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Old 03-10-18, 06:49 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - October 6th, ’18

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October 6th, 2018




Justice Department Sues California Over Net Neutrality Law
Dina Kesbeh

An equal playing field that prevents Internet companies from slowing down or blocking some content was signed into law by California Gov. Jerry Brown, but the Justice Department quickly filed a lawsuit to block its implementation.

The state law would guarantee what is known as net neutrality — rules that were established during the Obama administration, but that the Federal Communications Commission under President Trump rescinded last year.

The Justice Department says the new California law illegally conflicts with federal rules. Attorney Jeff Sessions said in a statement, "under the Constitution, states do not regulate interstate commerce — the federal government does."

He added, "once again the California legislature has enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy."

Last year, the FCC rolled back rules that went into effect in 2015 banning cable and telecom companies from blocking or slowing down websites and applications.

The rollback dramatically favored Internet companies. Broadband companies and then-FCC board member Ajit Pai — who was appointed as chairman of the commission in 2017 — opposed net neutrality in 2015 arguing that it prevented the opportunity for investment in broadband companies and stifled innovation.

According to The New York Times, California's is one of the strongest net neutrality laws in the nation and could set a new standard for other states to follow.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Oregon, Vermont and Washington have enacted their own net neutrality laws and governors in six states have signed executive orders affirming some degree of net neutrality. Thirty other states are debating net neutrality measures of their own.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener, an author of the state bill, struck back, saying in a statement that the Justice Department lawsuit is just the latest attempt by the administration to block the state's initiatives.

"We've been down this road before: when Trump and Sessions sued Calif. and claimed we lacked the power to protect immigrants. California fought Trump and Sessions on their immigration lawsuit — California won — and California will fight this lawsuit as well," Wiener said in a statement.

Within minutes of our #NetNeutrality⁠ ⁠bill being signed into law, Jeff Sessions ran into court & sued CA, claiming we don’t have the power to protect internet access. Well, we do. We‘ll fight you & win, just like we did when you sued us on protecting immigrants. My statement: pic.twitter.com/NgMZWNI0mS
— Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) October 1, 2018


Pai issued a statement after California's law passed, saying, "the law prohibits many free-data plans, which allows consumers to stream video, music, and the like exempt from any data limits."

The new law bans interconnection fees and has a "zero-rating" rule, which means telecom companies would exempt certain applications or services from counting toward a consumers data cap.

"When the FCC chose to ignore the millions of consumers who urged them not to repeal net neutrality protections last year, it left a void that state lawmakers are now rightfully filling," Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for Consumers Union tells the Times.
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/01/65321...neutrality-law





Cities Will Sue FCC to Stop $2 Billion Giveaway to Wireless Carriers

After FCC vote, cities try to restore local control over 5G fees and equipment.
Jon Brodkin

Cities are planning to sue the Federal Communications Commission over its decision to preempt local rules on deployment of 5G wireless equipment.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and City Attorney Pete Holmes yesterday said their city intends to appeal the FCC order in federal court. Seattle will be coordinating with other cities on a lawsuit, they said.

"In coordination with the overwhelming majority of local jurisdictions that oppose this unprecedented federal intrusion by the FCC, we will be appealing this order, challenging the FCC's authority and its misguided interpretations of federal law," they said in a press release.

The FCC says its order will save carriers $2 billion, less than one percent of the estimated $275 billion it will take to deploy 5G across the country.

In Oregon, the Portland City Council voted Tuesday to approve a lawsuit against the FCC, The Oregonian reported, saying the move "added Portland to a growing list of cities, primarily on the West Coast, that are preparing to fight" the FCC order. (UPDATE: Portland filed a lawsuit against the FCC.)

East Coast cities including New York City and Boston have also objected to the FCC decision. As we've previously reported, the FCC order drew opposition from rural municipalities as well.

The FCC vote on September 26 limited the amount that local governments may charge carriers for placing 5G equipment such as small cells on poles, traffic lights, and other government property in public rights-of-way.

The FCC order suggests up-front application fees of $100 for each small cell and annual fees of up to $270 per small cell. Cities that charge more than that would likely face litigation from carriers and would have to prove that the fees are a reasonable approximation of all costs and "non-discriminatory." Portland typically charges $3,000 per year, The Oregonian report said.

Some cities charge different rates in different areas to encourage deployment. New York City, for example, charges as little as $148 per month in underserved areas and $5,100 in parts of Manhattan, a Bloomberg story said.

“Significant” overreach

The FCC order also forces cities and towns to act on carrier applications within 60 or 90 days, and it limits the kinds of aesthetic requirements cities and towns can impose on carrier deployments.

"The scope of this overreach is significant," Durkan and Holmes said. "It impedes local authority to serve as trustees of public property and to fulfill cities' public health and safety responsibilities while establishing unworkable standards. This will increase costs and impose an unreasonable burden on local governments."

The Seattle officials said they "are particularly concerned about how the Order will compromise the safety, security, and reliability of critical electrical infrastructure, City Light's utility poles."

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai accused cities and towns of "extracting as much money as possible in fees from the private sector and forcing companies to navigate a maze of regulatory hurdles in order to deploy wireless infrastructure."

Pai argues that cutting fees in big cities will spur carriers to deploy more broadband in rural areas. But he offered no evidence that carriers' deployment decisions in rural areas are affected by permit fees in big cities, and the FCC order doesn't require carriers to build in areas where they wouldn't have done so anyway.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, questioned the FCC's authority to override local rules in this case. She said that litigation against the FCC "will only slow our 5G future."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...less-carriers/





Cities Are Teaming Up to Offer Broadband, and the FCC Is Mad
Susan Crawford

This is a story that defies two strongly held beliefs. The first—embraced fervently by today's FCC—is that the private marketplace is delivering world-class internet access infrastructure at low prices to all Americans, particularly in urban areas. The second is that cities are so busy competing that they are incapable of cooperating with one another, particularly when they have little in common save proximity.

These two beliefs aren’t necessarily true. Right now, the 16 very different cities that make up the South Bay region of Southern California have gotten fed up with their internet access situation: They’re paying too much for too little. So they are working together to collectively lower the amounts they pay for city communications by at least a third. It's the first step along a path that, ultimately, will bring far cheaper internet access services to the 1.1 million people who live in the region.

You might think this is impossible. It’s true that many city officials have argued that regional collaborations are resource-intensive and bound to fail. That's the case in the Boston area, where a city official in Malden (7 miles from Boston City Hall) bluntly told researchers, "I couldn't support regional government at all. Each community has its own unique set of circumstances and facts and issues."

The South Bay partnership suggests a promising alternative: Maybe cities can cooperate and save money without compromising their local autonomy. At this same moment, though, the FCC is on a march to smother local authority by blocking states from regulating any aspect of broadband service, supporting states that have raised barriers to municipal networks, deregulating pricing for lines running between cities, and removing local control over rights-of-way that could be used to bring cheaper access into town.

The writing is on the wall: the FCC would like to bar other regions from acting in just this kind of sensible way.

The South Bay is a huge, wildly diverse region, ranging from mostly-white-and-rich Rancho Palos Verdes in the south, where at least three-quarters of adults have a college degree, to mostly-African-American-and-not-rich Inglewood to the north, where only 17 percent of adults have that degree. The beach towns of Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, with their low-slung, raffish apartment houses and innumerable surfboards, are in the middle. This densely populated area is facing a hollowing of its middle class, at the same time that its population is skewing older. Like many regions in the US, it needs to attract new businesses and residents, get its people into more modern jobs, and lower residents’ commute times.

South Bay Cities Council of Governments

But the region's data failings are getting in its way. In general, businesses and residents in the South Bay have either low-cost but low-speed or high-speed but high-cost options for data transmission. The choices of alternative providers aren't great, and there aren't inexpensive fiber options.

The situation for the cities themselves is truly awful: About a third of city buildings in the 16 South Bay cities have to rely on slow DSL internet access. Only two of the cities have fiber-optic connections between buildings. "They're paying too much, and they're getting very little," says Jory Wolf, a former CIO of the City of Santa Monica who now acts as a consultant to cities and regions and led the South Bay project.

Earlier this year, the South Bay Cities Council of Governments decided that addressing the region's internet access problems, starting with city buildings and moving out from there to businesses, was a shared economic development priority. The SBCCOG asked for bids for a regional fiber-optic loop that would connect all the city halls in the region to one another as well as to two major internet points of presence (POPs). Having all the cities' traffic aggregated together would give the region bargaining power and potentially wholesale prices through those redundant POPs. (Having redundant POPs is also important; you want to make sure that no one provider can hold your traffic ransom when it's on its way out of town.)

Every one of the 16 city councils involved is supportive; they understand that building a huge regional backbone will eventually lead to cascading effects on consumer prices, and that being able to plow city cost savings into business connections—as Santa Monica did years ago—will attract new industries to their cities. And that will help them keep their citizens well employed.

Wolf says the RFP offered by the region has attracted a slew of strong bidders, and that it's likely the region will end up with several providers operating the regional fiber loop. He also says the cities in the region are working together in a new way, bringing their public works teams together for monthly meetings. But, he says, for regions hoping to follow this playbook, "the FCC is going to put a sponge" on all that activity, "soak it all up, and take it away."

He’s right. Step by step, the FCC is working to undermine cities' abilities to create municipal fiber networks of any size, while doing everything it can to keep the status quo in place. One of the goals of the FCC’s reversal of net neutrality earlier this year was to broadly block local government from having anything to do with internet access. The commission effectively said it was blocking in advance any local regulatory efforts that could be viewed as in conflict with the FCC’s hands-off approach. (Earlier this month, 20 states filed a brief with the DC Circuit pointing this out.)

This week, the FCC is planning to eliminate local authority over private communications equipment being stuck to public property. As Blair Levin, former FCC chief of staff and former executive director of the National Broadband Plan, puts it, this is a "power grab in which the FCC majority substitutes their judgment of what is best for local communities for the judgment of duly elected local officials." At the same time, paradoxically, FCC chair Ajit Pai himself is very supportive of state laws that block cities from working on municipal fiber initiatives.

The South Bay effort is inspiring; none of the 16 cities in the region has the leverage to build a fiber loop on its own, but together they can transform the area. Wolf is already launching additional regional plans in California and wants to do the kind of careful, incremental fiber planning he did for Santa Monica for other less-well-off cities and regions in the country. But he sounds almost despairing when he talks about the FCC blocking local cooperation. "Cities will suffer, and consumers will suffer, and so will economic development in this country,” he told me.

At least Hermosa Beach will be moving ahead. It's a lovely place, and there's a great pancake place right next to the water that you need to visit. Go soon, before hordes of newcomers hear about the cheap connectivity.
https://www.wired.com/story/fcc-sout...nd-collective/





One Small Step for the Web...
Tim Berners-Lee

I’ve always believed the web is for everyone. That's why I and others fight fiercely to protect it. The changes we’ve managed to bring have created a better and more connected world. But for all the good we’ve achieved, the web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas.

Today, I believe we’ve reached a critical tipping point, and that powerful change for the better is possible - and necessary.

This is why I have, over recent years, been working with a few people at MIT and elsewhere to develop Solid, an open-source project to restore the power and agency of individuals on the web.

Solid changes the current model where users have to hand over personal data to digital giants in exchange for perceived value. As we’ve all discovered, this hasn’t been in our best interests. Solid is how we evolve the web in order to restore balance - by giving every one of us complete control over data, personal or not, in a revolutionary way.

Solid is a platform, built using the existing web. It gives every user a choice about where data is stored, which specific people and groups can access select elements, and which apps you use. It allows you, your family and colleagues, to link and share data with anyone. It allows people to look at the same data with different apps at the same time.

Solid unleashes incredible opportunities for creativity, problem-solving and commerce. It will empower individuals, developers and businesses with entirely new ways to conceive, build and find innovative, trusted and beneficial applications and services. I see multiple market possibilities, including Solid apps and Solid data storage.

Data should empower you

Solid is guided by the principle of “personal empowerment through data” which we believe is fundamental to the success of the next era of the web. We believe data should empower each of us.

Imagine if all your current apps talked to each other, collaborating and conceiving ways to enrich and streamline your personal life and business objectives? That’s the kind of innovation, intelligence and creativity Solid apps will generate.

With Solid, you will have far more personal agency over data - you decide which apps can access it.

Injecting momentum

In 2009, I said, “The web as I envisaged it we have not seen yet.” That was because people were using the web just for documents, not for the data of a big web-wide computer. Since then, we have seen a wave of open data, but not of read-write data. For example, much open government data is produced through a one-way pipeline, so we can only view it. With Solid, it becomes a read-write web where users can interact and innovate, collaborate and share.

Meanwhile though, there is a wave of concern, and related energy, desperate for change. People want to have a web they can trust. People want apps that help them do what they want and need to do - without spying on them. Apps that don’t have an ulterior motive of distracting them with propositions to buy this or that. People will pay for this kind of quality and assurance. For example, today people pay for storage in places like Dropbox. There is a need for Solid, and the different, beneficial approach it will provide.

It is going to take a lot of effort to build the new Solid platform and drive broad adoption but I think we have enough energy to take the world to a new tipping point.

So I have taken a sabbatical from MIT, reduced my day-to-day involvement with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and founded a company called inrupt where I will be guiding the next stage of the web in a very direct way. Inrupt will be the infrastructure allowing Solid to flourish. Its mission is to provide commercial energy and an ecosystem to help protect the integrity and quality of the new web built on Solid.

There are many examples of open-source efforts that have benefited hugely from the contribution of a well-resourced company. While the open-source community provides initiative and a deep source of innovation, everyday web users as well as businesses often look for applications and services from a commercial entity that also provides technical support and vital, ancillary business services.

I believe this same model will be critical to the success of Solid. Inrupt’s success is totally aligned to Solid’s success. My partner and inrupt co-founder is John Bruce, an experienced business leader with the skills to execute on my vision for Solid. We share the same passion for creating a better and more balanced web.

Together, Solid and inrupt will provide new experiences benefitting every web user - and that are impossible on the web today. Where individuals, developers and businesses create and find innovative, life- and business-enriching, applications and services. Where we all find trusted services for storing, securing and managing personal data.

I’m incredibly optimistic for this next era of the web.

I’ll still be acting as Founder and Director of W3C, the Web Foundation and the Open Data Institute as these are vital components for protecting what has been - and what will come. Inrupt, a W3C member, uses many existing standards and is part of the standards-building community. The Web Foundation advocates for data rights as part of its mission to advance a free and open web that benefits humanity. And the Open Data Institute's drive to make data as open as possible while respecting privacy is very relevant. I wear many hats and when I’m working in each capacity, I’ll always try to act according to the interests of that organization.

These are very exciting times. I will be committed to steering the direction of Solid, and developing its future governance. Inrupt will do many things: its first priority will be the Solid ecosystem. With the right values and a foundational corporate infrastructure, we will build beneficial systems that work for everyone.

The future is still so much bigger than the past.
https://www.inrupt.com/blog/one-small-step-for-the-web





BitTorrenters are Set to be Paid in Cryptocurrency for Seeding Files
Simon Brew

The first fruits of Tron’s acquisition of BitTorrent have been announced…

It was back in July of this year that news broke about the Tron Foundation, headed up by Justin Sun, buying BitTorrent. The file sharing service was acquired for an undisclosed sum, and now we’ve got the first clues as to how the two are going to be working together.

The Tron Foundation has announced what it’s calling Project Atlas, a new scheme by which people who file share via BitTorrent will be rewarded with cryptocurrency. This will thus bring together the BitTorrent network, and the userbase of the Tron blockchain.

As per the official announcement, Justin Sun declared that “the product will feature faster downloads, more seeds, no mining, and backward compatibility. It is adapted to the world we live in today: mobile, connected, and transparent. We aim to eventually empower all content creators and their communities by eliminating the middleman and enabling content creators to distribute directly to users”.

Payment for file sharing will come via the Tronix (TRX) token. Those who seed files in particular will be open to extra credit, as users will be able to offer them extra for giving more bandwidth to files they may particularly want. In turn, that means that download speeds for the files in question will also be quicker. We await confirmation as to when Project Atlas kicks in formally.

Meanwhile, if you’ve got a spare 76 minutes and 44 seconds, the Tron Foundation has released a video that gives a detailed update with regards its technical application. You can see that right here…
https://cryptonewsreview.com/bittorr...seeding-files/





Google and Yandex may Collaborate on a Real-Time Blacklist of All Known Pirated Works
Devin Coldewey

A meeting on the status of anti-piracy efforts at search engines has produced a collaborative approach to better addressing the issue of pirated works appearing in search results. An international collective of search giants thinking of creating a blacklist of all known pirated works, which will be compared with search results every five minutes and any matches removed.

The meeting, which took place last week, was reported by Russian outlets Vedomosti and RBC; TorrentFreak noted the news soon after. The attendees included Google, Yandex, Mail.ru Group, Gazprom Media, and other local trade associations. The issue at hand: how to return accurate results when someone searches for “download princess bride movie” without also including links to piracy sites.

Yandex in particular has been under threat by regulators for its refusal to take more serious steps to block pirated content — the company argues that it isn’t required by law to do so. The argument is in some ways similar to that of Google, which has resisted pressure to be the first and last line of defense, incurring great cost to protect someone else’s property. But clearly both are open to a more collaborative effort.

The solution proposed by the groups is a shared ledger of links and works known to be pirated. This register would be continually updated and each partner would regularly check it against its index and strike any matches from being displayed in results within six hours.

The list would be curated by the companies themselves and rightsholders who find, as they often do, links to or copies of their copyrighted materials online.

Obviously this isn’t an entirely novel idea: search engines and media companies of course have their own lists and may even share some information, and Russian regulator Roscomnadzor has one that ISPs consult when issuing blocks at their level. But this would be an official, cross-border, cross-industry collaboration, built to minimize both the time and paperwork needed to remove an infringing link.

The difficulties and dangers of such a system are easily imaginable. A mistaken or fraudulent entry could lead to a site being delisted or demoted in search results, and because this system is largely internal to the companies and not part of an official process (like DMCA takedowns, such as they are), the owner of that entry could lack recourse. There’s no shortage of stories of YouTube videos being taken down via fraudulent reports, so the new system would need to be both robust against that threat and responsive to petitions.

There are also plenty of ways that piracy sites can escape the clutches of these systems, which by necessity given the scale of the issue, are largely automated. Futzing with the URL — for instance, generating a new one for every user and deleting them shortly after — could lead to an inflated and inaccurate register. (That’s just one simple way of throwing a wrench in the machinery; piracy sites are technically adept and legally savvy and their methods may be rather more sophisticated.)

And because the list wouldn’t necessarily be backed by law — this would be an understanding between these organizations based on mutual benefit — it might be respected only when convenient. If, for example, one of the companies faces an ugly lawsuit or challenge regarding a listing, it may choose to slacken its enforcement to avoid such complications.

The war between big web properties and piracy is an ongoing one and no one is likely to strike a killing blow given how advanced things are on both sides of the line of battle. But it’s equally unlikely that either side will stop or slow in its efforts to gain the upper hand, if only temporarily.

It’s unclear what stage this effort is at, but Roskomnadzor and the trade associations confirmed to Vedomosti that work is underway, though Yandex would only say that it was involved. I’ve asked Google for comment and will update this story if I hear back.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/24/go...ted-works/amp/





Qatar Sues Saudi Arabia for 'Pirating' beIN Broadcasts

A Qatari state-owned TV station has launched a $1-billion claim against Saudi Arabia for failing to tackle piracy. FIFA and the English Premier League have also taken action over illegal football broadcasts.

Spectators watch a football game at a cafe

Qatar on Monday announced its decision to pursue proceedings at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against Saudi Arabia for violating intellectual property rights stemming from sports broadcasting licences.

The economy ministry said that not only has Saudi Arabia blocked access to Qatari-owned broadcaster beIN, it has also failed to take action against illegal broadcaster beoutQ.

"As a result of the arbitrary and discriminatory measures implemented by Saudi Arabia — beIN has suffered damages in excess of $1 billion (860 million)," said beIN in a statement.

Qatari authorities accuse beoutQ of pirating beIN content and rebroadcasting it via the Riyadh-based satellite provider Arabsat.

Other broadcasters have also had their content stolen, including NBC Universal, Telemundo and Eleven Sports, according to beIN.

Since June 2017, Saudi Arabia and its allies have imposed an embargo on Qatar and cut diplomatic ties for allegedly supporting terrorism, an accusation Doha has strongly denied.

FIFA takes a stand

But Qatar isn't the only one concerned. In July, world football governing body FIFA said it would take legal action against broadcasters pirating its content, especially beoutQ, which it called a "pirate entity."

"FIFA urges the authorities of Saudi Arabia and of the different countries where these illegal activities have been observed to support us in the fight against piracy," it said in a statement.

The English Premier League and tennis governing bodies have also launched legal proceedings against beoutQ for illegally broadcasting content.
https://www.dw.com/en/qatar-sues-sau...sts/a-45721446





The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy

BitTorrent usage has bounced back because there's too many streaming services, and too much exclusive content.
Karl Bode

A new study shows that after years of declines, BitTorrent usage and piracy is on the rise again. The culprit: an increase in exclusivity deals that force subscribers to hunt and peck among a myriad of streaming services to actually find the content they’re looking for.

Sandvine’s new Global Internet Phenomena report offers some interesting insight into user video habits and the internet, such as the fact that more than 50 percent of internet traffic is now encrypted, video now accounts for 58 percent of all global traffic, and Netflix alone now comprises 15 percent of all internet downstream data consumed.

But there’s another interesting tidbit buried in the firm’s report: after years of steady decline, BitTorrent usage is once again growing.

According to Sandvine, file-sharing accounts for 3 percent of global downstream and 22 percent of upstream traffic, with 97% of that traffic in turn being BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is often used to distribute ordinary files, it remains the choice du jour for those looking to distribute and trade copyrighted content online, made easier via media PCs running Kodi and select plugins.

Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent’s share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy.

But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent’s traffic share once again growing worldwide. That’s especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.

One major reason for BitTorrent’s rising popularity? Annoying exclusivity streaming deals.

“More sources than ever are producing "exclusive" content available on a single streaming or broadcast service—think Game of Thrones for HBO, House of Cards for Netflix, The Handmaid's Tale for Hulu, or Jack Ryan for Amazon,” Sandvine’s Cam Cullen said in a blog post.

“To get access to all of these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two and pirate the rest.” Cullen said.

As more and more companies jump into the streaming race, they’re cordoning off “must have” content into a wider and wider array of exclusivity silos.

Disney, for example, will soon be pulling most of its fare from Netflix as it launches its own streaming service this year. Studies have shown that nearly every major broadcaster will have launched their own streaming service by 2022. And these companies are increasingly choosing to keep their own content as in-house exclusives in order to drive subscriptions.

On one hand that makes sense. Numerous streaming providers are now winning awards for the original, usually-exclusive content they develop in house in a bid to reduce content licensing costs. The better, more exclusive your content is, the more subscribers you can drive to your service.

The problem: consumers only have so much disposable income, and the growing laundry-list of services users now need to subscribe to if they want to watch all of their favorite movies and shows can not only become confusing, but prohibitively expensive. That’s especially true overseas, where geographical viewing restrictions hamper access to popular U.S. content.

As a result, these users are starting to drift back to piracy.

Keep in mind that BitTorrent usage numbers are likely higher than Sandvine estimates, given the high number of users that hide their BitTorrent traffic behind proxies and VPNs to not only dodge the prying-eyes of their ISPs, but avoid copyright trolls and industry lawsuits.

The content industry spent years trying to battle piracy via all manner of heavy handed-tactics and lawsuits, only to realize that offering users inexpensive, quality, legitimate services was the best solution. Many users flocked to these services because they provided a less-expensive, more flexible alternative to traditional cable.

Now, if the industry isn’t careful, it could lose a sizeable chunk of this newfound audience back to piracy by making it overly expensive and cumbersome to access the content subscribers are looking for.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...treaming-sites





Netflix Eats Up 15% of All Internet Downstream Traffic Worldwide (Study)

Amazon Prime consumes more bandwidth than YouTube in Americas region: Sandvine report
Todd Spangler

Netflix remains the 800-pound gorilla of the streaming world: Video from the service consumes a significant 15% of all internet bandwidth globally, the most of any single application.

That’s according to the latest Global Internet Phenomena Report from Sandvine, a vendor of bandwidth-management systems. Netflix was followed by HTTP media streams, representing 13.1% of all downstream traffic; YouTube (11.4%); web browsing (7.8%); and MPEG transport streams (4.4%).

In the Americas, Netflix grabs an even bigger slice of the bandwidth pie, accounting for 19.1% of total downstream traffic. Here’s an interesting wrinkle: In this Americas, Amazon Prime Video consumes more data (7.7% of downstream traffic) than YouTube (7.5%), per Sandvine.

During peak evening hours, Netflix usage can spike as high as 40% of all downstream traffic on some wireline operator networks in the Americas, per the study, which remains consistent with past studies Sandvine has conducted.

Netflix’s dominant share of internet bandwidth usage is even more impressive considering that its video encoding is more efficient than any other major internet video provider, according to Sandvine. In other words, Netflix would represent an even larger portion of internet-data consumption if its compression algorithms were less efficient.

Worldwide, video is 57.7% of the total volume of downstream traffic on the internet, followed by web (17.0%), gaming (7.8%) and social media (5.1%). Other categories include content marketplaces like iTunes and Google Play (4.6%), file sharing (2.8%), and audio streaming (1.0%), according to the Sandvine report.

Looking at video as a category, Netflix represents of 26.6% downstream video traffic worldwide. Regionally, Netflix gobbles up 30.7% in the Americas. In EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), YouTube takes top share of downstream video traffic (30.4%) followed by Netflix (23.1%), while in the Asia-Pacific region web-based video streaming is No. 1 (29.2%) followed by Facebook video (17.7%).

The data Sandvine uses to compile its Global Internet Phenomena Report comes from more than 150 service-provider customers globally, representing 2.1 billion subscribers. The Canadian company, based in Waterloo, Ontario, noted that the report doesn’t include significant data from China or India.
https://variety.com/2018/digital/new...dy-1202963207/





If You Lead People to a More Private Search Engine, Will They Care?
Molly Wood

Searching the web is one of the most revealing things you can do. It shows what you're looking to buy, where you want to go and if you're worried about a weird rash. When you search Google, those searches help power its huge digital advertising networks, which is why you might see skin cream ads for that rash days later on a totally different website. But do people know how much information they're giving up? And do they care? Recently, a privacy-oriented search engine called DuckDuckGo raised $10 million from a Canadian pension fund. It's trying to establish itself as the anti-Google.

"So it's like Google, except when you search on it, you're completely anonymous," said Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of the company.

The searches are encrypted. The site knows where you are, but only while you're searching, and it doesn't store your personal information.

"We serve you the search results and we throw away your personal information ... so your IP address and things like that. And we don't actually store any cookies by default. And so when you search on DuckDuckGo, it's like every time you're a new user and we know nothing about you," Weinberg said.

There are a handful of other private search engines, but DuckDuckGo is the biggest. It's been profitable since 2014, but the $10 million it just raised is what Google makes in a few minutes. And then there's the question of whether people even want to use a more private search engine.

"The reality is that people talk a big game here when it comes to privacy, but they don't actually do very much," said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist at SK Ventures. "People don't use encrypted email, but they tell you their email privacy is hugely important. People don't use virtual private networks, and yet they'll tell you that it's hugely important that no one can monitor their network traffic. So people are, you know, hugely amusing on this topic but are not to be paid attention to."

The reason services are free is because of ads, ads that are more valuable when companies know something about you. Take that away and, Kedrosky said, "that means the likelihood of that service continuing to exist goes down, or horror of horrors, you might actually have to pay for it."

But perhaps privacy isn't dead after all. Weinberg of DuckDuckGo said about a quarter of Americans have taken some action to protect their privacy, and DuckDuckGo searches have been growing about 50 percent a year. Meanwhile, venture capital tracker Pitchbook says privacy-related companies have raised $506 million in 2018 so far, more than triple what was raised five years ago.
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/09/...-actually-care





Australian Industry and Tech Groups Unite to Fight Encryption-Busting Bill

The new mega-group has called on Canberra to ditch its push to force technology companies to help break into their own systems.
Chris Duckett

A new group calling itself Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet has been formed by Australian industry, technology, and human rights groups to persuade Canberra to ditch its encryption-busting Bill.

The Bill is currently before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, with a minuscule three-week window for submissions closing on Friday, October 12 and a hearing set for Friday, October 19.

The proposed legislation would allow the nation's police and anti-corruption forces to ask, before forcing, internet companies, telcos, messaging providers, or anyone deemed necessary, to break into whatever content interception agencies want access to.

"This Bill stands to have a huge impact on millions of Australians, so it is crucial that lawmakers reject this proposal in its present form before we sleepwalk into a digital dystopia," said board member of Digital Rights Watch and alliance spokesperson Lizzie O'Shea.

"The rushed processes coupled with the lack of transparency can only mean that expert opinions from Australia and abroad are being disregarded, and deep concerns about privacy erosion and lack of judicial review have simply been tossed aside."

The membership of the new alliance consists of Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, Access Now, Ai Group, Australian Information Industry Association, Amnesty International Australia, AMTA, Blueprint for Free Speech, members of Communications Alliance sans NBN, DIGI, Digital Rights Watch, Future Wise, Hack for Privacy, Human Rights Law Centre, Internet Australia, IoT Alliance Australia, and Liberty Victoria.

"The scope of this legislation sets a disturbing first-world benchmark and poses real threats to the cybersecurity and privacy rights of all Australians," Communications Alliance CEO and alliance spokesperson John Stanton said.

Also read: The race to ruin the internet is upon us

Speaking last month, Stanton said the encryption-busting legislation set a new benchmark for outrageous and cheeky legislation.

"You almost have to congratulate them about the way that they have constructed the elements of this legislation, which, when you view each of them on their own, looking concerning, [and] when you combine them, definitely scary," Stanton said at the time.

"When you think about the scope of the Bill, where it expands on an unholy trinity of how many agencies can take advantage of the powers of the legislation, how many players in Australia and abroad that it seeks to direct and control, and the virtually unlimited scope of the acts that it can require to be undertaken -- that really is breathtaking, I think.

"And when you look into those acts about the potential to remove electronic protection, to give up source code, to install software to create systemic weaknesses in devices, that really opens up a Pandora's box."

See: Australia's anti-encryption law will merely relocate the backdoors

Ten days after releasing its draft legislation, the government rushed its encryption-busting Bill into the House of Representatives with a number of changes.

Patrick Fair, partner at law firm Baker McKenzie, told ZDNet at the time that the changes were a step forward, but failed to take the concerns expressed by the technical community into account.

Fair said a list of criteria added to the Bill -- against which those issuing compulsory notices need to have regard of, including the "legitimate expectations of the Australian community relating to privacy and cybersecurity" -- was so broad that it would now be harder for a service provider to say compliance is costly and risky, than it was before. But even disputing a decision is going to be hard.

"The way they've set it up, it's an administrative decision by a government decision maker, so it's not something that is easy to overturn, probably," he said.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/austra...-busting-bill/





The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

The attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain, according to extensive interviews with government and corporate sources.
Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley

In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland, Ore., Elemental made software for compressing massive video files and formatting them for different devices. Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Elemental’s national security contracts weren’t the main reason for the proposed acquisition, but they fit nicely with Amazon’s government businesses, such as the highly secure cloud that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was building for the CIA.

To help with due diligence, AWS, which was overseeing the prospective acquisition, hired a third-party company to scrutinize Elemental’s security, according to one person familiar with the process. The first pass uncovered troubling issues, prompting AWS to take a closer look at Elemental’s main product: the expensive servers that customers installed in their networks to handle the video compression. These servers were assembled for Elemental by Super Micro Computer Inc., a San Jose-based company (commonly known as Supermicro) that’s also one of the world’s biggest suppliers of server motherboards, the fiberglass-mounted clusters of chips and capacitors that act as the neurons of data centers large and small. In late spring of 2015, Elemental’s staff boxed up several servers and sent them to Ontario, Canada, for the third-party security company to test, the person says.

Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.

During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.

This attack was something graver than the software-based incidents the world has grown accustomed to seeing. Hardware hacks are more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get.

There are two ways for spies to alter the guts of computer equipment. One, known as interdiction, consists of manipulating devices as they’re in transit from manufacturer to customer. This approach is favored by U.S. spy agencies, according to documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The other method involves seeding changes from the very beginning.

One country in particular has an advantage executing this kind of attack: China, which by some estimates makes 75 percent of the world’s mobile phones and 90 percent of its PCs. Still, to actually accomplish a seeding attack would mean developing a deep understanding of a product’s design, manipulating components at the factory, and ensuring that the doctored devices made it through the global logistics chain to the desired location—a feat akin to throwing a stick in the Yangtze River upstream from Shanghai and ensuring that it washes ashore in Seattle. “Having a well-done, nation-state-level hardware implant surface would be like witnessing a unicorn jumping over a rainbow,” says Joe Grand, a hardware hacker and the founder of Grand Idea Studio Inc. “Hardware is just so far off the radar, it’s almost treated like black magic.”

But that’s just what U.S. investigators found: The chips had been inserted during the manufacturing process, two officials say, by operatives from a unit of the People’s Liberation Army. In Supermicro, China’s spies appear to have found a perfect conduit for what U.S. officials now describe as the most significant supply chain attack known to have been carried out against American companies.

One official says investigators found that it eventually affected almost 30 companies, including a major bank, government contractors, and the world’s most valuable company, Apple Inc. Apple was an important Supermicro customer and had planned to order more than 30,000 of its servers in two years for a new global network of data centers. Three senior insiders at Apple say that in the summer of 2015, it, too, found malicious chips on Supermicro motherboards. Apple severed ties with Supermicro the following year, for what it described as unrelated reasons.

In emailed statements, Amazon (which announced its acquisition of Elemental in September 2015), Apple, and Supermicro disputed summaries of Bloomberg Businessweek’s reporting. “It’s untrue that AWS knew about a supply chain compromise, an issue with malicious chips, or hardware modifications when acquiring Elemental,” Amazon wrote. “On this we can be very clear: Apple has never found malicious chips, ‘hardware manipulations’ or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server,” Apple wrote. “We remain unaware of any such investigation,” wrote a spokesman for Supermicro, Perry Hayes. The Chinese government didn’t directly address questions about manipulation of Supermicro servers, issuing a statement that read, in part, “Supply chain safety in cyberspace is an issue of common concern, and China is also a victim.” The FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, representing the CIA and NSA, declined to comment.

The companies’ denials are countered by six current and former senior national security officials, who—in conversations that began during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration—detailed the discovery of the chips and the government’s investigation. One of those officials and two people inside AWS provided extensive information on how the attack played out at Elemental and Amazon; the official and one of the insiders also described Amazon’s cooperation with the government investigation. In addition to the three Apple insiders, four of the six U.S. officials confirmed that Apple was a victim. In all, 17 people confirmed the manipulation of Supermicro’s hardware and other elements of the attacks. The sources were granted anonymity because of the sensitive, and in some cases classified, nature of the information.

One government official says China’s goal was long-term access to high-value corporate secrets and sensitive government networks. No consumer data is known to have been stolen.

The ramifications of the attack continue to play out. The Trump administration has made computer and networking hardware, including motherboards, a focus of its latest round of trade sanctions against China, and White House officials have made it clear they think companies will begin shifting their supply chains to other countries as a result. Such a shift might assuage officials who have been warning for years about the security of the supply chain—even though they’ve never disclosed a major reason for their concerns.

Back in 2006, three engineers in Oregon had a clever idea. Demand for mobile video was about to explode, and they predicted that broadcasters would be desperate to transform programs designed to fit TV screens into the various formats needed for viewing on smartphones, laptops, and other devices. To meet the anticipated demand, the engineers started Elemental Technologies, assembling what one former adviser to the company calls a genius team to write code that would adapt the superfast graphics chips being produced for high-end video-gaming machines. The resulting software dramatically reduced the time it took to process large video files. Elemental then loaded the software onto custom-built servers emblazoned with its leprechaun-green logos.

Elemental servers sold for as much as $100,000 each, at profit margins of as high as 70 percent, according to a former adviser to the company. Two of Elemental’s biggest early clients were the Mormon church, which used the technology to beam sermons to congregations around the world, and the adult film industry, which did not.

Elemental also started working with American spy agencies. In 2009 the company announced a development partnership with In-Q-Tel Inc., the CIA’s investment arm, a deal that paved the way for Elemental servers to be used in national security missions across the U.S. government. Public documents, including the company’s own promotional materials, show that the servers have been used inside Department of Defense data centers to process drone and surveillance-camera footage, on Navy warships to transmit feeds of airborne missions, and inside government buildings to enable secure videoconferencing. NASA, both houses of Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security have also been customers. This portfolio made Elemental a target for foreign adversaries.

Supermicro had been an obvious choice to build Elemental’s servers. Headquartered north of San Jose’s airport, up a smoggy stretch of Interstate 880, the company was founded by Charles Liang, a Taiwanese engineer who attended graduate school in Texas and then moved west to start Supermicro with his wife in 1993. Silicon Valley was then embracing outsourcing, forging a pathway from Taiwanese, and later Chinese, factories to American consumers, and Liang added a comforting advantage: Supermicro’s motherboards would be engineered mostly in San Jose, close to the company’s biggest clients, even if the products were manufactured overseas.

Today, Supermicro sells more server motherboards than almost anyone else. It also dominates the $1 billion market for boards used in special-purpose computers, from MRI machines to weapons systems. Its motherboards can be found in made-to-order server setups at banks, hedge funds, cloud computing providers, and web-hosting services, among other places. Supermicro has assembly facilities in California, the Netherlands, and Taiwan, but its motherboards—its core product—are nearly all manufactured by contractors in China.

The company’s pitch to customers hinges on unmatched customization, made possible by hundreds of full-time engineers and a catalog encompassing more than 600 designs. The majority of its workforce in San Jose is Taiwanese or Chinese, and Mandarin is the preferred language, with hanzi filling the whiteboards, according to six former employees. Chinese pastries are delivered every week, and many routine calls are done twice, once for English-only workers and again in Mandarin. The latter are more productive, according to people who’ve been on both. These overseas ties, especially the widespread use of Mandarin, would have made it easier for China to gain an understanding of Supermicro’s operations and potentially to infiltrate the company. (A U.S. official says the government’s probe is still examining whether spies were planted inside Supermicro or other American companies to aid the attack.)

With more than 900 customers in 100 countries by 2015, Supermicro offered inroads to a bountiful collection of sensitive targets. “Think of Supermicro as the Microsoft of the hardware world,” says a former U.S. intelligence official who’s studied Supermicro and its business model. “Attacking Supermicro motherboards is like attacking Windows. It’s like attacking the whole world.”

The security of the global technology supply chain had been compromised, even if consumers and most companies didn’t know it yet

Well before evidence of the attack surfaced inside the networks of U.S. companies, American intelligence sources were reporting that China’s spies had plans to introduce malicious microchips into the supply chain. The sources weren’t specific, according to a person familiar with the information they provided, and millions of motherboards are shipped into the U.S. annually. But in the first half of 2014, a different person briefed on high-level discussions says, intelligence officials went to the White House with something more concrete: China’s military was preparing to insert the chips into Supermicro motherboards bound for U.S. companies.

The specificity of the information was remarkable, but so were the challenges it posed. Issuing a broad warning to Supermicro’s customers could have crippled the company, a major American hardware maker, and it wasn’t clear from the intelligence whom the operation was targeting or what its ultimate aims were. Plus, without confirmation that anyone had been attacked, the FBI was limited in how it could respond. The White House requested periodic updates as information came in, the person familiar with the discussions says.

Apple made its discovery of suspicious chips inside Supermicro servers around May 2015, after detecting odd network activity and firmware problems, according to a person familiar with the timeline. Two of the senior Apple insiders say the company reported the incident to the FBI but kept details about what it had detected tightly held, even internally. Government investigators were still chasing clues on their own when Amazon made its discovery and gave them access to sabotaged hardware, according to one U.S. official. This created an invaluable opportunity for intelligence agencies and the FBI—by then running a full investigation led by its cyber- and counterintelligence teams—to see what the chips looked like and how they worked.

The chips on Elemental servers were designed to be as inconspicuous as possible, according to one person who saw a detailed report prepared for Amazon by its third-party security contractor, as well as a second person who saw digital photos and X-ray images of the chips incorporated into a later report prepared by Amazon’s security team. Gray or off-white in color, they looked more like signal conditioning couplers, another common motherboard component, than microchips, and so they were unlikely to be detectable without specialized equipment. Depending on the board model, the chips varied slightly in size, suggesting that the attackers had supplied different factories with different batches.

Officials familiar with the investigation say the primary role of implants such as these is to open doors that other attackers can go through. “Hardware attacks are about access,” as one former senior official puts it. In simplified terms, the implants on Supermicro hardware manipulated the core operating instructions that tell the server what to do as data move across a motherboard, two people familiar with the chips’ operation say. This happened at a crucial moment, as small bits of the operating system were being stored in the board’s temporary memory en route to the server’s central processor, the CPU. The implant was placed on the board in a way that allowed it to effectively edit this information queue, injecting its own code or altering the order of the instructions the CPU was meant to follow. Deviously small changes could create disastrous effects.

Since the implants were small, the amount of code they contained was small as well. But they were capable of doing two very important things: telling the device to communicate with one of several anonymous computers elsewhere on the internet that were loaded with more complex code; and preparing the device’s operating system to accept this new code. The illicit chips could do all this because they were connected to the baseboard management controller, a kind of superchip that administrators use to remotely log in to problematic servers, giving them access to the most sensitive code even on machines that have crashed or are turned off.

This system could let the attackers alter how the device functioned, line by line, however they wanted, leaving no one the wiser. To understand the power that would give them, take this hypothetical example: Somewhere in the Linux operating system, which runs in many servers, is code that authorizes a user by verifying a typed password against a stored encrypted one. An implanted chip can alter part of that code so the server won’t check for a password—and presto! A secure machine is open to any and all users. A chip can also steal encryption keys for secure communications, block security updates that would neutralize the attack, and open up new pathways to the internet. Should some anomaly be noticed, it would likely be cast as an unexplained oddity. “The hardware opens whatever door it wants,” says Joe FitzPatrick, founder of Hardware Security Resources LLC, a company that trains cybersecurity professionals in hardware hacking techniques.

U.S. officials had caught China experimenting with hardware tampering before, but they’d never seen anything of this scale and ambition. The security of the global technology supply chain had been compromised, even if consumers and most companies didn’t know it yet. What remained for investigators to learn was how the attackers had so thoroughly infiltrated Supermicro’s production process—and how many doors they’d opened into American targets.

Unlike software-based hacks, hardware manipulation creates a real-world trail. Components leave a wake of shipping manifests and invoices. Boards have serial numbers that trace to specific factories. To track the corrupted chips to their source, U.S. intelligence agencies began following Supermicro’s serpentine supply chain in reverse, a person briefed on evidence gathered during the probe says.

As recently as 2016, according to DigiTimes, a news site specializing in supply chain research, Supermicro had three primary manufacturers constructing its motherboards, two headquartered in Taiwan and one in Shanghai. When such suppliers are choked with big orders, they sometimes parcel out work to subcontractors. In order to get further down the trail, U.S. spy agencies drew on the prodigious tools at their disposal. They sifted through communications intercepts, tapped informants in Taiwan and China, even tracked key individuals through their phones, according to the person briefed on evidence gathered during the probe. Eventually, that person says, they traced the malicious chips to four subcontracting factories that had been building Supermicro motherboards for at least two years.

As the agents monitored interactions among Chinese officials, motherboard manufacturers, and middlemen, they glimpsed how the seeding process worked. In some cases, plant managers were approached by people who claimed to represent Supermicro or who held positions suggesting a connection to the government. The middlemen would request changes to the motherboards’ original designs, initially offering bribes in conjunction with their unusual requests. If that didn’t work, they threatened factory managers with inspections that could shut down their plants. Once arrangements were in place, the middlemen would organize delivery of the chips to the factories.

The investigators concluded that this intricate scheme was the work of a People’s Liberation Army unit specializing in hardware attacks, according to two people briefed on its activities. The existence of this group has never been revealed before, but one official says, “We’ve been tracking these guys for longer than we’d like to admit.” The unit is believed to focus on high-priority targets, including advanced commercial technology and the computers of rival militaries. In past attacks, it targeted the designs for high-performance computer chips and computing systems of large U.S. internet providers.

Provided details of Businessweek’s reporting, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a statement that said “China is a resolute defender of cybersecurity.” The ministry added that in 2011, China proposed international guarantees on hardware security along with other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security body. The statement concluded, “We hope parties make less gratuitous accusations and suspicions but conduct more constructive talk and collaboration so that we can work together in building a peaceful, safe, open, cooperative and orderly cyberspace.”

The Supermicro attack was on another order entirely from earlier episodes attributed to the PLA. It threatened to have reached a dizzying array of end users, with some vital ones in the mix. Apple, for its part, has used Supermicro hardware in its data centers sporadically for years, but the relationship intensified after 2013, when Apple acquired a startup called Topsy Labs, which created superfast technology for indexing and searching vast troves of internet content. By 2014, the startup was put to work building small data centers in or near major global cities. This project, known internally as Ledbelly, was designed to make the search function for Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, faster, according to the three senior Apple insiders.

Documents seen by Businessweek show that in 2014, Apple planned to order more than 6,000 Supermicro servers for installation in 17 locations, including Amsterdam, Chicago, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York, San Jose, Singapore, and Tokyo, plus 4,000 servers for its existing North Carolina and Oregon data centers. Those orders were supposed to double, to 20,000, by 2015. Ledbelly made Apple an important Supermicro customer at the exact same time the PLA was found to be manipulating the vendor’s hardware.

Project delays and early performance problems meant that around 7,000 Supermicro servers were humming in Apple’s network by the time the company’s security team found the added chips. Because Apple didn’t, according to a U.S. official, provide government investigators with access to its facilities or the tampered hardware, the extent of the attack there remained outside their view.

American investigators eventually figured out who else had been hit. Since the implanted chips were designed to ping anonymous computers on the internet for further instructions, operatives could hack those computers to identify others who’d been affected. Although the investigators couldn’t be sure they’d found every victim, a person familiar with the U.S. probe says they ultimately concluded that the number was almost 30 companies.

That left the question of whom to notify and how. U.S. officials had been warning for years that hardware made by two Chinese telecommunications giants, Huawei Corp. and ZTE Corp., was subject to Chinese government manipulation. (Both Huawei and ZTE have said no such tampering has occurred.) But a similar public alert regarding a U.S. company was out of the question. Instead, officials reached out to a small number of important Supermicro customers. One executive of a large web-hosting company says the message he took away from the exchange was clear: Supermicro’s hardware couldn’t be trusted. “That’s been the nudge to everyone—get that crap out,” the person says.

Amazon, for its part, began acquisition talks with an Elemental competitor, but according to one person familiar with Amazon’s deliberations, it reversed course in the summer of 2015 after learning that Elemental’s board was nearing a deal with another buyer. Amazon announced its acquisition of Elemental in September 2015, in a transaction whose value one person familiar with the deal places at $350 million. Multiple sources say that Amazon intended to move Elemental’s software to AWS’s cloud, whose chips, motherboards, and servers are typically designed in-house and built by factories that Amazon contracts from directly.

A notable exception was AWS’s data centers inside China, which were filled with Supermicro-built servers, according to two people with knowledge of AWS’s operations there. Mindful of the Elemental findings, Amazon’s security team conducted its own investigation into AWS’s Beijing facilities and found altered motherboards there as well, including more sophisticated designs than they’d previously encountered. In one case, the malicious chips were thin enough that they’d been embedded between the layers of fiberglass onto which the other components were attached, according to one person who saw pictures of the chips. That generation of chips was smaller than a sharpened pencil tip, the person says. (Amazon denies that AWS knew of servers found in China containing malicious chips.)

China has long been known to monitor banks, manufacturers, and ordinary citizens on its own soil, and the main customers of AWS’s China cloud were domestic companies or foreign entities with operations there. Still, the fact that the country appeared to be conducting those operations inside Amazon’s cloud presented the company with a Gordian knot. Its security team determined that it would be difficult to quietly remove the equipment and that, even if they could devise a way, doing so would alert the attackers that the chips had been found, according to a person familiar with the company’s probe. Instead, the team developed a method of monitoring the chips. In the ensuing months, they detected brief check-in communications between the attackers and the sabotaged servers but didn’t see any attempts to remove data. That likely meant either that the attackers were saving the chips for a later operation or that they’d infiltrated other parts of the network before the monitoring began. Neither possibility was reassuring.

When in 2016 the Chinese government was about to pass a new cybersecurity law—seen by many outside the country as a pretext to give authorities wider access to sensitive data—Amazon decided to act, the person familiar with the company’s probe says. In August it transferred operational control of its Beijing data center to its local partner, Beijing Sinnet, a move the companies said was needed to comply with the incoming law. The following November, Amazon sold the entire infrastructure to Beijing Sinnet for about $300 million. The person familiar with Amazon’s probe casts the sale as a choice to “hack off the diseased limb.”

As for Apple, one of the three senior insiders says that in the summer of 2015, a few weeks after it identified the malicious chips, the company started removing all Supermicro servers from its data centers, a process Apple referred to internally as “going to zero.” Every Supermicro server, all 7,000 or so, was replaced in a matter of weeks, the senior insider says. (Apple denies that any servers were removed.) In 2016, Apple informed Supermicro that it was severing their relationship entirely—a decision a spokesman for Apple ascribed in response to Businessweek’s questions to an unrelated and relatively minor security incident.

That August, Supermicro’s CEO, Liang, revealed that the company had lost two major customers. Although he didn’t name them, one was later identified in news reports as Apple. He blamed competition, but his explanation was vague. “When customers asked for lower price, our people did not respond quickly enough,” he said on a conference call with analysts. Hayes, the Supermicro spokesman, says the company has never been notified of the existence of malicious chips on its motherboards by either customers or U.S. law enforcement.

Concurrent with the illicit chips’ discovery in 2015 and the unfolding investigation, Supermicro has been plagued by an accounting problem, which the company characterizes as an issue related to the timing of certain revenue recognition. After missing two deadlines to file quarterly and annual reports required by regulators, Supermicro was delisted from the Nasdaq on Aug. 23 of this year. It marked an extraordinary stumble for a company whose annual revenue had risen sharply in the previous four years, from a reported $1.5 billion in 2014 to a projected $3.2 billion this year.

One Friday in late September 2015, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared together at the White House for an hourlong press conference headlined by a landmark deal on cybersecurity. After months of negotiations, the U.S. had extracted from China a grand promise: It would no longer support the theft by hackers of U.S. intellectual property to benefit Chinese companies. Left out of those pronouncements, according to a person familiar with discussions among senior officials across the U.S. government, was the White House’s deep concern that China was willing to offer this concession because it was already developing far more advanced and surreptitious forms of hacking founded on its near monopoly of the technology supply chain.

In the weeks after the agreement was announced, the U.S. government quietly raised the alarm with several dozen tech executives and investors at a small, invite-only meeting in McLean, Va., organized by the Pentagon. According to someone who was present, Defense Department officials briefed the technologists on a recent attack and asked them to think about creating commercial products that could detect hardware implants. Attendees weren’t told the name of the hardware maker involved, but it was clear to at least some in the room that it was Supermicro, the person says.

The problem under discussion wasn’t just technological. It spoke to decisions made decades ago to send advanced production work to Southeast Asia. In the intervening years, low-cost Chinese manufacturing had come to underpin the business models of many of America’s largest technology companies. Early on, Apple, for instance, made many of its most sophisticated electronics domestically. Then in 1992, it closed a state-of-the-art plant for motherboard and computer assembly in Fremont, Calif., and sent much of that work overseas.

Over the decades, the security of the supply chain became an article of faith despite repeated warnings by Western officials. A belief formed that China was unlikely to jeopardize its position as workshop to the world by letting its spies meddle in its factories. That left the decision about where to build commercial systems resting largely on where capacity was greatest and cheapest. “You end up with a classic Satan’s bargain,” one former U.S. official says. “You can have less supply than you want and guarantee it’s secure, or you can have the supply you need, but there will be risk. Every organization has accepted the second proposition.”

In the three years since the briefing in McLean, no commercially viable way to detect attacks like the one on Supermicro’s motherboards has emerged—or has looked likely to emerge. Few companies have the resources of Apple and Amazon, and it took some luck even for them to spot the problem. “This stuff is at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, and there is no easy technological solution,” one of the people present in McLean says. “You have to invest in things that the world wants. You cannot invest in things that the world is not ready to accept yet.”

Bloomberg LP has been a Supermicro customer. According to a Bloomberg LP spokesperson, the company has found no evidence to suggest that it has been affected by the hardware issues raised in the article.
https://www.bloomberg.com/businessweek





Apple Watch’s New Auto-911 Calls after Falls may Tumble into Legal Trouble

Lawyers play out new privacy scenarios created by the Series 4's auto-alert feature.
Cyrus Farivar

Late last week, Apple released more details about how (with certain opt-in settings) the Apple Watch Series 4 will contact emergency services if the watch detects that you've had a hard fall.

Before actually contacting first responders, the Apple Watch will try to give numerous urgent alerts: tapping the wearer on the wrist, sounding of a very loud alarm, and also displaying a visual alert.

That alert gives the options of immediately calling an "Emergency SOS" or tapping "I fell, but I'm OK" or "I did not fall."

If the Apple Watch detects that the wearer is "immobile for about a minute," it begins a 15-second countdown. After that, the Watch will contact emergency services, which often can use mobile phone data to locate the wearer. (Apple says that the feature is automatically enabled for users who have entered their age into their profile and are over 65.)

The (mostly) opt-in nature of the service may mitigate but not completely assuage concerns raised by some lawyers in the immediate aftermath of the September 12 announcement of the watch.

Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, was quick to point out that, by inviting the police into your home, Apple Watch wearers may be opening themselves up to criminal liability.

Consider: your watch (accidentally) alerts the police to check on you: 4th Amend. community caretaking exception means they can enter your home w/o a warrant. Plain view means they may seize contraband/evidence of a crime. Nice work, guys.

— Elizabeth Joh (@elizabeth_joh) September 12, 2018

In other words, if police are alerted by an Apple Watch of a possible injury, they do not need a warrant to enter a home under the "community caretaking" exception to the Fourth Amendment. This is the notion that law enforcement officers can enter a private space if they reasonably believe that someone needs emergency assistance. It's similar to the "exigent circumstances" exception, which allows police to come in if they believe someone is in imminent danger or physical evidence is being destroyed.

In such a situation, the watch would alert first responders, and police officers could enter her home. They might spot a few joints on her coffee table, and the wearer might be subsequently charged with felony drug possession.

"One of the interesting things here is that, whenever there's a change in the technology, it creates an inadvertent Fourth Amendment question," Joh told Ars. "It's a good example of how design can enhance or detract from privacy in accidental ways. I'm sure there are nothing but very good intentions behind this change in how this Apple Watch is going to work. But there are other considerations as well, because every time there is a change of this sort, there will be accidents, and there will be missteps."

She noted that she would love to hear Apple justify this change in its design.

Apple did not respond to Ars' request for comment on the record, referring us solely to this webpage.

"I would love to hear that cost-benefit analysis," she said.

New York-based criminal-defense attorney Fred Jennings agreed with Joh. He said that he would prefer if the wearer could automatically alert a relative or friend instead of the police.

Exactly. Would much prefer a feature that can automatically dial a user-determined contact.

— fbj.esq.online (@Esquiring) September 12, 2018

On September 12, Jennings explained to Ars by phone that, unfortunately, there have been and still are instances "where people are made less safe by the summoning of police."

However, when Ars sent Jennings the September 20 writeup of the new emergency calling feature, he said his concerns were "confirmed."

"I think 'call auto-detected local emergency services' is a fine and sensible default, but users should have the ability to override that with their own setting," he wrote to Ars. "If I'm in rural Montana, my live-in partner or former-EMT neighbor may be a faster responder than the local police and doesn't come with the same privacy or over-response concerns."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ou-want-it-to/





LinkNYC’s 5 Million Users Make 500,000 Phone Calls Each Month
Kyle Wiggers

In 2014, in a bid to replace the more than 11,000 aging payphones scattered across New York City’s pedestrian walkways with more functional fixtures, Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a competition — the Reinvent Payphones initiative — calling on private enterprises, residents, and nonprofits to submit designs for replacements.

In the end, LinkNYC — a plan proposed by consortium CityBridge — secured a contract from the city, beating out competing proposals with electricity-generating piezoelectric pressure plates and EV charging stations. The plan was to spend $200 million installing as many as 10,000 kiosks, or Links, that would supply free, encrypted gigabit Wi-Fi to passers-by within 150 feet. They would have buttons that link directly to 911 and New York’s 311 service and free USB charging stations for smartphones, plus wired handsets that would allow free calls to all 50 states and Washington, D.C. And perhaps best of all, they wouldn’t cost the city a dime; advertising would subsidize expansion and ongoing maintenance.

The Links wouldn’t just get urbanites online and let them juice their phones, though. The idea was to engage users, too, principally with twin 55-inch high-definition displays and tethered Android tablets with map functions. Mike Gamaroff, head of innovation at Kinetic, characterized the Links in 2016 as “first and foremost a utility for the people of the city, that also doubles up as an advertising network.”

Two years after the deployment of prototypical kiosks in Manhattan, Intersection — a part of the aforementioned CityBridge, which with Qualcomm and CIVIQ Smartscapes manages the kiosks — is ready to declare them a success. The roughly 1,600 Links recently hit three milestones: 1 billion sessions, 5 million users, and 500,000 phone calls a month.

“We have an opportunity to communicate with people as they navigate their day,” Intersection senior consumer marketing manager Amanda Giddon told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “My mandate is to help make Link a part of the community through content and content strategy — really, anything that [makes] New Yorkers feel like tourists in their own city [or] even help tourists feel like New Yorkers through useful, actionable information.”

Creative content

At any given time, the Link kiosks’ screens host news headlines from the Associated Press, comics, weather info, real-time alerts from the Office of Emergency Management, and creative from a mix of roughly 50 other campaigns. Also on tap are hundreds of hyperlocal factoids — dubbed “NYC Fun Facts” and “This Day in New York” — about people (“Martin Hildebrandt opened the United States’ first tattoo business in New York City in 1870”), places (“There’s a superhero supply store in Brooklyn”), and things (“New York City gets 15 times more snow than the South Pole each year”). There are close to 400 trivia tidbits in all, with new ones joining the collection each week.

Gibbon researches the facts herself, typically spending a few hours a week poring through a range of sources, including Broadway.org, Grow NYC, Time Magazine, FiveThirtyEight, and the National History Museum. She dutifully fact-checks them and copies them to a master spreadsheet before deciding which ones will make the cut.


“It’s been really great to see people writing in about the content they see. We’ve created some moments of awe for people, and if I can create a moment of awe for someone on a daily basis, then I’m doing my job right,” Giddon said.

When the kiosks aren’t alerting pedestrians to, say, the percentage of New Yorkers riding elevators at any time, they display real-time bus arrivals and local maps. But the bulk of their programming consists of rotating regular, seasonal, and limited-time content collaborations with organizations, publications, and government agencies.

“We survey our users quite frequently [for ideas] … and we go to great lengths to make sure our [content] is contextually relevant,” said Giddon. “[We’re] pioneering this publishing approach and public space and are really eager to get feedback and adjust as we continue to expand.”

One recent example is a partnership with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) that showcased the work of local artists. Another is “Popular Places Near You,” a Foursquare-powered feature that shows top restaurants and entertainment hubs within walking distance.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Intersection worked with the Museum of the City of New York’s Beyond Suffrage exhibit to feature NYC women in politics, with the NYC Department of Records to curate historical photography (localized at a neighborhood level), and with Silicon Harlem and Global Kids to showcase legendary African Americans during Black History Month.

Social services

Intersection’s also leveraging the kiosks to promote civic engagement.

In April, it teamed up with the New York City Council to roll out Participatory Budgeting New York City, which let residents as young as 11 vote via the kiosk tablets on how the city will allocate its $40 million public budget. And it launched an awareness campaign to get New Yorkers registered to vote in advance of the November 2018 general elections. (The latter integrated with the city’s voter registration data to show a real-time count of the number of people signed up.) It also posts Community Board meeting notices and local road closures and through its LinkLocal program lets small businesses advertise for free on select kiosks around the city.

Intersection has experimented with social services, too. In January, users were able to browse and enroll in health plans through New York State of Health insurance marketplace.

For some New Yorkers, the Link hubs aren’t just a convenience — they’re a lifeline. A 2014 study by the Office of the New York City Comptroller found that 27 percent of NYC residents surveyed — 40 percent of whom had less than a high school education — lacked broadband internet at home.

Without a reliable internet connection, students can’t access online classroom resources, out-of-work adults can’t submit job applications, and families struggling to make ends meet can’t take advantage of social services. As the New York Times wrote in August 2016: “In urban areas, rural areas, and everywhere in between, students who lack internet service at home have difficulty doing their nightly schoolwork. Many of them cobble together whatever connectivity they can, picking up free Wi-Fi signals in front of libraries, in school parking lots, and at fast-food restaurants.”

Four years ago, De Blasio touted the Links as a sign of progress in the fight for unimpeded internet access. “[They’re] the fastest and largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the world,” he said, “[and] a critical step toward a more equal, open, and connected city for every New Yorker, in every borough.”
Controversy

But the accolades tend to ignore the fact that LinkNYC isn’t strictly a philanthropic effort. Advertisements that run alongside Intersection’s programming were expected to generate between $500 million and a billion dollars over the next 12 years. (CityBridge and the city split the ad revenue equally.)

And the kiosks themselves aren’t without controversy.

The connected tablets initially had an internet browser, but Intersection disabled it in response to complaints about users browsing pornographic material. It also added vision-assistance tools after the National Federation of the Blind sued the City of New York and LinkNYC, arguing that the tablets lacked basic accessibility features.

Revenue, meanwhile, has missed expectations. Over the first two years, the city collected $43.4 million in payments, narrowly beating the $42.5 million minimum CityBridge guaranteed. Under an amended deal, CityBridge will delay paying the city its share of revenues (above the minimum payments) until the last year of the contract, when they’ll be due with 10 percent interest.

And as The Intercept recently pointed out, consumer advocacy groups and activists, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Stop LinkNYC, and ReThink LinkNYC, have brought attention to the hubs’ potential for mass surveillance.

Each hub is equipped with three cameras and 30 sensors capable of, among other things, “monitor[ing] pedestrian, bike, and car traffic; track[ing] passing wireless devices; listen[ing] to street noise; and … identify[ing] abandoned packages.”

None of this has scared away investors, who extended $150 million in financing to Intersection last year.

Intersection makes clear in its privacy policy that it doesn’t collect information about users’ precise locations. And in response to recent allegations that it intends to track Wi-Fi users’ real-time positions, it said it doesn’t collect their clickstream data or browsing history.

As Intersection and CityBridge eye expansion to new markets, Giddon said, they’ll take into account feedback they’ve received so far.

“I think it’ll definitely be a combination of lessons learned and ensuring we add a little local flavor [to our programing],” Giddon said. “We have research teams in New York and Philadelphia who’ve conducted some preliminary focus group testing to understand how to best serve the community. We’re really open to feedback, and we’ve done a lot of work here and look forward to seeing how it’s received.

Intersection hopes to install 7,500 Link kiosks by 2026, when its contract with the city expires. In June, it launched InLinkUK, a partnership with telecom provider BT and outdoor advertising agency Primesight to replace over 1,000 pay phones in major U.K. cities with kiosks. In September, 100 kiosks hit the sidewalks of Philadelphia as part of its LinkPHL program. And by the end of this year, 45 will come to Newark.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/29/l...million-users/





Use of the Internet and Smartphones is No Longer on the Rise in America
Chase Purdy

For years, the number of Americans who have reported using the internet, social media, and smartphones has been on a meteoric rise. But that rate has slowed to a near-stall.

New data published this week by the Pew Research Center show that, since 2016, that number has plateaued, indicating those technologies have reached a saturation point among many groups of people. The percentage of Americans using smartphones (77%), the internet (88% to 89%), and social media (69%) has remained virtually unchanged during the last two years.

“Put simply, in some instances there just aren’t many non-users left,” the report states.

More than 90% of adults younger than 50 report they use the internet or own a smartphone. This number squares with some of the trends noticed earlier this year by Gartner, a global research firm. The fourth quarter of 2017 marked the first time since 2004 that the market for smartphones declined globally compared to the prior year. People are less frequently buying new phones.

“While demand for high quality, 4G connectivity and better camera features remained strong, high expectations and few incremental benefits during replacement weakened smartphone sales,” the firm reported.

That’s already posed significant challenges for foreign companies looking to break into the US market. The Chinese brand Xiaomi is the fourth-largest seller of smartphones in the world. But as CNBC reported earlier this year, any goals it has for getting its products into American hands will be tough, with market saturation being a big reason why.

Of course, there are segments of the US population that represent room in which to expand the use of smartphones and the internet. About 60% of Americans living in rural zones complain they have internet speeds so slow that it inhibits use. There’s also the population over 50 years old, which often complains that learning a new technology isn’t worth their time, according to the Pew report. In 2015, a Pew survey showed 34% of people over 65 said they had no confidence in their ability to perform tasks online.

So for companies looking to make inroads, some of the challenges are clear: Invent products that make usability improvements to what’s already offered by Apple or Samsung that can be applied across a broad age range of people. It’s a tall order, but a tighter market could just pave the way for a newer, better wave of technology.
https://qz.com/1407418/us-at-near-sa...-internet-use/





First they ignore you…

Entire Broadband Industry Sues California to Stop Net Neutrality Law

Top broadband lobby groups sue California, claim net neutrality law is illegal.
Jon Brodkin

Four lobby groups representing the broadband industry today sued California to stop the state's new net neutrality law.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Eastern District of California by mobile industry lobby CTIA, cable industry lobby NCTA, telco lobby USTelecom, and the American Cable Association, which represents small and mid-size cable companies. Together, these four lobby groups represent all the biggest mobile and home Internet providers in the US and hundreds of smaller ISPs. Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US, Sprint, Cox, Frontier, and CenturyLink are among the groups' members.

"This case presents a classic example of unconstitutional state regulation," the complaint said. The California net neutrality law "was purposefully intended to countermand and undermine federal law by imposing on [broadband] the very same regulations that the Federal Communications Commission expressly repealed in its 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order."

ISPs say the California law impermissibly regulates interstate commerce. "[i]t is impossible or impracticable for an Internet service provider (“ISP”) offering BIAS to distinguish traffic that moves only within California from traffic that crosses state borders," the lobby groups' complaint said.

The groups asked the court to declare that the state law "is preempted and unconstitutional, and should permanently enjoin [California] from enforcing or giving effect to it."

California now faces two major lawsuits challenging the net neutrality law signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Sunday. The Trump administration's Department of Justice also sued California and is seeking a preliminary injunction that would stop the law from being implemented. California' net neutrality rules are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2019.

Multiple court cases will affect state law

Like the DOJ, broadband lobby groups argue that state net neutrality laws are preempted by the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of federal net neutrality rules. The FCC and DOJ claim that California's net neutrality law conflicts with the federal government's deregulatory policy for broadband. California argues that the FCC gave up its authority to regulate broadband and therefore cannot preempt states from regulating the industry.

Ultimately, the question of whether the FCC's preemption of state laws is valid will be decided in a different lawsuit pending at the US Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit. In that suit, state attorneys general and other litigants sued the FCC in order to reverse the repeal of federal net neutrality rules and the preemption of state laws.

But the US District Court in California must rule on requests for a preliminary injunction from the DOJ and lobby groups. Because of that, the US District Court will decide whether California can enforce its law while the US Court of Appeals case is pending.

The new California state law prohibits Internet service providers from blocking or throttling lawful traffic and from requiring fees from websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic to consumers. The law also bans paid data cap exemptions (so-called "zero-rating") and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points.

California's ban on paid zero-rating would force AT&T and Verizon to stop charging companies for data cap exemptions. The California law also prohibits zero-rating some applications in a content category but not others. For example, an ISP could zero-rate all video services but would not be allowed to zero-rate some video services while counting other video services against data caps. AT&T's zero-rating of its DirecTV streaming service could thus violate the California law because AT&T doesn't provide the same data cap exemptions to all other video services.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...eutrality-law/

















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