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Old 09-01-19, 12:18 PM   #1
JackSpratts
 
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - January 12th, ’19

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"Blade Runner, the iconic sci-fi movie, is set in 2019. And here we are: there's an unregulated black market where bounty-hunters can buy information about where we are, in real time, over time, and come after us. You don't need to be a replicant to be scared of the consequences." – Thomas Rid, Johns Hopkins University






































January 12th, 2019




Tor Pulls in Record Donations as it Lessens Reliance on US Government Grants
Jon Russell

Tor, the open-source initiative that provides a more secure way to access the internet, is continuing to diversify its funding away from its long-standing reliance on U.S. government grants.

The Tor Project — the organization behind the service which stands for “The Onion Router” — announced this week that it brought in a record $460,000 from individual donors in 2018. In addition, recently released financial information shows it raised a record $4.13 million from all sources in 2017 thanks to a growth in non-U.S. government donors.

The individual donation push represents an increase on the $400,000 it raised in 2017. A large part of that is down to Tor ally Mozilla, which once again pledged to match donations in the closing months of the year, while an anonymous individual matched all new backers who pledged up to $20,000.

Overall, the organization said that it attracted donations from 115 countries worldwide in 2018, which reflects its importance outside of the U.S.

The record donation haul comes weeks after the Tor Project quietly revealed its latest financials — for 2017 — which show it has lessened its dependence on U.S. government sources. That’s been a key goal for some time, particularly after allegations that the FBI paid Carnegie Mellon researchers to help crack Tor, which served as a major motivation for the introduction of fundraising drives in 2015.

Back in 2015, U.S. government sources accounted for 80-90 percent of its financial backing, but that fell to just over 50 percent in 2017. The addition of a Swedish government agency, which provided $600,000, helped on that front, as well as corporate donations from Mozilla ($520,000) and DuckDuckGo ($25,000), more than $400,000 from a range of private foundations, and, of course, those donations from individuals.

Tor is best known for being used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden but, with governments across the world cracking down on the internet, it is a resource that’s increasingly necessary if we are to guard the world’s right to a free internet.

Tor has certainly been busy making its technology more accessible over the last year.

It launched its first official mobile browser for Android in September, and the same month it released TorBrowser 8.0, its most usable browser yet, which is based on Firefox’s 2017 Quantum structure. It has also worked closely with Mozilla to bring Tor into Firefox itself as it has already done with Brave, a browser firm led by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich.

Beyond the browser and the Tor network itself, which is designed to minimize the potential for network surveillance, the organization also develops a range of other projects. More than two million people are estimated to use Tor, according to data from the organization.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/to...nce-us-grants/





University of California Tells Students Not to Use WeChat, WhatsApp in China
James Griffiths, CNN

Students and faculty at the University of California (UC) have been warned not to use messaging apps and social media while visiting China, for fear their communications could be used against them by the country's law enforcement agencies.

The guidance from one of the biggest school networks in the US is the latest concern to be raised over Western travel to China following the December 1 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of US authorities.

Meng, who was detained in Vancouver and is currently on bail, is facing possible extradition to the US on suspicion of violating US sanctions against Iran.

Since her arrest, multiple Canadians have been detained in China and two -- Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig -- are being investigated on suspicion of "activities that endangered China's national security," charges which supporters say are politically motivated.

The UC guidance also appeared to reference the case of Paul Whelan, a US citizen arrested in Russia last month on suspicion of espionage.

"While the use of WhatsApp, WeChat and like messaging apps are legal in China, we have seen in the latest espionage charge of a US citizen in Russia where the use of WhatsApp has been cited in his espionage charges," read an email seen by CNN.

"Our concern here is the possibility China could use this condition similarly against western travelers to levy charges or as an excuse to deny departure. We recommend not using these messaging apps in China at this time."

Representatives for WeChat and WhatsApp did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'Exercise increased caution'

A spokeswoman for UC Davis confirmed staff and students at the campus had received the email, after the news was first reported by the South China Morning Post. Students at UC Berkeley also received the email.

"UC Davis Global Affairs routinely posts links to State Department travel advisories and CDC (Centers for Disease Control) health advisories for places where our faculty, staff and students travel," the spokeswoman told CNN.

The email was sent by Gary Leonard, an executive director with UC's Risk Services department, under the Office of the President. Leonard, who is traveling, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Claire Doan, director of media relations for UC's Office of the President, told CNN the Risk Services department "relayed the guidance from WorldAware (a security and risk management company with whom we consult) to risk managers on our campuses and medical centers."

"We sent the email following a recent Department of State travel advisory for China; it is meant for consideration by staff involved in ensuring the safety and security of international travel by individuals in the UC community," she added.

That government advisory, stating the threat level as 2 on a four point scale, told Americans to "exercise increased caution in China due to arbitrary enforcement of local laws as well as special restrictions on dual US-Chinese nationals."

'Do not sign anything'

China has always had a slightly uneasy relationship with foreign students.

While around half a million international students live in the country, and numerous prestigious Western institutions run or partner with universities in China -- including New York University, Duke University and the University of Liverpool -- foreign academics in particular have also been treated with suspicion.

In 2016, a propaganda poster released as part of National Security Education Day warned Chinese citizens that handsome foreigners could be seeking to steal sensitive information.

The comic book-style poster showed a female named Xiao Li, being showered with compliments, red roses, fancy dinners and romantic walks in the park by David, a "visiting scholar researching issues about China" who persuades her to share internal government documents.

Academics and even some students visiting China have complained about being watched and followed by police, or dragged in for questioning about their research and who they are speaking to in the country.

As well as warning "do not sign anything," the new UC guidance instructs staff to "be cautious of lengthy Q&A or interrogation to avoid inadvertently providing any information that may be distorted to deny departure or facilitate an arrest."

In the past, concerns have mainly focused on people's public pronouncements or statements to the authorities, but the new guidance suggests officials are concerned that even private comments could be used against academics and students.

'New level of suppression'

UC's concerns would appear to be well founded. China is increasingly cracking down on previously tolerated spheres of dissent, with even private comments being policed.

In recent months, the authorities have "detained or summoned dozens or more (Chinese) Twitter users, forcing them to delete sensitive tweets or close their accounts," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). "In some cases, authorities appear to have hacked accounts themselves."

Twitter is blocked inside China and while a tiny number of Chinese dissidents and activists do use the platform, their influence is limited and in the past they were mostly ignored by the authorities.

While tweets are public, the Chinese authorities have in the past also pursued people for things they say in private, particularly on Tencent's messaging app WeChat, which has a track record of conforming with government censorship and surveillance.

In a report on privacy protections in messaging apps, Amnesty International ranked Tencent zero out of 100, and WeChat has been accused of reading users' messages and storing data. While Tencent has denied reading messages, under a new Chinese cyber security law, tech firms must store logs and relevant data for at least six months and provide them to the authorities when requested.

"Numerous instances have shown that Chinese authorities have access to private chats on WeChat," HRW's Yaqiu Wang told CNN.

"The crackdown on Chinese Twitter users and the punishment leveled against WeChat users for their private messages show that authorities have become increasingly intolerant of speeches that are either private or anonymous."

While WhatsApp -- which boasts end-to-end encryption and overseas servers without a backdoor for the Chinese authorities -- is in theory far more secure than WeChat or other Chinese messaging apps, if authorities are able to compromise a target's phone with malware or other methods, encryption will not protect them.

Experts have long warned against using WeChat for anything sensitive, even as the sheer dominance of the app makes it difficult to avoid entirely in China.

"It's not an exaggeration to say I live in and work on WeChat," New York Times technology columnist Li Yuan wrote recently, adding that surveillance fears are "just the way of life."

"The reality is that ordinary Chinese often feel powerless and fatalistic when it comes to censorship and surveillance," she said.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/11/asia/...ntl/index.html





German Man Confesses to Hacking of Public Figures’ Data, Officials Say
Melissa Eddy

A young German man admitted to stealing and publishing online the personal data of hundreds of lawmakers, journalists and other public figures out of anger at their political statements, the authorities said Tuesday.

They did not give any information about the political views of the 20-year-old suspect, who they said had acted alone. But the cyberattack targeted members of every leading political party except the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

The leaked information — which included private email addresses, credit card information, personal chat exchanges and pictures of the subjects’ children — was available for a month before the federal cybersecurity services noticed it. The attacks fueled a new round of alarm in Germany, a country where citizens especially covet their privacy.

The suspect was detained on Sunday on suspicion of spying and illegally publishing personal information, but has since been released, said Georg Ungefuk, a prosecutor with the office that investigates cybercrimes. The suspect’s name was not made public.

“In the course of the interrogation, the suspect confessed to acting alone in spying and illegally publishing the data,” Mr. Ungefuk said. “Regarding his motivation, the suspect said that he was angry with the public statements of the targeted politicians, journalists and public personalities.”

Officers searched the home of the man, a student who lives with his parents in the central state of Hesse, on Sunday, Mr. Ungefuk said.

Two days earlier, the authorities were alerted to the hacking attacks, which were announced on Twitter in November and were published in a series of links beginning on Dec. 1. The authorities said they were still evaluating hard drives and personal papers confiscated in the raid.

Almost 1,000 people were targeted by the hacking attack, but sensitive personal information was released in only 60 or so cases, the authorities said.

Opposition lawmakers have criticized security officials and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s interior minister for failing to discover the incursion until nearly a month after the information was first published online. The hacker released the information through links and passwords posted on Twitter in the form of an Advent calendar, where a window is opened each day leading up to Christmas, revealing a treat.

Early postings involved the personal information of rappers, journalists and YouTube video bloggers, but from Dec. 20, information on members of five of the six political parties with seats in the German Parliament was released. It was not clear why AfD politicians were spared.

The attack raised new questions about whether the government had structures in place to adequately help users safeguard their computers and sensitive personal information

Katarina Barley, the justice minister, said her office was looking into whether it made sense to further tighten the country’s already strict privacy laws, or those requiring software providers and companies running internet platforms to respond more swiftly to requests for data to be taken down.

“We are examining whether tightening the laws would make sense or be necessary,” Ms. Barley said. She also encouraged Germans to use strong passwords and two-step verification to access to their online accounts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/w...ng-arrest.html





For Owners of Amazon’s Ring Security Cameras, Strangers May Have Been Watching Too
Sam Biddle

The “smart home” of the 21st century isn’t just supposed to be a monument to convenience, we’re told, but also to protection, a Tony Stark-like bubble of vigilant algorithms and internet-connected sensors working ceaselessly to watch over us. But for some who’ve welcomed in Amazon’s Ring security cameras, there have been more than just algorithms watching through the lens, according to sources alarmed by Ring’s dismal privacy practices.

Ring has a history of lax, sloppy oversight when it comes to deciding who has access to some of the most precious, intimate data belonging to any person: a live, high-definition feed from around — and perhaps inside — their house. The company has marketed its line of miniature cameras, designed to be mounted as doorbells, in garages, and on bookshelves, not only as a means of keeping tabs on your home while you’re away, but of creating a sort of privatized neighborhood watch, a constellation of overlapping camera feeds that will help police detect and apprehend burglars (and worse) as they approach. “Our mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods has been at the core of everything we do at Ring,” founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff wrote last spring to commemorate the company’s reported $1 billion acquisition payday from Amazon, a company with its own recent history of troubling facial recognition practices. The marketing is working; Ring is a consumer hit and a press darling.

Despite its mission to keep people and their property secure, the company’s treatment of customer video feeds has been anything but, people familiar with the company’s practices told The Intercept. Beginning in 2016, according to one source, Ring provided its Ukraine-based research and development team virtually unfettered access to a folder on Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service that contained every video created by every Ring camera around the world. This would amount to an enormous list of highly sensitive files that could be easily browsed and viewed. Downloading and sharing these customer video files would have required little more than a click. The Information, which has aggressively covered Ring’s security lapses, reported on these practices last month.

At the time the Ukrainian access was provided, the video files were left unencrypted, the source said, because of Ring leadership’s “sense that encryption would make the company less valuable,” owing to the expense of implementing encryption and lost revenue opportunities due to restricted access. The Ukraine team was also provided with a corresponding database that linked each specific video file to corresponding specific Ring customers.

At the same time, the source said, Ring unnecessarily provided executives and engineers in the U.S. with highly privileged access to the company’s technical support video portal, allowing unfiltered, round-the-clock live feeds from some customer cameras, regardless of whether they needed access to this extremely sensitive data to do their jobs. For someone who’d been given this top-level access — comparable to Uber’s infamous “God mode” map that revealed the movements of all passengers — only a Ring customer’s email address was required to watch cameras from that person’s home. Although the source said they never personally witnessed any egregious abuses, they told The Intercept “if [someone] knew a reporter or competitor’s email address, [they] could view all their cameras.” The source also recounted instances of Ring engineers “teasing each other about who they brought home” after romantic dates. Although the engineers in question were aware that they were being surveilled by their co-workers in real time, the source questioned whether their companions were similarly informed.

Ring’s decision to grant this access to its Ukraine team was spurred in part by the weaknesses of its in-house facial and object recognition software. Neighbors, the company’s disarming name for its distributed residential surveillance platform, is now a marquee feature for Ring’s cameras, billed as a “proactive” neighborhood watch. This real-time crime-fighting requires more than raw video — it requires the ability to make sense, quickly and at a vast scale, of what’s actually happening in these household video streams. Is that a dog or your husband? Is that a burglar or a tree? Ring’s software has for years struggled with these fundamentals of object recognition. According to the most recent Information report, “Users routinely complained to customer support about receiving alerts when nothing noteworthy was happening at their front door; instead, the system seemed to be detecting a car driving by on the street or a leaf falling from a tree in the front yard.”

Computer vision has made incredible strides in recent years, but creating software that can categorize objects from scratch is often expensive and time-consuming. To jump-start the process, Ring used its Ukrainian “data operators” as a crutch for its lackluster artificial intelligence efforts, manually tagging and labeling objects in a given video as part of a “training” process to teach software with the hope that it might be able to detect such things on its own in the near future. This process is still apparently underway years later: Ring Labs, the name of the Ukrainian operation, is still employing people as data operators, according to LinkedIn, and posting job listings for vacant video-tagging gigs: “You must be able to recognize and tag all moving objects in the video correctly with high accuracy,” reads one job ad. “Be ready for rapid changes in tasks in the same way as be ready for long monotonous work.”

A never-before-published image from an internal Ring document pulls back the veil of the company’s lofty security ambitions: Behind all the computer sophistication was a team of people drawing boxes around strangers, day in and day out, as they struggled to grant some semblance of human judgment to an algorithm. (The Intercept redacted a face from the image.)

A second source, with direct knowledge of Ring’s video-tagging efforts, said that the video annotation team watches footage not only from the popular outdoor and doorbell camera models, but from household interiors. The source said that Ring employees at times showed each other videos they were annotating and described some of the things they had witnessed, including people kissing, firing guns, and stealing.

Ring spokesperson Yassi Shahmiri would not answer any questions about the company’s past data policies and how they might be different today, electing instead to provide the following statement:

We take the privacy and security of our customers’ personal information extremely seriously. In order to improve our service, we view and annotate certain Ring videos. These videos are sourced exclusively from publicly shared Ring videos from the Neighbors app (in accordance with our terms of service), and from a small fraction of Ring users who have provided their explicit written consent to allow us to access and utilize their videos for such purposes.

We have strict policies in place for all our team members. We implement systems to restrict and audit access to information. We hold our team members to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our policies faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties. In addition, we have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them.


It’s not clear that the current standards for which Ring videos are accessed in Ukraine, as described in Ring’s statement, have always been in place, nor is there any indication of how (or if) they’re enforced. The Information quoted former employees saying the standards have not always been in place, and indicated that efforts to more tightly control video were put in place by Amazon only this past May after Amazon visited the Ukraine office. Even then, The Information added, staffers in Ukraine worked around the controls.

Furthermore, Ring’s overview of its Neighbors system provides zero mention of image or facial recognition, and no warning that those who use the feature are opting in to have their homes watched by individuals in a Ukrainian R&D lab. Mentions of Ring’s facial recognition practices are buried in its privacy policy, which said merely that “you may choose to use additional functionality in your Ring product that, through video data from your device, can recognize facial characteristics of familiar visitors.” Neither Ring’s terms of service nor its privacy policy mention any manual video annotation being conducted by humans, nor does either document mention of the possibility that Ring staffers could access this video at all. Even with suitably strong policies in place, the question of whether Ring owners should trust a company that ever considered the above permissible will remain an open one.
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/10/...curity-camera/





Bell Wants Permission to Gather and Track Customer Data

Canadian privacy laws mean they first have to ask
The Canadian Press

Canada's largest telecommunications group is getting mixed reviews for its plan to follow the lead of companies like Google and Facebook in collecting massive amounts of information about the activities and preferences of its customers.

Bell Canada began asking its customers in December for permission to track everything they do with their home and mobile phones, internet, television, apps or any other services they get through Bell or its affiliates.

In return, Bell says it will provide advertising and promotions that are more "tailored" to their needs and preferences.

"Tailored marketing means Bell will be able to customize advertising based on participant account information and service usage patterns, similar to the ways that companies like Google and others have been doing for some time," the company says in recent notices to customers.

Giving away valuable information

If given permission, Bell will collect information about its customers' age, gender, billing addresses, and the specific tablet, television or other devices used to access Bell services.

It will also collect the "number of messages sent and received, voice minutes, user data consumption and type of connectivity when downloading or streaming."

"Bell's marketing partners will not receive the personal information of program participants; we just deliver the offers relevant to the program participants on their behalf," the company assures customers.

Teresa Scassa, who teaches law at the University of Ottawa and holds the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, says Bell has done a good job of explaining what it wants to do.

But Scassa says Bell customers who opt into Bell's new program could be giving away commercially valuable personal information with little to no compensation for increased risks to their privacy and security.

"Here's a company that's taking every shred of personal information about me, from all kinds of activities that I engage in, and they're monetizing it. What do I get in return? Better ads? Really? That's it? What about better prices?"

Toronto-based consultant Charlie Wilton, whose firm has advised Bell and Rogers in the past, says there's "tonnes" of evidence that consumers are increasingly aware of how valuable their personal information can be.

Privacy and security concerns

"I mean, in a perfect world, they would give you discounts or they would give you points or things that consumers would more tangibly want, rather than just the elimination of a pain point — which is what they're offering right now," Wilton says.

Scassa says there are also privacy and security concerns to consider.

At the macro level, Bell's data security could be breached by hackers. At the micro level, she adds, there's the potential for family friction if everybody starts getting ads based on one person's activities.

Ads for pornography, birth control or services for victims of abuse could trigger confrontations, for instance.

"Some families are open and sharing. Others are fraught with tension and violence," Scassa says.

Wilton says a company in Bell's position also runs the risk that customers will feel betrayed if their information is leaked or the advertising they receive is inappropriate.

In the age of social media, he says, "one leak or one transgression gets amplified a million times."

For its part, Bell spokesman Nathan Gibson notes in an email that its customers aren't required to opt into its new marketing program and they can opt out later by adjusting their instructions to the company.

Ads that are relevant to customers

"Bell is responsible for delivering the advertising we believe would be most relevant to customers who opt in to the program, rather than the random online ads they would receive otherwise," Gibson says.

"Customer information is always protected, enforced by our strict privacy policy and in accordance with all Canadian privacy regulations."

Gibson noted that "international competitors like Google or Facebook, who deliver targeted marketing services in this country, are not subject to the rules that we as a Canadian company must and do follow."

A spokeswoman for the federal privacy commissioner says that it hasn't received any complaints about Bell's new program.

However, Tobi Cohen noted that Bell withdrew and replaced its earlier Relevant Ads Program for its mobile service after the commission concluded in 2015 that dissatisfied consumers shouldn't be required to take the initiative to opt out.

Numerous requirements

"Following further consultations and discussions with our office, Bell did make improvements and relaunched the program with opt-in consent in 2016," Cohen says.

She added that the privacy commission hasn't scrutinized the new "tailored" marketing program but added that the federal privacy law governing private-sector organizations has numerous requirements.

Among other things, organizations "need to explain what risks of harm may come to the individual from the collection, use or disclosure of the various information."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bel...data-1.4969066





I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone

T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.

Nervously, I gave a bounty hunter a phone number. He had offered to geolocate a phone for me, using a shady, overlooked service intended not for the cops, but for private individuals and businesses. Armed with just the number and a few hundred dollars, he said he could find the current location of most phones in the United States.

The bounty hunter sent the number to his own contact, who would track the phone. The contact responded with a screenshot of Google Maps, containing a blue circle indicating the phone’s current location, approximate to a few hundred metres.

Queens, New York. More specifically, the screenshot showed a location in a particular neighborhood—just a couple of blocks from where the target was. The hunter had found the phone (the target gave their consent to Motherboard to be tracked via their T-Mobile phone.)

The bounty hunter did this all without deploying a hacking tool or having any previous knowledge of the phone’s whereabouts. Instead, the tracking tool relies on real-time location data sold to bounty hunters that ultimately originated from the telcos themselves, including T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint, a Motherboard investigation has found. These surveillance capabilities are sometimes sold through word-of-mouth networks.

Whereas it’s common knowledge that law enforcement agencies can track phones with a warrant to service providers, IMSI catchers, or until recently via other companies that sell location data such as one called Securus, at least one company, called Microbilt, is selling phone geolocation services with little oversight to a spread of different private industries, ranging from car salesmen and property managers to bail bondsmen and bounty hunters, according to sources familiar with the company’s products and company documents obtained by Motherboard. Compounding that already highly questionable business practice, this spying capability is also being resold to others on the black market who are not licensed by the company to use it, including me, seemingly without Microbilt’s knowledge.

Motherboard’s investigation shows just how exposed mobile networks and the data they generate are, leaving them open to surveillance by ordinary citizens, stalkers, and criminals, and comes as media and policy makers are paying more attention than ever to how location and other sensitive data is collected and sold. The investigation also shows that a wide variety of companies can access cell phone location data, and that the information trickles down from cell phone providers to a wide array of smaller players, who don’t necessarily have the correct safeguards in place to protect that data.

“People are reselling to the wrong people,” the bail industry source who flagged the company to Motherboard said. Motherboard granted the source and others in this story anonymity to talk more candidly about a controversial surveillance capability.

Got a tip? You can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Your mobile phone is constantly communicating with nearby cell phone towers, so your telecom provider knows where to route calls and texts. From this, telecom companies also work out the phone’s approximate location based on its proximity to those towers.

Although many users may be unaware of the practice, telecom companies in the United States sell access to their customers’ location data to other companies, called location aggregators, who then sell it to specific clients and industries. Last year, one location aggregator called LocationSmart faced harsh criticism for selling data that ultimately ended up in the hands of Securus, a company which provided phone tracking to low level enforcement without requiring a warrant. LocationSmart also exposed the very data it was selling through a buggy website panel, meaning anyone could geolocate nearly any phone in the United States at a click of a mouse.

There’s a complex supply chain that shares some of American cell phone users’ most sensitive data, with the telcos potentially being unaware of how the data is being used by the eventual end user, or even whose hands it lands in. Financial companies use phone location data to detect fraud; roadside assistance firms use it to locate stuck customers. But AT&T, for example, told Motherboard the use of its customers’ data by bounty hunters goes explicitly against the company’s policies, raising questions about how AT&T allowed the sale for this purpose in the first place.

“The allegation here would violate our contract and Privacy Policy,” an AT&T spokesperson told Motherboard in an email.

In the case of the phone we tracked, six different entities had potential access to the phone’s data. T-Mobile shares location data with an aggregator called Zumigo, which shares information with Microbilt. Microbilt shared that data with a customer using its mobile phone tracking product. The bounty hunter then shared this information with a bail industry source, who shared it with Motherboard.

The CTIA, a telecom industry trade group of which AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are members, has official guidelines for the use of so-called “location-based services” that “rely on two fundamental principles: user notice and consent,” the group wrote in those guidelines. Telecom companies and data aggregators that Motherboard spoke to said that they require their clients to get consent from the people they want to track, but it’s clear that this is not always happening.

A second source who has tracked the geolocation industry told Motherboard, while talking about the industry generally, “If there is money to be made they will keep selling the data.”

“Those third-level companies sell their services. That is where you see the issues with going to shady folks [and] for shady reasons,” the source added.

Frederike Kaltheuner, data exploitation programme lead at campaign group Privacy International, told Motherboard in a phone call that “it’s part of a bigger problem; the US has a completely unregulated data ecosystem.”

Microbilt buys access to location data from an aggregator called Zumigo and then sells it to a dizzying number of sectors, including landlords to scope out potential renters; motor vehicle salesmen, and others who are conducting credit checks. Armed with just a phone number, Microbilt’s “Mobile Device Verify” product can return a target’s full name and address, geolocate a phone in an individual instance, or operate as a continuous tracking service.

“You can set up monitoring with control over the weeks, days and even hours that location on a device is checked as well as the start and end dates of monitoring,” a company brochure Motherboard found online reads.

Posing as a potential customer, Motherboard explicitly asked a Microbilt customer support staffer whether the company offered phone geolocation for bail bondsmen. Shortly after, another staffer emailed with a price list—locating a phone can cost as little as $4.95 each if searching for a low number of devices. That price gets even cheaper as the customer buys the capability to track more phones. Getting real-time updates on a phone’s location can cost around $12.95.

“Dirt cheap when you think about the data you can get,” the source familiar with the industry added.
microbilt_pricelistA section of the price list Motherboard obtained. Image: Motherboard.

It’s bad enough that access to highly sensitive phone geolocation data is already being sold to a wide range of industries and businesses. But there is also an underground market that Motherboard used to geolocate a phone—one where Microbilt customers resell their access at a profit, and with minimal oversight.

“Blade Runner, the iconic sci-fi movie, is set in 2019. And here we are: there's an unregulated black market where bounty-hunters can buy information about where we are, in real time, over time, and come after us. You don't need to be a replicant to be scared of the consequences,” Thomas Rid, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, told Motherboard in an online chat.

The bail industry source said his middleman used Microbilt to find the phone. This middleman charged $300, a sizeable markup on the usual Microbilt price. The Google Maps screenshot provided to Motherboard of the target phone’s location also included its approximate longitude and latitude coordinates, and a range of how accurate the phone geolocation is: 0.3 miles, or just under 500 metres. It may not necessarily be enough to geolocate someone to a specific building in a populated area, but it can certainly pinpoint a particular borough, city, or neighborhood.

In other cases of phone geolocation it is typically done with the consent of the target, perhaps by sending a text message the user has to deliberately reply to, signalling they accept their location being tracked. This may be done in the earlier roadside assistance example or when a company monitors its fleet of trucks. But when Motherboard tested the geolocation service, the target phone received no warning it was being tracked.

The bail source who originally alerted Microbilt to Motherboard said that bounty hunters have used phone geolocation services for non-work purposes, such as tracking their girlfriends. Motherboard was unable to identify a specific instance of this happening, but domestic stalkers have repeatedly used technology, such as mobile phone malware, to track spouses.

As Motherboard was reporting this story, Microbilt removed documents related to its mobile phone location product from its website.

A Microbilt spokesperson told Motherboard in a statement that the company requires anyone using its mobile device verification services for fraud prevention must first obtain consent of the consumer. Microbilt also confirmed it found an instance of abuse on its platform—our phone ping.

“The request came through a licensed state agency that writes in approximately $100 million in bonds per year and passed all up front credentialing under the pretense that location was being verified to mitigate financial exposure related to a bond loan being considered for the submitted consumer,” Microbilt said in an emailed statement. In this case, “licensed state agency” is referring to a private bail bond company, Motherboard confirmed.

“As a result, MicroBilt was unaware that its terms of use were being violated by the rogue individual that submitted the request under false pretenses, does not approve of such use cases, and has a clear policy that such violations will result in loss of access to all MicroBilt services and termination of the requesting party’s end-user agreement,” Microbilt added. “Upon investigating the alleged abuse and learning of the violation of our contract, we terminated the customer’s access to our products and they will not be eligible for reinstatement based on this violation.”

Zumigo confirmed it was the company that provided the phone location to Microbilt and defended its practices. In a statement, Zumigo did not seem to take issue with the practice of providing data that ultimately ended up with licensed bounty hunters, but wrote, “illegal access to data is an unfortunate occurrence across virtually every industry that deals in consumer or employee data, and it is impossible to detect a fraudster, or rogue customer, who requests location data of his or her own mobile devices when the required consent is provided. However, Zumigo takes steps to protect privacy by providing a measure of distance (approx. 0.5-1.0 mile) from an actual address.” Zumigo told Motherboard it has cut Microbilt’s data access.

"People are reselling to the wrong people."

In Motherboard’s case, the successfully geolocated phone was on T-Mobile.

“We take the privacy and security of our customers’ information very seriously and will not tolerate any misuse of our customers’ data,” A T-Mobile spokesperson told Motherboard in an emailed statement. “While T-Mobile does not have a direct relationship with Microbilt, our vendor Zumigo was working with them and has confirmed with us that they have already shut down all transmission of T-Mobile data. T-Mobile has also blocked access to device location data for any request submitted by Zumigo on behalf of Microbilt as an additional precaution.”

Microbilt’s product documentation suggests the phone location service works on all mobile networks, however the middleman was unable or unwilling to conduct a search for a Verizon device. Verizon did not respond to a request for comment.

AT&T told Motherboard it has cut access to Microbilt as the company investigates.

“We only permit the sharing of location when a customer gives permission for cases like fraud prevention or emergency roadside assistance, or when required by law,” the AT&T spokesperson said.

Sprint told Motherboard in a statement that “protecting our customers’ privacy and security is a top priority, and we are transparent about that in our Privacy Policy [...] Sprint does not have a direct relationship with MicroBilt. If we determine that any of our customers do and have violated the terms of our contract, we will take appropriate action based on those findings.” Sprint would not clarify the contours of its relationship with Microbilt.

These statements sound very familiar. When The New York Times and Senator Ron Wyden published details of Securus last year, the firm that was offering geolocation to low level law enforcement without a warrant, the telcos said they were taking extra measures to make sure their customers’ data would not be abused again. Verizon announced it was going to limit data access to companies not using it for legitimate purposes. T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T followed suit shortly after with similar promises.

After Wyden’s pressure, T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere tweeted in June last year “I’ve personally evaluated this issue & have pledged that @tmobile will not sell customer location data to shady middlemen.”

"It appears these promises were little more than worthless spam in their customers’ inboxes."

Months after the telcos said they were going to combat this problem, in the face of an arguably even worse case of abuse and data trading, they are saying much the same thing. Last year, Motherboard reported on a company that previously offered phone geolocation to bounty hunters; here Microbilt is operating even after a wave of outrage from policy makers. In its statement to Motherboard on Monday, T-Mobile said it has nearly finished the process of terminating its agreements with location aggregators.

“It would be bad if this was the first time we learned about it. It’s not. Every major wireless carrier pledged to end this kind of data sharing after I exposed this practice last year. Now it appears these promises were little more than worthless spam in their customers’ inboxes,” Wyden told Motherboard in a statement. Wyden is proposing legislation to safeguard personal data.

Due to the ongoing government shutdown, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was unable to provide a statement.

“Wireless carriers’ continued sale of location data is a nightmare for national security and the personal safety of anyone with a phone,” Wyden added. “When stalkers, spies, and predators know when a woman is alone, or when a home is empty, or where a White House official stops after work, the possibilities for abuse are endless.”
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...zumigo-tmobile





Senators Call on FCC To Investigate T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint Selling Location Data to Bounty Hunters

After Motherboard’s article, Senators Kamala Harris, Mark Warner, and Ron Wyden are coming out against telcos who are selling their customers' location data.
Joseph Cox

On Tuesday, Motherboard revealed that major American telcos T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint are selling customer location data of users in an unregulated market that trickles down to bounty hunters and people not authorized to handle such information. In our investigation, we purchased the real-time location of a cell phone from a bail industry source for $300, pinpointing it to a specific part of Queens, New York.

The issue potentially impacts hundreds of millions of cell phone users in the United States, with customers likely unaware that their location data is being sold and resold through multiple companies, with even the telcos sometimes having little idea where it ends up and how it is used.

Now, Senators and a commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have urged government bodies to investigate, with some calling for regulation that would ensure customers are properly made aware of how their data is being sold.

“The American people have an absolute right to the privacy of their data, which is why I’m extraordinarily troubled by reports of this system of repackaging and reselling location data to unregulated third party services for potentially nefarious purposes. If true, this practice represents a legitimate threat to our personal and national security,” Senator Kamala Harris told Motherboard in a statement.

The phone Motherboard paid to locate was on the T-Mobile network. That data access traveled through a complex series of companies and resellers, starting with T-Mobile, before moving to a another company called Zumigo, a so-called ‘location aggregator’. Zumigo then provided the access to Microbilt, which offers phone location services to the bail bondsman industry. In turn, a bounty hunter sold it to a source, and that source sent the phone’s location to Motherboard.

There are more legitimate uses for this data, such as financial companies detecting fraud, or roadside assistance firms finding stranded customers. But there is space for abuse: T-Mobile, Zumigo, and Microbilt only became aware of the unauthorized resale of the data access on the black market once Motherboard informed them.

The location itself was presented in a Google Maps interface, with the accuracy being around 500m. The phone received no warning, such as a text message, it was being tracked.

“This is just another example that of how unwitting consumers are to the ways in which their data is collected, sold or shared, and commercialized. It’s not that people ‘don’t care about privacy,’ as some have argued—it’s that customers, along with policymakers, have been kept in the dark for years about data collection and commercialization practices,” Senator Mark Warner told Motherboard in a statement.

Got a tip? You can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Harris explicitly called on the FCC to investigate the issue.

“The FCC needs to immediately investigate these serious security concerns and take the necessary steps to protect the privacy of American consumers,” she said.

The FCC may already have that in mind. On Tuesday, commissioner of the FCC Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted “The FCC needs to investigate. Stat.”

“It shouldn’t be that you pay a few hundred dollars to a bounty hunter and then they can tell you in real time where a phone is within a few hundred metres. That’s not right. This entire ecosystem needs some oversight,” she added on MSNBC’s Velshi & Ruhle show on Wednesday.

“I think we’ve got to get to this fast,” she added. Because of the ongoing government shutdown, it is unclear when an investigation, if it went ahead, would start.

Multiple senators are calling on regulation that could curb this unauthorized use and sale of phone location data.

“Responsible federal agencies and the U.S. Congress should continue to hold hearings to shine a light on these practices, and look at regulations to ensure companies are actually upfront with consumers about whether and how their sensitive data is being used and sold,” Warner’s statement added.

Senator Ron Wyden recently proposed a bill designed to safeguard personal data.

“The industry has failed again and again to protect Americans’ information. It’s time for Congress to step in and pass strong privacy legislation, like my bill, to safeguard our data and hold companies accountable when they fail,” Wyden told Motherboard in a statement.

Beyond the tracking itself, and any potential legislation or investigations, is ultimately an issue of consent.

“I haven’t consented to this, and I bet you haven’t either,” Rosenworcel added in her MSNBC interview.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...bounty-hunters





Apple Took Out a CES Ad to Troll its Competitors Over Privacy

Apple never attends CES, but it's here in spirit.
Nathan Ingraham

Historically, Apple hasn't had an official presence at CES. It's not surprising given the company's success at hosting and hyping its own product launch events -- long before the iPod and iPhone brought Apple to the top of the technology mountain, Steve Jobs keynotes were can't miss events. The company is also very deliberate about its marketing campaigns; when I see Apple billboard ads, they focus on new product close-ups with minimal messaging.

This is why the giant ad banner I saw when I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for CES 2019 caught my eye. Positioned not far from the convention center where CES takes place, the sign is a cheeky riff on the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan -- and with just a few words, it casts an Apple-shaped shadow over the convention.

Apple never shows up at CES, so I can't say I saw this coming. pic.twitter.com/8jjiBSEu7z
— Chris Velazco (@chrisvelazco) January 4, 2019

Apple's focus on privacy is nothing new -- the company has long said that it doesn't make money from its users' personal information, but from selling people hardware and software. That privacy priority came into clear focus three years ago when Apple refused to assist the FBI in unlocking an iPhone that belonged to a suspected terrorist in San Bernardino, CA. And throughout 2018, new security scandals seemingly emerged every week (with Facebook almost always leading the way) and the government took a major interest in what technology giants like Google are doing with our personal data.

In a world where privacy is on everyone's mind, Apple is saying to the technology industry that it stands alone. "Do whatever you want in the city of sin," the billboard barks, "we'll never know."

The ad's placement takes on extra irony when you notice that Google's CES presence is even bigger than it was last year -- the company once again wrapped the Las Vegas monorail with "Hey Google" ads and once again it is building a huge playhouse in the convention center parking lot. For the second year in a row, Google will be unavoidable at CES even though it probably isn't launching any new products of its own. But this year, Apple will literally be reminding everyone of 2018's privacy scandals, asking CES visitors how comfortable they are saying "hey Google" to a growing raft of products.

It doesn't hurt that this helps Apple change the conversation a little bit from the tough week it just had, either. Yes, iPhone sales are slowing down -- but if you want a Vegas-proof smartphone, Apple is ready to sell you one.

Ultimately, this is just one ad (I haven't seen it elsewhere in Las Vegas yet) that just builds on a message Apple has been crafting for years. But the company is nothing if not deliberate with its messaging. This probably isn't the start of a large-scale, national ad campaign -- but touting its focus on privacy for all the tech industry to see makes a statement that goes way beyond a single billboard.

We've reached out to see if Apple has any comment on its advertising here at CES and will update this post if we hear anything.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/05/...y-advertising/





AT&T Preps for New Layoffs Despite Billions in Tax Breaks and Regulatory Favors

Internal documents obtained by Motherboard show that the company is preparing for layoffs—megamergers, deregulation, and tax breaks aren’t providing the public benefits AT&T promised.
Karl Bode

AT&T is preparing for yet another significant round of layoffs according to internal documents obtained by Motherboard. The staff reductions come despite billions in tax breaks and regulatory favors AT&T promised would dramatically boost both investment and job creation.

A source at AT&T who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly told Motherboard that company leadership is planning what it’s calling a “geographic rationalization” and employment “surplus” reduction that will consolidate some aspects of AT&T operations in 10 major operational hubs in New York, California, Texas, New Jersey, Washington State, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, and Washington, DC. A spokesperson for AT&T confirmed to Motherboard that it is planning to “adjust” its workforce.

While AT&T has yet to come up with a final, formal internal tally for this new round of looming layoffs, AT&T employees worry the staff reductions could prove to be significant, especially outside of these core areas. Managers are being briefed on the plans now, though AT&T isn’t expected to formally announce the specifics until they’re finalized later this month.

The staff reductions were first announced in an internal memo sent to managers last Friday by Jeff McElfresh, President, Technology & Operations at AT&T.

“To win in this new world, we must continue to lower costs and keep getting faster, leaner, and more agile,” McElfresh told employees. “This includes reductions in our organization, and others across the company, which will begin later this month and take place over several months.”

The ongoing consolidation isn’t surprising for a company that’s attempting to pivot from curmudgeonly-old phone company to sexy new media brand via its acquisition of Time Warner. AT&T’s desperate to shed old DSL customers it doesn’t want to upgrade, and instead want to utilize those resources for its pivot into streaming video over wireless.

This news comes in the wake of AT&T receiving a $20 billion windfall last quarter courtesy of the Trump administration tax breaks. That’s in addition to the friendlier environment AT&T finds itself in as a result of the Trump administration’s assault on consumer protections ranging from net neutrality to broadband privacy guidelines.

In a memo of talking points advising managers on how to address employee concerns obtained by Motherboard, AT&T attempts to explain away the disconnect between the company’s words and its actions.

“What we’ve said was that AT&T planned to invest an additional $1 billion in the United States this year as a result of tax reform, and that research shows that every $1 billion in capital invested in the telecom industry creates about 7,000 good-paying jobs for American workers, across the broader economy,” the memo states.

But wireless sector investment actually declined last year, with most of the savings from regulatory favors and tax breaks going instead toward stock buybacks, executive compensation, or to pay off the mammoth debt accumulated by a series of AT&T megamergers many consumers and employees didn’t want in the first place, critics charge.

When contacted for comment, AT&T confirmed that the company was planning another round of staff reductions, but insisted that any layoffs would only impact a very small portion of the company’s overall workforce.

“We are hiring to meet the needs of the growth areas of our business,” the company told Motherboard. “In fact, we hired more than 20,000 new employees last year and more than 17,000 the year before. In cases where we do have to adjust our workforce, we take steps to lessen the effect on employees.”

But outside analysis and union officials contest these numbers.

AT&T’s offshoring efforts have resulted in 44 closed call centers and 16,000 lost US jobs since 2011. And despite AT&T CEO Randall Stephen promising 7,000 high-paying jobs thanks to the Trump tax cuts, a new report released this week by the Communications Workers of America claims 10,700 US-based union jobs have been eliminated in the last year alone.

Thanks to a reduction of future AT&T tax liabilities in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, AT&T saw profits of $29.5 billion in 2017, up from $13 billion in 2016. The permanently-lower tax rate should net AT&T an additional $3 billion annually in perpetuity, the CWA report states. Similar windfalls have been enjoyed by Verizon, which has also responded not with raises or hiring, but staff reductions.

AT&T initially insisted it had doled out $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 employees as a direct result of the Trump tax cuts. It was later revealed that these bonuses had already been negotiated as part of unrelated union negotiations. Even then, the $200 million expenditure from the bonuses amounted to just 7 percent of AT&T’s expected annual benefit from the cuts, the report found.

"Despite its strong financial position and promises to invest in its American workforce, AT&T has shifted much of its employment away from good, family-supporting jobs and towards a low-wage model that undermines the quality of its customer service and its standing as a good corporate citizen," the CWA said in this week’s report.

Granted none of this is really new. Both AT&T and Verizon were widely criticized back in 2014 when it was similarly found that telecom tax breaks didn’t result in increased investment or job creation. AT&T’s promises of “synergies” in the wake of its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner have proven to be similarly hollow. And the industry’s false claims regarding the benefits of killing net neutrality are well documented.

Someday, younger generations may want to seriously reconsider America’s historical obsession with blindly throwing tax breaks, subsidies, and deregulatory favors at companies in exchange for benefits that seem to never actually materialize. Until then, we seem intent on repeating the same mistakes, having learned little to nothing from experience.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...ulatory-favors





The Ajit Pai FCC Often Battles FOIA Requests For No Reason, Showcasing Its Hostility To Transparency
Karl Bode

You might recall that FCC boss Ajit Pai promised to operate the "most transparent" FCC ever. Initially, Pai lived up to that promise by changing FCC policy so that FCC orders would be released before they were voted on; a pretty obvious improvement of benefit to both consumers and ISP lobbyists alike. But in the year or two since, Pai has shown that genuine transparency is the very least of the chairman's priorities.

For example, Pai's FCC has actively refused to aid law enforcement inquiries into who was behind the millions of bogus comments that polluted the net neutrality repeal public comment period. Similarly, the Pai FCC's general response to FOIA requests has been to stall, delay, and ignore said requests whenever possible, resulting in numerous lawsuits by media outlets attempting to get to the bottom of all manner of bizarre FCC policy decisions (like that fake DDOS attack emails show they made up to try and downplay public anger over the net neutrality repeal).

This stonewalling extended to more mundane subject matter, like media inquiries into that giant Reeses mug Pai believes is eccentric. Or inquiries into who was behind that aggressively lame Harlem Shake video that featured Pai and some pizzagate conspiracy theorists trolling net neutrality supporters.

Hip, man, yeah.

As with other, more serious inquires, reporters that filed FOIA requests related to this video were met with stonewalling by the FCC, which tried to claim that numerous FOIA exemptions prevented it from complying. In this case, reporters say they were told by Pai's FCC they couldn't release any emails related to the video's creation because of FOIA exemption b(5) (affectionately referred to as the "Withhold It Because You Want To" exemption by FOIA nerds). That is, you might recall, the same exemption the Pai FCC used when people tried to find out if he worked with Verizon on another, similarly lame video making light of his cozy ties to industry.

All of that said, MuckRock Executive Editor JPat Brown persisted, filing numerous appeals stating that the FCC was engaged in a bad faith interpretation of b(5)’s deliberative process privilege. After the FCC spent months denying requests or trying to provide everything but the email bodies, the FCC was finally forced to comply last month, and released at least some internal emails related to the video's creation.

What did they say? Bupkis. Several simply highlighted how the Pai FCC has worked with Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller on the video's production and circulation, which we already knew. Other emails the FCC fought to avoid releasing said nothing of note at all:
[source: imgur.com]

Which is all a long way of showcasing how, as Brown notes, the FCC's aggressive hostility to transparency (even if there's nothing actually at stake) is its default mode of operation:

"Look, I’ll be the first to say that Pai dusting off some dated memes is far from the agency’s worst crime, and if the FCC had just released these records when I asked from them last December, I would have struggled to string together a couple of work emails into an article of any substance. But the fact that the agency felt the need to fight me on such a stupid issue, for as long as they did, all the while taking care to make sure they don’t lose any ground to fight stupid fights in the future, is alarming, and an important reminder that some agencies are fundamentally opposed to being held accountable for anything.”

Pai's blind fealty to incumbent broadband monopolies like Comcast isn't unique; we saw much of the same behavior during the tenure of former FCC Boss Mike Powell, now the top lobbyist for the cable industry. But Pai's FCC is different in that it doesn't just engage in the normal up is down, black is white rhetoric normally reserved for industry sycophants. Pai's current staffers seem to actively enjoy making critics (often the bipartisan majority of ordinary Americans) angry. They're having fun being misleading and aggressively contentious assholes (for lack of a more apt technical term)."

But the Pai FCC also differentiates itself by being aggressively hostile to transparency almost to a comical fault. There was no reason to fight against the release of the above emails so vehemently, and the fact Pai's agency did so shows that, even at the risk of costly lawsuits and wasted taxpayer dollars, this FCC sees truth and transparency as mortal enemies in dire need of conquering, not essential axles in the healthy functioning of a democracy.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...sparency.shtml





Netflix Password Sharing May Soon be Impossible Due to New AI Tracking

Artificial intelligence can tell if someone is streaming shows when they're not supposed to be
Anthony Cuthbertson

A video software firm has come up with a way to prevent people from sharing their account details for Netflix and other streaming services with friends and family members.

UK-based Synamedia unveiled the artificial intelligence software at the CES 2019 technology trade show in Las Vegas, claiming it could save the streaming industry billions of dollars over the next few years.

Casual password sharing is practised by more than a quarter of millennials, according to figures from market research company Magid.

Separate figures from research firm Parks Associates predicts that by $9.9 billion (£7.7bn) of pay-TV revenues and $1.2 billion of revenue from subscription-based streaming services will be lost to credential sharing each year.

The AI system developed by Synamedia uses machine learning to analyse account activity and recognise unusual patterns, such as account details being used in two locations within similar time periods.

The idea is to spot instances of customers sharing their account credentials illegally and offering them a premium shared account service that will authorise a limited level of password sharing.

"Casual credentials sharing is becoming too expensive to ignore. Our new solution gives operators the ability to take action," said Jean Marc Racine, Synamedia's chief product officer.

"Many casual users will be happy to pay an additional fee for a premium, shared service with a greater number of concurrent users. It's a great way to keep honest people honest while benefiting from an incremental revenue stream."

The company said it is already carrying out trials with a number of pay-TV operators but did not reveal which ones.

Pay-TV operators and streaming services will be able to integrate the AI software into their existing platforms, helping them track down large-scale operations of account sharing, the company said.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-a8720586.html





Keeping Up with Netflix Originals is Basically a Part-Time Job Now
Ashley Rodriguez

Netflix released a ridiculous amount of original programming in 2018. How ridiculous? By Quartz’s measure, the streaming-video giant put out nearly 90,000 minutes—close to 1,500 hours—of original series, movies, and other productions this year. That’s nearly nine consecutive weeks of binge-watching. It would have taken more than four hours of streaming per day, every day of 2018, to watch all of it.

These are rough estimates based on a list published by Netflix of more than 850 titles that are streamed exclusively on Netflix, including originals and first-run titles that the company syndicates and premieres in some of its markets, as of Dec. 31, 2018. Quartz tallied up the titles for only the Netflix originals (not the first-run titles) with global premiere dates in 2018—about 345 of them—and checked those titles and dates against Netflix’s US site and the Internet Movie Database. The run times were pulled from the US version of Netflix.

Overall, series made up the vast majority of the original content added to Netflix this year. There were more than 58,000 minutes of original series added in 2018, including new seasons of shows like House of Cards and Fuller House, and new series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Maniac. Netflix also stepped up its supply of international dramas, adding thousands of hours of telenovelas like La Reina del Flow and Korean dramas like Mr. Sunshine (as it is listed in English).

Netflix also released more than 10,100 minutes of original documentaries, about 8,500 minutes of movies, 4,800 minutes of kids programming, and 3,600 minutes of stand-up comedy.

The company did not confirm or deny Quartz’s estimates.

The total only includes titles listed by Netflix as US “originals.” with run times listed on Netflix US. The streaming giant doesn’t produce all of its original programming, but rather licenses some series and movies from other studios. As such, some Netflix originals, like the anime series Lost Song, aren’t branded as originals in every market. That show is only licensed as a “Netflix original” outside of Japan.

Not all of the titles counted by Quartz are available on Netflix everywhere in the world, either, as the company’s library varies globally. There was one title that appeared to be released in 2018, but was not included in the final count because Quartz could not obtain its run time through Netflix US.

Netflix originals also earned the company a great deal of acclaim in 2018, including series Stranger Things, The Crown, Ozark, GLOW, and Queer Eye, and movies like Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs from Joel and Ethan Coen. The company leaned into its originals, spending the much of its $8 billion content budget on them, just as studios like Disney began reserving their own movies and TV shows for proprietary streaming services.

In 2018, Netflix also became the first network in 17 years to dethrone HBO in Emmy nominations, and matched the premium-TV network in wins. Netflix proved it is not just a platform for watching content, but a home for world-class creators, which in turn drove subscribers and the company’s stock.

Back in May, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos estimated the platform would have more than 1,000 originals by the end of 2018. The goal was to make sure each of Netflix’s 130 million members found content that appealed to their unique tastes. Or to give you a reason to dump all your New Years resolution’s.
https://qz.com/1505030/keeping-up-wi...-time-job-now/





Roku Tops 27M Accounts & 24B Hours Streamed by End of 2018, Announces More TV Partners
Sarah Perez

Ahead of its announcements of new TV partnerships at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Roku today shared some new numbers about the growing traction of its overall platform. The company said the number of active accounts grew 40 percent year-over-year in 2018, to top 27 million by year-end. In addition, its total streaming hours grew 61 percent year-over-year to 24 billion hours of movies, TV shows, sports and more being streamed across its devices.

In Q4 2018 alone, Roku users streamed an estimated 7.3 billion hours, up about 68 percent year-over-year.

Roku’s decision to release new numbers about active users and hours streamed comes at a time when the company itself is becoming more competitive with streaming services themselves, instead of just offering a platform on which their apps can run. In fall 2017 Roku began to aggregate the free content from the various channels across its platform in its own Roku Channel, then combined that with content it licensed directly from studios. This free, ad-supported content has given Roku a way to further grow its advertising revenues.

Since its launch, the channel has added more types of content, including sports, news and entertainment from both traditional and digital studios, and just last week launched its own set of premium subscriptions where it gets a cut of customers’ purchases.

Some analysts now believe the Roku Channel’s average revenue per user is now the fastest-growing contributor to overall revenue growth at Roku

Now Roku is working with more manufacturers to get its Roku OS – and therefore its Roku Channel – in front of more people.

At CES this week, Roku announced the Westinghouse Electronics was joining the Roku TV licensing program.

It also announced a partnership with TV brand TCL. The two companies will work together to make 8K TCL Roku TVs that will become available to consumers in late 2019. As a result of catering to TV makers, Roku said it’s updating its 4K and HDR hardware reference design to include far-field microphones for voice search and control. TCL will be the first to deliver these TV models in 2019.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/ro...e-tv-partners/





VLC Passes 3 Billion Downloads, Will Get AirPlay Support and Improved VR Features Soon
Manish Singh

In 1996, a group of students at Ecole Centrale Paris wondered if there was a way to efficiently stream videos across the campus. Their curiosity quickly turned into an academic project and paved the way to the early development of a media player application called VLC.

Over the past 23 years, the VLC media player has become a household name, offering a helping hand to users who are struggling to play a video file that other applications won’t support. It is available on nearly every computing platform, a rarity in the apps ecosystem. Today, VLC reached another rare milestone: It has been downloaded more than 3 billion times across various platforms, up from 1 billion downloads in May 2012.

In front of an audience at #CES2019 we reached the 3 billion downloads of #VLC in live. What an amazing journey! See you in a billion :-) pic.twitter.com/sncDsiQ1J3

— Ludovic Fauvet (@etixxx) January 10, 2019

What is equally fascinating about VLC is that its parent company, VideoLan, remains a nonprofit organization that runs solely on donations. Moreover, VLC has scaled its growth over the years without ever exploring business opportunities to make money. The application is also still free to use, does not serve ads, and is not collecting user data.

Much of the credit for this goes to Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the president and lead developer of VideoLan. Kempf spoke to VentureBeat on the big occasion and shared what’s in store for the media application.

What’s next for VLC?

VLC today rolled out a minor update – v3.0.6 – that adds support for HDR videos in AV1, an emerging video format. But in the coming months, VLC has bigger things planned. First up is a major update to VLC’s Android app in about a month, which will introduce support for AirPlay. This will enable Android users to beam video files from their Android phones to the Apple TV.

Kempf then plans to update the VR app, which will enable native support for VR videos. He said his team reverse-engineered popular VR headsets so that developers no longer need to rely on the SDKs offered by vendors. The app will also receive support for 3D interactions and stereo sound, and add a virtual theater feature.

After that, a major update will be pushed to VLC across all popular platforms. The update, dubbed version 4.0, will offer playback improvements in scaling and video quality of HDR video files.

But that’s not all. Kempf says he plans to bring VLC to more platforms. He said he is thinking about bringing the media player to Sony’s PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Roku devices.

But as always, don’t hold your breath for the arrival of these apps in the immediate future. You see, there are fewer than a dozen people who contribute to VLC. And recent developments — such as the closure of MPC-HC, another popular media player — in the space have made it apparent how challenging it can be to support an open source application solely on donations. VLC has been pleasantly lucky on that front.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/10/v...features-soon/





Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year
Veronica Neto

Albums sold on vinyl and cassette both saw a growth in sales according to BuzzAngle Music’s End-Year Report profiling U.S. music industry consumption for 2018.

Vinyl sales grew by just shy of 12% from 8.6 to 9.7 million sales, while cassette sales grew by almost 19% from 99,400 to 118,200 copies sold in the US, The Verge reported.

Sixty-six percent of those vinyl sales were of albums that are more than three years old and feature classic bands like The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and Pink Floyd, reported BuzzAngle. Cassettes saw popularity in newer releases.

CDs on the other hand have declined by 18.5% in popularity leading to a total decline in physical album sales of over 15%, reported The Verge. Meanwhile, audio streaming saw an increase of 41.8%, the largest of all music consumption.

In addition to millennials reviving the vinyl industry, the sales are seeing another trend: musical diversity. Rolling Stone reported that while 65% of vinyl album sales fell into the rock genre three years ago, that figure was 54% in 2017 and 42% in 2018—meaning the bulk of vinyl albums last year were actually in categories like pop (26%) and urban/hip-hop (14.4%).

These were the 20 top-selling vinyl albums of 2018, according to BuzzAngle, as pointed out by Rolling Stone:

1. Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 (Various Artists)
2. Thriller (Michael Jackson)
3. Abbey Road (The Beatles)
4. Rumours (Fleetwood Mac)
5. Purple Rain (Prince & The Revolution)
6. Back to Black (Amy Winehouse)
7. Love Is Here to Stay (Tony Bennett & Diana Krall)
8. Greatest Hits I (Queen)
9. The Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd)
10. Legend (Bob Marley & The Wailers)
11. American Teen (Khalid)
12. The Greatest Showman: Original Soundtrack (Various Artists)
13. Chronicle – 20 Greatest Hits (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
14. Divide (Ed Sheeran)
15. Nevermind (Nirvana)
16. Man of the Woods (Justin Timberlake)
17. DAMN. (Kendrick Lamar)
18. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band (The Beatles)
19. Ultimate Sinatra (Frank Sinatra)
20. good kid, m.A.A.d city (Kendrick Lamar)

http://fortune.com/2019/01/06/vinyl-...s-2018-growth/





The World’s First 1-Terabyte SDXC Card is Here
Devin Coldewey

Do you frequently record super-slow-motion 8K video? Do you want to back up your entire computer to your coin pocket? Then these measly 512-gigabyte SD cards probably aren’t cutting it. Fortunately, Lexar has a 1-terabyte card for you. Only $500!

Terabyte cards have been promised for years — SanDisk said it was going to, but never made it happen. Longsys (which owns the Lexar brand) beat them to the punch, and today you can buy one. Or pay for one, anyway — it’s unclear what the shipping date is. Funnily enough, Lexar was on its way out at the time as a brand, but has since returned and no doubt this card is a way to get it back into the conversation.

Beyond the capacity, the specs aren’t anything exciting; 95 MB/s read rate, slower read rate, just like any normal SD card. Well, SDXC technically, but everyone just calls them SD.

Of course, a terabyte card isn’t really practical for most people. For most photographers, it would be difficult, not to mention inadvisable, to fill up a card that big before offloading or backing up. If the card gets stolen or broken or corrupted, that’s a whole lot of data you’ve just lost.

Even if you wanted to, it would take some three hours to read the entire card off. That’s not ideal. I asked one of our video team if they’d want a terabyte card; the response: “Uh, no. No way.”

On the other hand, for cameras with two card slots, one could hold a super-high-capacity card like this and the other a smaller card that you offload more frequently. If you write shots to both, it’s like an in-camera backup. Even then, a terabyte is more than most would need.

But of course, we all laughed when the first gigabyte cards came out — who needs that much space?

With 8K video capture becoming more common, mostly for the convenience of cropping and editing rather than for any increased fidelity, and higher frame rates being asked for in many forms of media, a terabyte actually disappears pretty quickly, even with a single shooter. So these terabyte cards will likely find a niche even if you and I don’t really need one.

Even so, maybe wait for a sale.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/09/th...-card-is-here/





World Media Piracy Report 2018: Linear and Sports Content Piracy / Illegal Services' Business Models / Impact on the Industry / Recommendations

News provided by Research and Markets

Jan 07, 2019, 13:45 ET

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DUBLIN, Jan 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Media Piracy - A Major Threat for Sport and Live Programming?" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Despite the growing number of technical and legal measures being put into place, we continue to see more and more media piracy around the globe. The most popular content remains films, TV series and music, with an especially strong rise in the illegal distribution of sporting events.

Several factors have enabled piracy practices and methods to flourish, not least the increasing use of streaming, the development of app systems, the more professional structure of illegal services and the use of social media platforms as relays.

This report begins with a snapshot of the illegal consumption of digital cultural products, then analyses the dynamics of live event piracy (including sport), explores the economic issues tied to piracy, then concludes with a series of recommendations for the ecosystem's players.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary
1.1. Background and methodology
1.2. Key findings
1.3. Recommendations for curbing piracy

2. Media piracy: a global phenomenon
2.1. Snapshot
2.1.1. Segmented solutions
2.1.2. Piracy on the rise around the globe
2.1.3. Type of content pirated - live on the rise
2.2. The mass market: an environment that enables piracy and a threat
2.2.1. Technological developments
2.2.2. An improved playback environment
2.2.3. Piracy is a well entrenched practice

3. Linear and sports content piracy
3.1. Pirating pay-TV and SVOD services
3.1.1. Card sharing
3.1.2. Pirate TV broadcasters
3.2. Streaming and indexing sites
3.2.1. Streaming sites
3.2.2. Indexing sites
3.3. Social media platforms
3.4. Interfaces and applications

4. Illegal services' business models
4.1. Revenue
4.1.1. Advertising
4.1.2. Payment-based systems
4.1.3. Listing commissions
4.2. Costs
4.2.1. Distribution cost models on the open Internet
4.2.2. Other costs
4.2.3. Balance sheet

5. Impact on the industry
5.1. A source of value destruction for the industry
5.2. Loss assessments that are disparate by definition

6. Recommendations
6.1. Foster the development of legal services
6.2. Strengthen technical protection measures
6.3. Strengthen public-private coordination efforts
6.4. Promote consumer communication and education policies
6.5. Cut off pirate sites' revenue streams

Companies Mentioned

Case Studies

• cCloud TV
• Facebook Live
• Kodi
• LiveTV
• Mobdro
• Reddit
• RojaDirecta
• YouTube Live

Other Players

• Acestream
• BeIN
• BeoutQ
• Google/Android
• Instagram
• Netflix
• Periscope
• Popcorn Time
• Twitch
• VLC

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r...orld_media?w=5

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470
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SOURCE Research and Markets
Related Links

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https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...300773800.html





Article 13 is Almost Finished – and it Will Change the Internet as We Know it
Julia Reda

Negotiations about the EU copyright reform law have resumed: After missing the original Christmas deadline, negotiators for the European Parliament and Council are now aiming to finalise the text on January 21, 2019.

The negotiators have reached agreement on the core of Article 13, which will change the internet as we know it: They want to make internet platforms directly liable for any copyright infringements their users commit.

What remains to be decided: Exactly what lengths will platforms need to go to to avoid or limit their liability? Just how much they will need to restrict our ability to post and share our creations online?

New timeline

January 18 — National governments vote on the Council’s position ahead of the final negotiation. This is the moment of truth for EU member state governments: Will Italy keep its promise to vote against? Will Germany do so as announced, unless small businesses are excluded? Will Poland keep supporting the bill, although every single Polish MEP of the governing party voted against?

January 21 — Trilogue negotiations between Parliament and Council: Attempt to finalise the text

March/April — Final vote in the Council

March 25-28, or possibly March 11-14, April 4 or April 15-18 (tbd) — Final vote in the European Parliament

* * *

Article 13 current status

(Download current negotiation documents: Articles, Recitals)

FINAL Article 13 applies to internet platforms that organise and promote large amounts of copyright-protected works uploaded by their users in order to make a profit.

Note that “copyright-protected” does not mean “copyright-infringing”! All creative texts, photos, videos etc. are automatically copyrighted, so this applies to all platforms where users express themselves, like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok, Twitch, Wattpad, Imgur, Giphy, etc. etc.

FINAL These platorms are liable for copyright infringement by their users.

This is the core provision: Legally, anything we post to platforms will be treated as if employees of the platform had uploaded it themselves. If even a single user commits a copyright infringement, it will be viewed as if the platform had done so itself. This will force platforms to take drastic measures, since they can never say for certain which of our posts or uploads will expose them to costly liability. They may well need to restrict who is allowed to post/upload content in the first place, demand personal identification from uploaders and/or block most uploads using overly strict filters to be on the safe side.

FINAL Licenses that platforms take out cover uploads by their users, as long as they act non-commercially or “don’t generate significant revenues”

For example: If YouTube negotiates a license with a film studio for their trailers, casual users will then no longer be blocked from uploading these trailers (and adding commentary, for example) – but not professional vloggers who make a living on the platform, who would be “acting commercially”

FINAL The law should not result in a “general monitoring obligation”, which is forbidden by current EU law

This is merely window dressing: Even if Article 13 doesn’t explicitly establish such an obligation, it will lead platforms to monitor all user uploads anyway.

FINAL Uploaders can complain about blocked uploads and request impartial, human review.

This doesn’t change the fact that users like you and me will be considered “guilty until proven innocent”

FINAL The Commission shall organize debates between platforms, rightholders and user associations and consider their input when they publish guidelines on exactly how to best comply with the law.

This is unlikely to alleviate any of the negative effects, as it won’t change the letter of the law.

TBC If platforms do not have authorisation, they must put in place upload filters (stated as: cooperate with rightholders to ensure that works they’ve been informed about never appear online).

Platforms will never have authorisation for all copyright-protected content in the world, so this will always apply.

TBC Platforms run by startups (small and micro-sized businesses) are exempted from the law.

This was one of the European Parliament’s main improvements to the text. Unfortunately, it is now in danger of being dropped in negotiations.

TBC How much platforms must do shall be proportional to their size, the amount of works they host, and whether “suitable and effective” upload filters are available.

This provision will need to be interpreted by courts on a case-by-case basis. To avoid risky and expensive court cases, platforms will comply regardless of these factors to be on the safe side.

TBC Legal content should not be blocked.

Wishful thinking: Automatic filters remain fundamentally unable to distinguish between infringement and legitimate uses such as parody.

CONTROVERSIAL If platforms can demonstrate they have done everything they can (e.g. deploying the strictest possible upload filters) they shall not be liable for infringing uploads that slip through.

CONTROVERSIAL When infringements do slip through, rightholders may request that they be taken down and prevented from being reuploaded in the future – if platforms don’t comply, they are liable.

Such a “staydown” procedure requires upload filters: Platforms need to surveil all user posts to identify reuploads of reported works. Council is insisting on this, and would apply it even to those platforms not required by Article 13 to otherwise filter (e.g. because they are small).

CONTROVERSIAL Parodies and other uses of existing works uploaded for non-commercial purposes, or which don’t generate significant revenue, should remain online.

A restatement of several existing copyright exceptions, but mandatory for all member states in this context, which the exceptions aren’t (that’s good!) and limited to non-commercial/unsuccessful uses (that’s bad – should parody only be allowed if nobody’s watching?). It remains entirely unclear how this ought to be achieved, since algorithms can’t ensure it.

* * *
Regardless of the open points, it’s now for certain: The final text of Article 13 will force the internet platforms that we all rely on to express ourselves online to install upload filters and/or otherwise restrict our ability to post and share content. We can’t let that happen.

Your elected representatives in the European Parliament will have one last chance to reject Article 13 when it comes up for the final vote just before the next EU elections. Get ready to reach out to your MEPs!
https://juliareda.eu/2019/01/article...most-finished/





The Digital Activist Taking Politicians Out of Madrid Politics
James Badcock

Once, he faced down major music industry giants over the file-sharing software he created. Now, Pablo Soto wants to use his digital knowhow to reshape democracy.

He is in the left-wing coalition that beat traditional parties to take over Madrid's council in 2015.

Now, as Madrid's head of open government, Mr Soto has launched a platform where citizens dictate policies to city hall and choose what to spend taxes on.

"I don't think of myself as a politician," the councillor says. "But I am a political person."

"I want public participation to be the prime mechanism for reaching political decisions, with the role of politicians reduced to handling the lesser day-to-day stuff."

How file-sharing crusader became an activist

A decade ago Mr Soto was a twenty-something computer programmer who had designed a series of person-to-person (P2P) file-sharing applications used by 25 million people around the world.

Many of them used the software to share music files.

Mr Soto, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, was sued in 2008 by Warner, EMI, Sony and other entertainment industry giants for millions of euros in allegedly lost revenues - a sum he says he could not have dreamed of amassing.

He eventually won a drawn-out series of battles though Spain's courts that, he says, made him more politically aware and an activist for internet freedom and net neutrality.

He then joined the mass street protests against Spain's party politics that mimicked the Arab Spring revolts.

"The most political moment of my life was the night of 15 May 2011, when I decided to take my rucksack to Puerta del Sol in Madrid, even though there was a threat of the police clearing the square as the protest had been declared illegal.

"We challenged a whole system of representation in which a few people have 100% power of decision for years, without having to explain or allow citizens to participate."

From street protest to digital democracy

Mr Soto turned to technology to open up the decision-making process.

Decide Madrid is an online platform with 400,000 users in the Spanish capital. Any of them can propose an idea, which, if backed by 27,662 other users (1% of the city's adult population), goes to a referendum.

"It is voted on by the people, not the council. The politicians cannot block it," Mr Soto says.

Other cities where left-wing coalitions swept to power in 2015 - including Barcelona and Valencia - have also set up participative systems to take collective decisions on public facilities – and on how to spend part of their budgets.

In Madrid's process, citizens can vote online or in person to decide how to allocate €100 million in spending - a significant part of the council's total investments every year.

The software driving Madrid's participatory platform has been adopted by 100 government institutions in 33 countries, with Uruguay the first country to use the free software at a national level.

Critics of direct democracy warn that well-organised single-issue groups could hijack the debate, such as anti-vaccine campaigners in Italy. There are also concerns that minority groups might be crushed by the wheels of majority power.

But Mr Soto believes people can be trusted with political decisions.

He cites studies of direct democracy which suggest taxpayers may take greater care with public money than electioneering politicians. He also says Madrid citizens have shown solidarity with others, backing new homes for women victims of gender violence and day centres for Alzheimer's patients.

"Politicians have always sold us the idea that it is a contradiction to support something that doesn't benefit you. Our experience shows that the opposite is true."

What next for Pablo Soto?

This month Madrid plans to launch Mr Soto's most far-reaching reform yet - an "observatory" of 57 citizens selected at random to advise the city's 57 councillors.

Mr Soto explains that an algorithm will ensure that observatory members will be representative of Madrid's social diversity, with a one-year mandate and access to expert assistance to reach well-informed decisions.

The concept was inspired by the ancient Athenian practice of choosing citizens to form governing committees, and by more recent examples where governments have asked the people to decide on single issues to break political deadlock.

In Australia, a "citizens' jury" was asked about the construction of a nuclear dump.

"The idea is as old as democracy itself," he says. "A group of people chosen at random - if they have the time and capacity to study the issues in depth - can take very representative decisions."

Mr Soto does not plan to stop at Madrid, and notes that his platform could now be used to connect people across the globe in joint decision-making.

"It does not make sense that the world is still organised along territorial lines, because the internet contradicts these geographical distances."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46799768

















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