.com, founded in 2006, is a part social justice, part profit motive.

“I thought something was wrong,” Mr. Fertik says. “You know when you go into a bank or an insurer that you may get offered different rates than the next person, but you have no idea when you go on the Internet that your options, the offers you get or whether you get a coupon, have been defined 20 steps before you get to a site.”

For $99 per year, clients can have the company remove their personal details from databases maintained by various information resellers. They can also install company software that blocks Web tracking by 200 data brokers, advertising networks and ad trading platforms. For $5,000 a year, Reputation.com also offers a “white glove” service for executives who want their personal details removed from list brokers with more cumbersome opt-out processes.

Reputation’s forthcoming data vault service is just a more elaborate attempt to monetize consumer privacy.

Mr. Fertik says he doesn’t think it will be difficult to persuade people to store their data in the vault and share some of it with selected companies in exchange for benefits like cash, coupons or status upgrades. The companies that get permission to gain access to his clients’ records, he adds, will have to sign contracts agreeing not to sell or share them with third parties.

Still, some people may not be comfortable with the fact that Reputation.com has already amassed files on millions of Americans mainly by scraping the Web. Other people may wonder whether a consumer data vault is truly secure. Mr. Fertik says Reputation.com will never share or sell clients’ information without their permission.

Convincing marketers that Reputation.com’s vault has more valuable information and consumer insights than an ordinary data broker is another challenge. “In order to make our information attractive to Best Buy, Amazon or Disney World, we’d have to tell them we have 5 percent more information about you and better insights than other sources,” Mr. Fertik says.

EXECUTIVES in technology, retail, marketing and other industries like to say that data is “the new oil” or, at least, the fuel that powers the Internet economy. It is a metaphor that casts consumers as natural resources with no say over the valuable commodities that companies extract from them.

Data vaults could give consumers more control over who sees certain kinds of information about them and how that information is used.

It is already a common practice in health care. Patients of the Kaiser Permanente system, for example, can use an online health manager to handle information about their health care, prescriptions and insurance. Elderly parents might also choose to give access to their health vault to offspring who help manage their care.

Still, consumers may not care enough about data-mining by marketers and information resellers to patronize data vaults. And legislators may eventually require information resellers to periodically provide consumers with free data reports, Ms. Khatibloo, of Forrester, said. That would put a dent in the fee-for-service data vault business.

In fact, some politicians and regulators already argue that services that charge people to control their personal data are not an appropriate solution to comprehensive online data collection.

“Having to pay a fee in order to engage in a retrospective effort to claw back personal information doesn’t seem to us the right way to go about this,” David Vladeck, the director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, said at a Congressional hearing in 2010.

Regulators are moving to give consumers more control over data without having to pay for it. In February, for example, the White House assigned the Commerce Department to supervise the development of a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” a code of conduct to be worked out between industry and consumer advocacy groups.

While governmental efforts inch along, companies like Reputation.com are forging ahead with new services that promise consumers more insight into the data collected about them. This month, for example, the direct-to-consumer division of Equifax, the credit information services company, plans to begin offering its customers a separate personal data report from Reputation.com in addition to their credit report. Some Equifax customers will also be offered the option to have Reputation.com delete personal details, like home addresses and phone numbers, from certain information broker databases.

“We see broadening consumers’ understanding of what’s out there about them online as a very natural extension of what we do today,” said Trey Loughran, the president of Equifax Personal Information Solutions.

Next spring, TransUnion Interactive, the consumer division of the TransUnion credit information company, plans to offer its customers similar services from Reputation.com.

These deals in no way signify that data vaults are a sure thing or, if they are, that Reputation.com is the company to take them to the masses. But the sudden interest from corporations like Equifax and TransUnion gives credence to the idea that consumers increasingly want to see data collected about themselves and that there is some commercial benefit in showing it to them.

After all, Mr. Fertik says, “it’s your data.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/b...onal-data.html





Stop Congress from Reauthorizing the FISA Amendments Act, a Warrantless Spying Bill

We could be celebrating the New Year by ripping out the fiber optic cables that are sending copies of all our emails to the National Security Agency. But instead, Congress is planning on ringing in 2013 by re-authorizing parts of the FISA Amendments Act, the controversial 2008 bill that allows Americans speaking to people overseas to be surveilled without warrants.

The House of Representatives has already passed a five-year extension on the Act with no reforms. Now the Senate has only a few days left to consider the matter, and our contacts in DC say the Senate is planning on reauthorizing the bill for 5 years without any meaningful amendments to protect privacy or increase transparency, much less allow Senators to debate its merits.

The FISA Amendments Act allows the NSA warrantless access to Americans communicating with a “target” overseas as long as the conversation deals with “foreign intelligence information”—a broad term that can mean virtually anything. And unlike regular warrants, FISA Amendments Act orders can target whole groups of people—so one order could potentially affect thousands of Americans—and don't require probable cause that a crime has been committed.

Many believe that the government uses this law to justify receiving a fire hose of information about how Americans use the Internet. Whistleblower evidence (PDF) provided by AT&T technician Mark Klein and former NSA employee William Binney show that the NSA has installed equipment in AT&T facilities, creating a copy of all Internet traffic flowing through facility—including our domestic and international emails and web browsing data—and sending that data to the government.

This is exactly the type of government spying on our private lives that the authors of the Constitution banned when they wrote in the Fourth Amendment that we should be “secure in our papers” .

In October, President Obama appeared on The Daily Show where John Stewart asked about the Bush-era warrantless surveillance program (which Obama had soundly criticized as a candidate in 2008). Rather than promise meaningful reform, Obama vaguely claimed that the program has been “modified” and that they had “built a legal structure and safeguards in place that weren’t there before on a whole range of issues.”

We aren’t sure what “issues” the President is talking about, but one thing hasn’t seen any public reform: warrantless wiretapping of our Internet communications.

The nation was shocked when revelations about the NSA's widespread surveillance program were first unearthed more than 5 years ago, including President Bush’s admission he was violating the surveillance law by spying on selected Americans without warrants. EFF has gathered and presented evidence that the actual spying was much broader, including millions of innocent Americans. EFF’s evidence includes testimony from three former NSA employee whistleblowers as well as schematics and photographs from inside AT&T’s San Francisco facilities where millions of Americans’ communications are being copied to the government and three former NSA employee whistleblowers.

But rather than dismantle this illegal program, Congress gave at least part of it a sheen of legality by passing the FISA Amendments Act in 2008.

Thankfully, a group of bipartisan senators including Ron Wyden, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee have placed a hold on the bill. They're asking for debate and time to consider amendments that would increase privacy protections and add transparency requirements. And they’re asking that the government answer questions about the scope of domestic spying questions the Department of Justice refuses to answer. Senator Wyden is planning to do his best to block the FISA Amendments Act reauthorization until there’s real debate, an honest accounting of how the government is using surveillance powers, and meaningful reform. EFF and other civil libertarian groups are joining up with Senator Wyden in calling for sunlight and reform around FISA.

Please use our action center to contact your member of Congress and urge them to oppose a rubber-stamp of the FISA Amendments Act.

And please also tweet a message to Senator leadership to ensure they don’t rush a vote on this issue without even time for a meaningful debate.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/1...ss-spying-bill





How the UN's 'Game-Changing' Internet Treaty Failed
Megan Garber

Did you know that, for the past two weeks, the future of the Internet has been at stake?

Yes, it has. Those two weeks hosted the World Conference on International Telecommunications (also hosted, technically, by Dubai). And they hosted, as well, a fairly dramatic face-off -- often between blocs led by Iran, Russia, and China and blocs led by the United States, the UK, and Canada. The purpose of the summit? To rewrite a multilateral communications treaty (official name: International Telecommunications Regulations). The document, if passed with a meaningful consensus, could have significantly altered the way the Internet is governed -- and, therefore, it could have significantly altered the Internet itself.

But go ahead and exhale: Late last night, a faction led by the United States walked out of negotiations, refusing to sign the treaty. "It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," Terry Kramer, the U.S. ambassador to the summit, put it. "The internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years."

So what went down last night -- and what does it mean for us, the users of (and reliers on) the Internet? Here's a guide.

So what was the treaty?
One of the stated goals of the document was to help nations coordinate efforts to fight against spam -- and to widen their access to the web. But many of the summit's discussions ended up questioning whether countries should have equal rights to the development of the Internet's technical foundations -- an extension of the original, stated purpose of the document.

Why was it deemed necessary?
The age of our current governing treaty, most obviously. The current communications treaty that governs Internet communications was last overhauled 24 years ago, in 1988 -- basically hundreds of years ago, in Internet Time.

Who proposed it?
UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) organized the 12-day conference in order to make the changes.

Who refused to sign it?
More than 80 countries -- among them the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

So why didn't they go for it?
Some of it had to do with governance -- in particular, the idea that the U.S. government should get to determine which decide which body should regulate the Internet's address system as a legacy of its funding for ARPANET. (The U.S. maintain's that this structure allows its experts to make "agile, rapid-fire decisions" about the Internet's development, adding that another system might be used for purposes of censorship, interference in the operation of ISPs, and the interruption of U.S.-run operations like Google and Facebook.) Much of it came down to the idea that the content of the Internet, rather than its regulation alone, was at stake in the treaty's language.

But didn't they know that from the beginning?
Yes and no. It seems that many of the aspects of the treaty that proved most objectionable to some delegates weren't introduced until later in the game. And the breaking point, per the BBC, was the addition of text relating to "human rights." A proposal from Russia, China, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, for example, -- one calling for equal rights for all governments to manage "Internet numbering, naming, addressing and identification resources" -- was proposed during the proceedings. And then eventually shelved.

Later, an African bloc of countries began calling for a paragraph to be added to the treaty's preamble that would similarly relate to "human rights." (Proposed language: "These regulations recognize the right of access of member states to international telecommunication services.")

But, I mean, human rights! What's wrong with that?
Again: "human rights." The U.S. and its allies suggested that the proposals weren't about the rights of countries' citizens, but rather the rights of their governments to regulate their use of the Internet. They viewed the Russian/Chinese/Saudi Arabian/African proposals, therefore, as a semi-veiled attempt to extend the treaty's regulations to cover Internet governance and content -- regulation of content being, from an open-web perspective, pretty much the worse thing you can do to the Internet.

So how did they end up actually walking out?
After a break for sleep, Iran called for a vote on the African proposal -- this despite the ITU's earlier promise that disputed issues would be resolved by consensus, rather than a majority vote.

When the vote was carried by 77 to 33 in favor of the proposal, the U.S., the UK, and Canada said they could no longer ratify the treaty. As Simon Towler, the head of the UK delegation, put it: "My delegation came to work for revised international telecommunication regulations, but not at any cost. We prefer no resolution on the Internet at all, and I'm extremely concerned that the language just adopted opens the possibility of Internet and content issues."

Was there anyone else opposed to the treaty?
Yes, many. And not just countries. Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee -- two of the founders of the Internet and the World Wide Web, respectively -- came out strongly against its ratification. Google ran an adamant campaign against the treaty and the process that wanted to overhaul it, declaring, "A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future."

What about the other countries involved?
Many of them basically half-refused to sign. Delegates from Chile, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Kenya, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, and Sweden essentially voted "present": Though they didn't flat-out refuse to sign, they also said that they'd need to confer with their national governments -- ""consult with capital" -- about how to proceed.

But what about the other countries?
Many of them, including Russia, Iran, and Qatar, supported the treaty -- and, this morning, the remaining members of the ITU (which is made up of 193 countries), signed it. But, as Forbes's Elise Ackerman points out, given that so many major players refused to ratify the document, "the gesture in many ways was hollow."

Why's that, exactly?
Because, like other UN agencies, the ITU derives its power from consensus. Without that -- without buy-in from its members, particularly its more powerful ones -- any treaties under its auspices are extremely difficult to enforce, and therefore largely meaningless.

So what does that mean for the countries that did sign?
Despite this setback, the ITU's secretary-general, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, insisted that signing countries would enjoy benefits including "increased transparency in international mobile roaming charges and competition." He also stressed, however, that the treaty did not address content-related telecommunications -- a note to which effect has also been added to the final text of the treaty.

What does this mean for the ITU?
Toure tried to put a positive spin on the proceedings: "History will show," he said, "that the conference has achieved something extremely important. It has succeeded in bringing unprecedented public attention to the different and important perspectives that govern global communications." Which, okay. But this was a loss, and an embarrassing one, for the ITU. As Ackerman put it, "the collapse of negotiations around the treaty update exposed the ITU as woefully out of step with the most technologically advanced sectors of the global society."

What does this mean for the rest of us?
It means, basically, that we won't see much change in how the Internet is currently run, at least when it comes to international regulations. But the treaty's defeat as a matter of consensus might also have more far-reaching implications for how the world gets together to regulate (or not regulate) the Internet. Closed-door sessions are in some ways at odds with the ideal -- and, for the most part, the reality -- of a free and open Internet. The ITU debacle was, among so much else, a reminder of that.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...failed/266263/

















Until next week,

- js.



















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