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NEWS:
Does
technology lead us invariably to
an uncertain future? Or just more of the
same? How
about cable? Zoning enforcement? What does it mean to be
"Running out of IP addresses?"
You can sing along with this
page - just a simple substitution - just substitute "lawyers" for
"clowns" and do a Judy Collins
imitation!
CIVIC, CIVIL AND UNCIVIL USES
MILITARY USES OR GOVERNMENT INVASION OF
PRIVACY
WHERE GLOBAL FINANCE AND GLOBAL
COMMUNICATION MEET
THE
SOCIAL NETWORK
Thought you could expunge that silly photo you posted?
How many Harvard drop-outs are on the list of wealthiest people?
FACEBOOK
We have been following this concept of networking, wondering when and
if it might result in Big Brother Is Watching You effect - Supreme
Court in United States facing the question now - seems to be something they have
thought about, too!
DIE HARD 4
Internet meets terrorism - or maybe just watching too many movies?
Anonymous planning another BART protest
Vivian Ho, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, August 22, 2011
Anonymous is anyone, and therefore it's everyone.
It's a cause, an idea, a network, a rallying point, its supporters say.
But it's a movement that has no structure, no leader, no rules. And yet
this is the group - and many of its supporters don't even consider it a
group - that gave BART a major headache last Monday when a protest
organized online forced the agency to close its four downtown San
Francisco stations during evening rush hour, stranding thousands of
commuters.
Today, Anonymous is promising more of the same, planning a protest for
5 p.m. at Civic Center Station - the same time and place as last week's
demonstration.
As part of the Anonymous campaign known as OpBART, the group promises
to keep up pressure until BART officials admit they were wrong to cut
off cell-phone service in underground stations to head off an earlier
planned protest, apologize to the public and fire the transit agency's
chief spokesman, who defended the cutoff and has been outspoken in his
denunciation of "cyber-thugs."
Sometimes called a proponent of "hacktivism," Anonymous generally
targets institutions its supporters consider to be suppressing free
speech and Internet freedom. Earlier this year, some blamed its
supporters for a sophisticated attack on Sony's PlayStation Network
over the company's pursuit of PS3 hackers, an attack that forced the
system offline.
In December, Anonymous initiated an online attack against PayPal after
the company stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks. When the FBI
arrested 14 Anonymous members last month in connection with the action,
the group asked supporters to boycott PayPal.
Offline
In 2008, Anonymous went offline, organizing demonstrations at
Scientology centers around the world. But several supporters in
Anonymous chat rooms - the forum where its plans are hatched and
organized - celebrated the Aug. 15 BART protest in San Francisco as one
of the movement's first strikes outside the confines of the online
world.
"We're not just cyber anymore," said Peter Fein, 33, a computer
programmer from Washington state and one of the few Anonymous
supporters willing to reveal his identity. "This is as good as a
protest gets. There were no arrests, no extensive injuries, no damages.
This is how it should be."
While Anonymous' faceless, online organizing technique makes it a
difficult target for law enforcement to pin down, it also leaves the
movement vulnerable to internal disagreements. When the Anonymous
Internet Relay Chat network was attacked and rendered unusable Thursday
evening, OpBART organizers initially said they feared the perpetrator
was an Anonymous supporter opposed to their protests. They later found
out it was someone with a personal grudge against some of his Anonymous
friends.
"Anonymous is not unanimous," said one of OpBART's organizers, who is
known by the pseudonym Po and identifies himself only as a computer
programmer living in the United States.
Some of the Anonymous actions taken in the name of OpBART have run into
criticism even from those who otherwise back the campaign. Po, who was
interviewed online, said he opposed the Anonymous-backed hacking last
weekend of the marketing website myBART.org, which resulted in the
online posting of more than 2,000 customers' personal information.
But because Anonymous does not control individual actions, there is
nothing organizers can do when an individual goes rogue.
"It's a matter of timing and 'force of will,' " said an OpBART
organizer known as AlbaandOmegle. "The actions we take (as a whole)
have to drown out the bumps."
Another problem for the Anonymous movement is that because anyone can
claim membership, any hacking can be attributed to Anonymous.
When a French girl known only as Lamaline_5mg hacked the BART police
association's website last week and released the personal information
of 102 officers and other employees, many assumed the action was the
work of Anonymous. The girl turned out to be acting on her own.
In addition to being angered by BART's cell-phone cutoff Aug. 11 - an
action the agency did not repeat during last week's actions - OpBART
supporters said that they were seeking to "amplify" earlier protests
over the July 3 fatal shooting of a knife-wielding transient by a BART
police officer. Among Anonymous' demands is that BART retrain its
officers to minimize the use of deadly force.
Changes ignored
Linton Johnson, the BART spokesman whom Anonymous wants fired, said the
movement is overlooking police reforms that BART has instituted since
the New Year's Day 2009 incident in which then-Officer Johannes
Mehserle fatally shot the unarmed Oscar Grant. Johnson said BART has
tripled police training and created two independent bodies to keep
police accountable.
"It's ironic that these protesters have no idea about the sacrifices
that people who live and care about this community made after Oscar
Grant, and all the sweat and tears they poured in to create citizen
oversight," Johnson said. "Use the process that your predecessors put
in place and let the people get to their jobs and loved ones."
As for Anonymous' call for his firing, Johnson said, "Regardless of
what they think of me, let's have a discussion outside the fare gates
and let the customers get from point A to point B."
Among those planning to protest at the Civic Center Station this
evening is Fein, who is making the trip from Washington state.
"If our only actions are online, then we're shouting in vain," Fein
said. "It's the year the Internet crossed back over into making a
difference in real life."
Planning for protests
BART advises that it may have to adjust service or close stations
temporarily tonight in downtown San Francisco because of a
demonstration planned for 5 p.m. at Civic Center Station.
Hackers
gain access to transit police
union site
YAHOO
By PAUL ELIAS - Associated Press
17 August 2011
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hackers on Wednesday again targeted a California
transit agency that came under fire last week for turning off cell
phone service in its stations to thwart a potential protest.
This time, the hackers gained access to a Bay Area Rapid Transit police
union website and posted personal information on more than 100
officers. The officers' home addresses, email addresses and passwords
were posted online.
The hacker group Anonymous announced the breach on Twitter and
published the address of the website where the officers' information
could be found. It did not immediately claim responsibility for the
hack as it did when it broke into BART's marketing website last week
and released the personal information of more than 2,000 customers.
BART Police Deputy Chief Daniel Hartwig said his office "has been made
aware of the breach" and referred inquiries to the BART Police Officers
Association.
Union president Jesse Sekhon didn't immediately return a phone call.
The union's website was disabled later Wednesday.
The two hacks are in apparent retaliation to BART's cutting wireless
communication in its San Francisco stations last week to quell a
brewing protest over a police shooting.
Cell
service stays on during BART
protest in SF
SFGATE.COM
Rachel Gordon, Vivian Ho, Will Kane,Demian Bulwa, Chronicle
Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO -- The busy evening commute out of downtown San Francisco
gave way Monday to a chaotic cat-and-mouse game between police officers
and roving protesters who lashed out at the transit agency for
temporarily shutting down underground cellular phone service last week.
BART closed all four downtown San Francisco stations - Civic Center,
Powell, Montgomery and Embarcadero - soon after the protest began at 5
p.m. Officers in riot gear blocked entrances as many train riders fumed
on the sidewalks and tried to figure out how to get home. All stations
were reopened by 7:30 p.m.
Muni Metro stations at the same locations were closed in tandem with
the BART stations.
BART's action last Thursday - which ignited an international debate
about technology, free speech and public safety - was an effort to
diffuse an antipolice demonstration. But it spurred an even larger
protest Monday that was organized online by a loose-knit band of
computer hackers known as Anonymous.
Trains continued to run through the stations, only allowing passengers
to exit. Outside, protesters carried signs and chanted, while some - at
the urging of Anonymous - wore T-shirts spattered with fake blood and
creepy Guy Fawkes masks popularized by the graphic novel and movie "V
for Vendetta."
At a brief news conference after service was fully restored, BART
spokesman Linton Johnson said, "Tonight our customers are angry and
frustrated."
Police reported no arrests and no injuries.
Closing the stations
The station closures began at 5:25 p.m., when protesters were ejected
from the Civic Center Station after at least one blocked a door of a
Dublin-Pleasanton train for two minutes as others chanted "No justice,
no peace." The train continued east, and police issued a dispersal
order.
"Once we got to a situation where the BART platform was unsafe, we
cleared the station," said BART Deputy Police Chief Daniel Hartwig.
He said cell service was never switched off. "The bottom line with cell
service is that it's always in the game plan, but we chose not to
utilize that resource tonight," Hartwig said. "Once we read the
dispersal notice and they complied, we didn't feel like any other
actions were required."
Demonstrators then began marching toward the other stations, prompting
BART to close them, one by one, as people affiliated with the hacker
group gloated online through Twitter. At one point, near the
Embarcadero Station, protesters blocked Market Street, but quickly
complied with police orders to clear out.
Some transit riders were infuriated. Jennifer Cohn, an attorney who
works downtown, arrived at the Civic Center Station at about 6 p.m.
with her two sons, ages 3 and 4, after picking them up from day care.
She was trying to get home to the Glen Park neighborhood.
With the station closed, she tried to catch a cab, but they seemed to
be avoiding the area.
"This is an outrage. We just want to get home," Cohn said. "I don't
really see why they should be shutting down the stations. If they have
an issue with BART, they should go to BART headquarters."
But Ryan Bell, 25, of San Jose yelled to sullen-faced pedestrians,
"What's a bigger inconvenience, missing your train or getting shot by a
BART cop?" Other protesters held phones with cut cords while repeating
"Can you hear me now?"
Johnson, the BART spokesman, said earlier Monday that the agency had
the right to cut cell phone service Thursday because transit riders
"don't have the right to free speech inside the fare gates." He said
passengers' safety was threatened by protesters upset over a BART
police officer's fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man on July 3.
"We're in the business of transporting people from point A to point B
safely," Johnson said. "We were forced into a gut-wrenching decision on
how we were going to stop (the possible Thursday protest), given the
propensity of this group to create chaos on the platform."
Genesis of the protests
Activists angered by the police shooting of Charles Blair Hill
disrupted service during a protest July 11 that started at Civic Center
Station and spread to the 16th Street Mission and Powell Street
stations. BART closed all three stations for varying lengths of time.
BART shut down cell service Thursday at four downtown San Francisco
stations, Johnson said. The agency did not jam cell signals, which is
illegal, but shut off the system - which Johnson said is allowable
under an agreement with several major phone service providers that pay
rent to BART.
Lynette Sweet, a member of BART's Board of Directors, said Monday that
she opposed any further disruption of cell service and would seek to
bring the issue before the board for a vote.
"This is one where we can almost say we're stuck on stupid," Sweet
said. "We put ourselves on the radar screen for no good reason. This is
a country that champions civil liberties all the time. So why would a
transit agency take it upon themselves to trample on civil liberties?"
The Federal Communications Commission is looking into BART's action. In
a statement Monday, spokesman Neil Grace said, "Any time communications
services are interrupted, we seek to assess the situation."
The protest came after the hackers breached a BART website Sunday and
released personal information from more than 2,000 customers. Johnson
said the FBI was investigating the hack attack.
BART serves San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa
counties, with about 350,000 boardings a day.
Legal Debate Ignites Over
BART’s Anti-Protester Cellphone Shutdown
WIRED.COM
By David Kravets Email Author
August 15, 2011 3:55 pm
For apparently the first time in the United States, a government agency
shuttered mobile internet and phone service in a bid to quash a
demonstration — the same type of speech suppression exercised by Middle
Eastern tyrannies to quell dissent.
Thursday’s move by Bay Area Rapid Transit authorities was greeted by an
uproar of comparisons to Egypt and Libya. The hacking collective
Anonymous responded in typical form over the weekend by defacing the
agency’s website, and stealing and releasing the private account
information of some 2,000 BART subway riders.
The controversy began when officials removed the power to underground
service towers Thursday at four San Francisco stations in anticipation
of a planned protest — which did not materialize — over the shooting
death of a knife-wielding man by BART police last month.
Some constitutional scholars are likening BART’s actions to an unlawful
suppression of First Amendment speech — a digital form of prior
restraint. Others, however, say BART’s move would probably survive a
court challenge, and will likely be copied by other government agencies
as the use of mobile technology and social networking by protesters
grows.
“You have the right to speak,” Damon Dunn, a First Amendment lawyer in
Chicago, said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think you have the
right to leverage your speech through technology that you don’t
necessarily control yourself.”
An earlier BART protest in July resulted in a major disruption of
rush-hour service, as some protesters even climbed atop cars at the
Civic Center station.
“The interruption of cell phone service was done Thursday to prevent
what could have been a dangerous situation. It’s one of the tactics we
have at our disposal. We may use it; we may not. And I’m not sure we
would necessarily let anyone know in advance either way,” BART
spokesman Jim Allison said.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said BART’s actions constituted an
unconstitutional breach of protesters’ First Amendment rights. A blog
post on the San Francisco civil rights group’s website likened the
subway’s move to Egypt’s decision to cut internet access to quell
protests: “Bart Pulls a Mubarak in San Francisco.”
“What they did, effectively, is suppressed an enormous amount of speech
that otherwise would have occurred by disabling people’s devices,” Lee
Tien, an EFF staff attorney, said in a telephone interview. “They just
put a cone of silence for cell phone service over the BART stations in
the belief that something needed to be prevented. In my mind, that’s
the electronic version for shutting down somebody.”
He added that, “I’m not aware of us having thought about actually suing
yet. I’m not aware of anyone doing that.”
The American Civil Liberties Union said it was mulling legal action,
but conceded that there could be instances when it would be legal for a
government agency to shutter mobile-phone service.
“I don’t want to say, absolutely, that this will never be permissible,”
Michael Risher, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a telephone interview.
“It should not happen unless under extraordinary circumstances, real
and concrete, where it is necessary to prevent some disaster.”
He does not believe that BART has met that burden. But he noted that it
might be hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
“It’s very difficult to stop this from happening once,” he said. “It
never happened before. There are no rules.”
Anonymous
to BART: We Hack. We
Organize, Too
NYTIMES
By JOSHUA BRUSTEIN
August 15, 2011, 2:09 pm
Anonymous, the loosely affiliated group of computer hackers, is
planning a flesh-and-blood demonstration Monday afternoon in San
Francisco to protest the Bay Area Rapid Transit cutting off underground
cellphone service to thwart protesters.
Since Thursday, when BART temporarily shut down cellphone service in
its tunnels to prevent a protest against police violence, the group has
gone on the offensive. It hacked into myBart.org, a Web site for BART
riders, and leaked the names, phone numbers and passwords of users.
Now it is calling for people to gather at the San Francisco Civic
Center Bart Station at 5 p.m., wearing shirts stained with blood or
paint. In addition to putting a call out on Twitter, the group said
that it has sent an e-mail to the approximately 120,000 people it found
on BART’s own mailing list, asking them to attend.
“Remember to bring your mask, and remember that this is a peaceful
protest. Anonymous does not support violent action and it is
discouraged,” the group said in a video posted online.
While Anonymous’s target is ostensibly the agency, leaking the names
and passwords of riders has the potential to alienate those who it
claims to support. The group acknowledged this danger, but ultimately
blamed BART’s poor security for the breach.
“We apologize to any citizen that has his information published, but
you should go to BART and ask them why your information wasn’t secure
with them. Also do not worry, probably the only information that will
be abused from this database is that of BART employees,” the group
wrote on the Web site where it posted the leaked information.
Linton Johnson, a spokesperson for the BART police department, jumped
on the chance to portray the agency as a victim, saying that Anonymous
had violated riders’ privacy. He said that BART has called in the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law enforcement agencies to
investigate the attack.
Anonymous has been very active in recent months, attacking the Web
sites of major corporations and government agencies. But this action
has been in the form of hacking attacks, not physical demonstrations.
The group has held several large-scale demonstrations in the past,
perhaps most notably a series of protests against the Church of
Scientology in 2008.
But previous protests took weeks of planning, said Gregg Housh, an
advocate affiliated with Anonymous who played a role in physical
demonstrations in the past. The speed at which such actions can be
organized is changing rapidly, a trend that has been on display across
the globe this year.
“It used to be months, then weeks, now it’s days,” he said. “Soon it
will be hours.”
Of course, it is unclear how many people will actually show up on
Monday. But BART is not taking any chances. On Sunday, it posted an
alert on its Web site warning riders of possible disruptions due to the
protest.
Mr. Johnson, the agency spokesperson, said that as BART prepares for
protests this afternoon and in the future, it would not rule out
cutting cellphone service again. He said that the criticism the agency
has received for its actions last week were misguided.
“The fact that people want to focus on the cellphone service, I think
it’s an interesting argument, but people are forgetting the other
constitutional right that allows government agencies to put people’s
right to safety ahead of their right of expression,” he said. “We are
allowed to designate the time, place and manner of free speech.”
San Francisco transit blocks
cellphones
to hinder protest
Washington Times
By Paul Elias, Associated Press
Saturday, August 13, 201
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Transit officials blocked cellphone reception in
San Francisco train stations for three hours to disrupt planned
demonstrations over a police shooting.
Officials with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, better known as BART,
said Friday that they turned off electricity to cellular towers in four
stations from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday. The move was made after BART
learned that protesters planned to use mobile devices to coordinate a
demonstration on train platforms.
The tactic drew comparisons to those used by the former president of
Egypt to squelch protests demanding an end to his authoritarian rule.
Authorities there cut Internet and cellphone services in the country
for days earlier this year.
“BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former
president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation
said on its website.
The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the tactic, saying on its
blog that it was the “wrong response to political protests.”
BART officials were confident the cellphone disruptions were legal.
They said in a statement that it’s illegal to demonstrate on the
platform or aboard the trains, and that it has set aside special areas
for demonstrations.
The demonstration planned Thursday failed to develop. “We had a commute
that was safe and without disruption,” said BART spokesman Jim Allison.
The demonstrators were protesting the July 3 shooting of Charles Blair
Hill by BART police, who claimed Hill came at them with a knife.
Several people were arrested when a July 11 demonstration disrupted
service during the rush-hour commute and prompted the closing of BART’s
Civic Center station.
Town meetings now live on mobile
devices
Greenwich TIME
Neil Vigdor, Staff Writer
Updated 10:55 p.m., Friday, July 8, 2011
Greenwich is pandering to the Droid population.
No, not R2-D2 -- smart phone owners can now watch town meetings in
progress through a free live video streaming application on their
mobile devices, including the Droid by Motorola, the iPhone and iPad.
"It's as if you were sitting in front of your TV set," said Paul
Curtis, the station's volunteer main producer and a member of the
Representative Town Meeting.
The feature is one of a series of enhancements that were recently
announced by Greenwich Community Television, the town's
government-access channel. In addition to the new service on mobile
devices, he station is also now available on Channel 24 of FiOS, the
fiber-optic television service of Verizon that was launched as a
competitor to cable in Greenwich in September 2010.
GCTV carries live coverage of the RTM, Board of Selectmen, Board of
Estimate and Taxation, BET Budget Committee, and Planning and Zoning
Commission meetings, as well as rebroadcasts of the meetings.
"The more people who watch our system of government here in Greenwich,
we'll all hopefully benefit and get more people involved," said
Selectman Drew Marzullo, a liaison between the station and the Board of
Selectmen.
The only way to watch GCTV up until last month, when the station rolled
out its new streaming service for smart phone users and availability on
FiOS, was on Channel 79 for Cablevision customers or the Internet.
"It's just another way to reach viewers," Curtis said, estimating that
over half the households in town now get the station, whether it be
through Verizon or Cablevision.
GCTV is dropping Channel 79 from its name as a result of the expansion
to FiOS.
The station is expected to receive funding from Verizon the way it does
from Cablevision, which Curtis said contributes $6,000 to $7,000 to the
station annually through equipment purchase reimbursements. Funding is
based on the number of customers in town, a figure Cablevision keeps a
closely-guarded secret.
"They say, `OK, go buy the cameras,' and they pay us back," Curtis said
of the reimbursement program.
Under federal and state law, all cable companies are required to
provide public access, including two channels devoted to local
government and education. In lower Fairfield County, Cablevision
viewers pay $5 per year in their bills to fund public access. The money
goes into to a pool governed by the Area Nine Cable Council, to which
municipalities can apply for grants to purchase equipment and cover
other costs associated with the channels.
GCTV is separate from the town's educational access station, Channel 78
for Cablevision customers and Channel 26 on FiOS, which carries school
board meetings and other events.
To watch town meetings live on your smart phone, go to the app store,
do a search for Ustream TV and hit "install" to download the free
application. Once the application is loaded, do a search for Greenwich
Community Television.
There's a 15-second to one-minute delay depending on wireless coverage
and whether the smart phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, according
to Curtis.
"We had a couple of people watching it at the RTM on their Androids,
not on Wi-Fi, and it looked fine," Curtis said.
COMING SOON
TO AMERICA: go to a hospital/doctor and records are online???
Gordon Brown Says Newspaper Hired
‘Known Criminals’
NYTIMES
By JOHN F. BURNS, JO BECKER and ALAN COWELL
July 12, 2011
LONDON — Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown brought new and alarming
charges on Tuesday to the broadening scandal enveloping Rupert
Murdoch’s media empire in Britain, accusing one of the most prestigious
newspapers in the group of employing “known criminals” to gather
personal information on his bank account, legal files and tax affairs.
The claims came a day after the crisis deepened with reports that two
Murdoch newspapers may have bribed police officers or used other
potentially illegal methods to obtain information about Queen Elizabeth
II as well as Mr. Brown.
At the same time, two former journalists for The News of the World —
the newspaper at the epicenter of the scandal, which the Murdoch family
closed last weekend — said that police officers had been bribed to use
restricted cellphone-tracking technology to pinpoint the location of
people sought by the papers in their pursuit of scoops.
Since flying to Britain over the weekend, Mr. Murdoch has assumed
command of damage control efforts at his London headquarters amid a
torrent of new revelations, including reports that newsroom malpractice
extended far beyond The News of the World to two other newspapers in
his British stable — The Sunday Times, an upmarket broadsheet, and The
Sun, the country’s highest-selling daily tabloid.
On Tuesday, Mr. Brown accused The Sunday Times — owned by News
International, the British subsidiary of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation
— of employing “known criminals” to gather personal information on his
bank account, legal files and “other files — documentation, tax and
everything else.”
“I think that what happened pretty early on in government is that the
Sunday Times appear to have got access to my building society account,
they got access to my legal files, there is some question mark about
what happened to other files — documentation, tax and everything else,”
Mr. Brown, who was Britain’s Labour prime minister from 2007 to 2010
after serving for a decade as chancellor of the Exchequer, told the BBC
on Tuesday.
“I’m shocked, I’m genuinely shocked, to find that this happened because
of their links with criminals, known criminals, who were undertaking
this activity, hired by investigators working with the Sunday Times,”
Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Brown added: “I just can’t understand this — if I, with all the
protection and all the defenses and all the security that a chancellor
of the Exchequer or a prime minister has, am so vulnerable to
unscrupulous tactics, unlawful tactics, methods that have been used in
the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen?”
The Guardian newspaper reported earlier that Mr. Brown’s bank, Abbey
National, alerted him that someone acting for The Sunday Times had
posed in his name — a practice commonly referred to as identity theft,
or blagging — to obtain details of his account six times in 2000, when
he was chancellor. The BBC said that the effort was made as part of an
inquiry by the paper into allegations that Mr. Brown had bought a
property in his native Scotland at below-market value, something Mr.
Brown has strongly denied.
But the most damaging aspect of the
affair involving Mr. Brown related to his son Fraser, now five years
old, who suffers from cystic fibrosis. Mr. Brown told the BBC on
Tuesday that he had never publicly discussed his son’s medical
condition. But a person close to Mr. Brown said on Monday he believed
that The Sun gained access to his son’s medical records for an article
about his illness that ran in November 2006, four months after the
boy’s birth.
Mr. Brown said on Tuesday that he and his wife Sarah were “in tears”
when they learned that details of the health issue were going to appear
in the newspaper.
The BBC, quoting its sources, said the information about the boy’s
condition had been obtained first by The Sunday Times, and passed to
The Sun. Mr. Brown said that Rebekah Brooks, then The Sun’s editor and
now News International’s chief executive, called him to tell them that
the tabloid knew of the boy’s condition, which they had believed was
something known only to themselves and medical professionals who were
caring for their son.
In a statement, News International said it noted the allegations about
Mr. Brown, adding: “So that we can investigate these matters further,
we ask that all information concerning these allegations is provided to
us,” Britain’s Press Association news agency reported. The statement
said The Sun was satisfied that its story about the boy’s cystic
fibrosis had been obtained legitimately.
But Mr. Brown said: “They will have to explain themselves. I can’t
think of any way that the medical condition of a child can be put into
the public arena legitimately unless the doctor makes a statement or
the family makes a statement.”
A person close to Mr. Brown said that the former prime minister asked
Scotland Yard last year whether his personal details were among the
11,000 pages of notes seized from Glenn Mulcaire, a private
investigator working for The News of the World who was jailed in 2007
for hacking the phones of the royal household. Scotland Yard confirmed
that, the source said.
Phone hacking and other illegal or unethical methods have also been
common at many British newspapers that are not Murdoch-owned. But the
focus for now is on the Murdoch empire, which confronted what many have
called an existential threat on Monday by revising its attempted $12
billion takeover for Britain’s most lucrative satellite television
company, British Sky Broadcasting, in ways that appeared to delay the
bid for at least six months.
Many commentators in Britain said Mr. Murdoch appeared to be playing
for time, in the hope that public and political anger over the current
scandal will abate, making room for politicians and regulators to judge
the takeover on its business merits, and not on the basis of
retribution for the hacking scandal.
The revelations about the intrusive activities directed at the queen
and Mr. Brown have seized the headlines, driving home the realization
that nobody, not even the most powerful and protected people in the
land, had been beyond the reach of news organizations caught up in a
relentless battle for lurid headlines and mass circulation.
A wide segment of British society, from celebrities to ordinary
families wrestling with personal tragedies, has been shown to be
potentially vulnerable to the newspapers’ use of cellphone-hacking,
identity theft, tracking technology and police bribery — perhaps even
clandestine property break-ins, if some reports circulating in recent
days are true.
The BBC and The Guardian, in their Monday reports, cited internal
e-mails from a News of the World archive in which requests were made
for about $1,600 to pay a royal protection officer — one of several
hundred Scotland Yard officers eligible to serve in the palace security
detail — for classified information about the queen, Prince Charles and
other senior members of the royal family in what a Scotland Yard
official described as a major security breach. The Guardian article
said two officers on the royal detail were involved and that the
e-mails from an archive assembled by The News of the World were
exchanged by a senior executive and a reporter, neither of whom it
identified.
The accounts said the money was used to obtain a copy of a contact book
used by the royal protection service — a volume known as the Green
Book, according to the BBC — that contained information about the
queen, Prince Charles, other senior royals and their friends and
contacts. A report in The Evening Standard newspaper said the
information included “phone numbers, and tips about the movements and
activities” of the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. The BBC said
the book also gave details of friends of the royal couple, their palace
staff and other regular royal contacts. A Guardian report said the
police had informed the palace that the cellphones of Prince Charles
and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, may have also been hacked.
The BBC also reported that an e-mail requesting approval for the money
to buy the contacts book was written by Clive Goodman, The News of the
World’s royal correspondent, who served a four-month jail term in 2007
for his role in an earlier hacking case. The request for funds was
addressed to Andy Coulson, a former editor of The News of the World and
senior aide to Prime Minister David Cameron. Mr. Coulson was questioned
by police for nine hours on the hacking allegation and other alleged
abuses after he was arrested last Friday. He was released on bail.
Prime Minister Cameron said on Monday that he was outraged by the
diversion of the contact book, describing the alleged police
involvement in the palace intrusion as “a dereliction of duty” and
adding, “We need to get to the bottom of that if it is true.”
Separately, an inquiry by The New York Times, which included interviews
with two former journalists at The News of the World, has revealed the
workings of the illicit cellphone tracking, which the former tabloid
staffers said was known in the newsroom as “pinging.” Under British law, the technology involved
is restricted to law enforcement and security officials, requires
case-by-case authorization, and is used mainly for high-profile
criminal cases and terrorism investigations, according to a former
senior Scotland Yard official who requested anonymity so as to be able
to speak candidly.
According to Oliver Crofton, a
cybersecurity specialist who works to protect high-profile clients from
such invasive tactics, cellphones are constantly pinging off relay
towers as they search for a network, enabling an individual’s location
to be located within yards by checking the strength of the signal at
three different towers. But the former Scotland Yard official who
discussed the matter said that any officer who agreed to use the
technique to assist a newspaper would be crossing a red line.
“That would be a massive breach,” he
said.
A former show business reporter for
The News of the World, Sean Hoare, who was fired in 2005, said that
when he worked there, pinging cost the paper nearly $500 on each
occasion. He first found out how the practice worked, he said, when he
was scrambling to find someone and was told that one of the news desk
editors, Greg Miskiw, could help. Mr. Miskiw asked for the person’s
cellphone number, and returned later with information showing the
person’s precise location in Scotland, Mr. Hoare said. Mr. Miskiw, who
faces questioning by police on a separate matter, did not return calls
for comment.
John F. Burns and Jo Becker reported
from London and Alan Cowell from Paris. Ravi Somaiya, Don van Natta and
Graham Bowley contributed reporting from London.
Voicemail
spying shows phone network
weak spots
AP
By JORDAN ROBERTSON - Associated Press, RAPHAEL G. SATTER -
Associated Press
7 July 2011
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The voicemail tampering scandal engulfing
Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid demonstrates not only the
vulnerability of phone networks, but also the fallibility of the people
who help maintain them.
The British tabloid is accused of breaking into voicemail accounts of
various celebrities and dignitaries —and even crime victims and their
families— in a relentless hunt for scoops.
Those accused of hacking on behalf of Murdoch's publication were
alleged to have employed a variety of ruses. Glenn Mulcaire, the
private investigator at the center of the phone hacking scandal, once
targeted members of Britain's royal household by duping phone operators
into handing over their personal codes. Those PIN codes in turn allowed
him and tabloid journalist Clive Goodman to listen in on the royal
family's voicemails.
Many of the methods that phone hackers use are surprisingly low-tech.
"Pretexting" is a common technique for fooling company representatives
into giving up a customer's private account information. A pretexting
scheme works like this: A hacker calls up the telephone company
pretending to be his victim. An agent asks for personal information,
such as mother's maiden name or a pass code, to determine the person's
identity. The customer service rep then surrenders call logs or
passwords if the information is convincing enough.
Perhaps the most famous example of pretexting emerged in 2006 when it
was revealed that Hewlett-Packard Co. was spying on journalists and its
own board members by hiring private investigators to retrieve their
phone logs. The practice was already illegal in the U.S., but was
common in the world of private investigations because prosecutions were
rare. After the HP debacle, new federal legislation clarified the
penalties. Anyone found guilty of pretexting in the U.S. could face up
to 10 years in prison.
Knowing bits of key information —such as a Social Security number,
names of family members on the accounts — can help a hacker establish
credibility in pretexting attacks. Having access to the target's e-mail
account can be valuable as well.
In other cases in Britain, all journalists had to do was dial directly
into victims' phones and enter a default or easy-to-remember password,
such as "1111," to gain access to their voicemails.
The News of the World fiasco has led to prison terms for an
investigator and a former reporter for the tabloid, caused several
major companies to pull advertising. It is complicating Murdoch's
attempt at a multibillion-pound (dollar) takeover of British Sky
Broadcasting, which some in government now insist should be blocked
because of the hacking incident.
Authorities say tabloid staffers may have interfered with police
investigations by hacking into the cellphone of a 13-year-old girl who
was eventually found murdered. The staffers are also being investigated
on allegations of tampering with phones of victims of the July 7, 2005,
terrorist attacks in London, which killed 52 people.
Just as many people are surprised by how easy it is to hack into
someone's Internet e-mail account — the "forgot my password" feature is
reviled by many security professionals— it may be surprising as well
that phone accounts aren't much safer.
Unlike an ATM withdrawal that requires a bank card and a PIN code,
voicemail typically only requires a PIN code.
Today, we simply store too much information and don't take enough
advantage of technologies such as voice recognition, for instance, that
could better secure voicemail, said Mark Rasch, director of
cybersecurity and privacy consulting for Computer Sciences Corp.
"The four-digit PIN will someday die, but I can't tell you when," Rasch
said. "Businesses still like it, and people like it because it's easy
and easy to remember. But it's only easy and easy to remember if you
use the same PIN for everything — and once you do that, if you've
compromised it one place, you've compromised everywhere."
If all else fails, hackers can sometimes purchase phone information.
Britain's Guardian newspaper has reported allegations that other
investigators paid bribes to obtain information from Britain's police
database, the drivers' licensing agency, and cell phone companies.
The phone numbers and passwords were obtained in industrial quantities.
Last year Scotland Yard said that some 4,000 names, 3,000 cell phone
numbers and nearly 100 passwords had been found in Mulcaire's notes
when he was arrested.
How do you say "bureaucracy kills
innovation"
across the pond?
10 May 2011 Last updated at 09:54 ET
Microsoft confirms takeover of Skype
Microsoft has confirmed that it has agreed to buy
internet phone service Skype.
The deal will see Microsoft pay $8.5bn (£5.2bn) for Skype, making
it Microsoft's largest acquisition. Luxembourg-based Skype has
663 million global users. In August last year it announced plans for a
share flotation, but this was subsequently put on hold. Internet
auction house eBay bought Skype for $2.6bn in 2006, before selling 70%
of it in 2009 for $2bn. This majority stake was bought by a group
of investors led by private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen
Horowit.
Other major shareholders include tech-firm Joltid and the Canada
Pension Plan Investment Board.
'Defensive move'
Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said: "Skype is a phenomenal
service that is loved by millions of people around the world.
Together we will create the future of real-time communications so
people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and
colleagues anywhere in the world."
Skype will now become a new division within Microsoft, and Skype chief
executive Tony Bates will continue to lead the business, reporting
directly to Mr Ballmer.
"It's a strategic asset and a defensive move [for Microsoft]," said
Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial.
"If they can put it on Windows 8, it gives them an advantage. It helps
them in the tablet market."
Other analysts say Microsoft's aim in buying Skype is to improve its
video conferencing services.
Price concerns
Although the price tag of $8.5bn will not stretch the US giant, some
experts have questioned whether it is paying too much for a company
that has struggled to turn a profit. Michael Clendenin, managing
director of consulting firm RedTech Advisors, said: "If you consider
[Skype] was just valued at about $2.5bn 18 months ago when a chunk was
sold off, then $8.5bn seems generous.
"[It] means Microsoft has a high wall to climb to prove to investors
that Skype is a necessary linchpin for the company's online and mobile
strategy."
This view was echoed by Ben Woods, head of research group CCS Insight.
"The big unanswered question is how do Skype assets work for
Microsoft... how do you justify the price?" he said.
Skype was founded in 2003. Calls to other Skype users are free,
while the company charges for those made to both traditional landline
phones and mobiles.
Microsoft agrees to buy Skype for $8.5B
YAHOO
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer
10 May 2011
NEW YORK – Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it has agreed to buy the
popular Internet telephone service Skype SA for $8.5 billion in the
biggest deal in the software maker's 36-year history. Buying
Skype would give Microsoft a potentially valuable communications tool
as it tries to become a bigger force on the Internet and in the
increasingly important smartphone market. Microsoft said it will
marry Skype's functions to its Xbox game console, Outlook email program
and Windows smartphones. The company said it will continue to support
Skype on other software platforms.
The sellers include eBay Inc. and private equity firms Silver Lake and
Andreessen Horowitz.
About 170 million people log in to Skype's services every month, though
not all of them make calls. Skype users made 207 billion minutes of
voice and video calls last year. Most people use Skype's free
calling services, which has made it difficult for the service to make
money since entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis started the
company in 2003. An average of about 8.8 million customers per month,
or just over 1 percent of the user base, pay to use Skype services.
Skype lost $7 million on revenue of $860 million last year, according
to papers that the company has filed since announcing its intentions
last summer to launch an initial public offering of stock. The IPO was
later put on hold. Skype's long-term debt, net of cash, was $543,883 at
the end of 2010.
The Skype takeover tops Microsoft's biggest previous acquisition — a $6
billion purchase of the online ad service aQuantive in 2007.
Microsoft said Skype will become a new business division headed by
Skype CEO Tony Bates, who will report directly to Ballmer.
Although it makes billions from its computer software, Microsoft has
been accustomed to losing money on the Internet in a mostly futile
attempt to catch up to Google Inc. in the lucrative online search
market. Microsoft got so desperate that it made a $47.5 billion bid to
buy Yahoo Inc. three years ago, but withdrew the offer after Yahoo
balked. Yahoo is now worth about half of what Microsoft offered.
Microsoft would be Skype's second large-company owner. EBay bought
Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, but its attempt to unite the phone
service with its online shopping bazaar never worked out. It wound up
selling a 70 percent stake in Skype to a group of investors led by
private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz for $2 billion
18 months ago.
Besides eBay, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, Skype's other major
shareholders are Joltid and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
3.5 millions Texans' personal data
mistakenly posted on public servers
New Haven REGISTER
By The Associated Press
12 April 2011
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — The personal information of about 3.5 million
Texans — including addresses and Social Security numbers — was
mistakenly posted on public servers controlled by the state
comptroller’s office and remained there in some cases for more than a
year, the agency said Monday.
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs said that in some cases, the data
inadvertently released included dates of birth and driver’s license
numbers. There was no indication any personal data had been misused.
“I deeply regret the exposure of the personal information that occurred
and am angry that it happened,” Combs said in a statement.
Agency spokesman R.J. DeSilva said the personal data was contained
within folders on a comptroller FTP site separate from its main page —
one that contained hundreds of folders. Some of those folders were
security-protected and could only be accessed by state agencies, while
others were open to the public.
The personal information was “on a portion of the page where anyone
could look,” he said.
Jerry Strickland, a spokesman with the state attorney general’s office,
said officials had contacted the FBI to assist in a criminal
investigation that began last week. Strickland said he couldn’t comment
on whether the information had been misused, citing the active
investigation.
DeSilva said officials discovered the problem March 31, but only
notified those agencies it affected Monday.
The information affected was in data transferred by the Teacher
Retirement System of Texas, the Texas Workforce Commission, and the
Employees Retirement System of Texas.
The Teacher Retirement System data was transferred in January 2010 and
had records of 1.2 million education employees and retirees, while the
Texas Workforce Commission had data on about 2 million individuals
listed in an April 2010 information transfer. The records of about
281,000 state employees and retirees were included in an Employees
Retirement System’s transfer from last May.
The comptroller’s office will begin issuing letters Wednesday,
notifying those people whose personal information was mistakenly made
accessible to the public.
The personal information was included in data transfers required by
state statute.
Obama promotes plans for
wireless expansion
YAHOO
By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press
10 February 2011
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama wants nearly all Americans to have
access to speedy wireless services. He's promoting that plan in a small
city in Michigan that's becoming a model for how the Internet can bring
prosperity to far-flung places.
Obama on Thursday heads to Marquette, Mich., a university and tourism
town of 20,000 overlooking Lake Superior that cherishes both its
geographical remoteness and technological savvy. He'll see high-tech
wireless initiatives in action at Northern Michigan University, where
students telecommute, and talk about the plan in his State of the Union
address to expand access to high-speed wireless to 98 percent of the
population within five years.
It's a lofty goal considering such technology is only now being built
in major cities by AT&T, Verizon and others. And it costs billions
of dollars that Republicans probably will be unwilling to spend. But
it's all part of Obama's new focus on innovation, technology and
competitiveness as a pathway to jobs and "winning the future" — the new
White House mantra.
Thursday's visit also takes Obama to a largely conservative area of a
state that will be important in the 2012 presidential campaign.
Obama's wireless plan involves nearly doubling the space available on
the airwaves for wireless high-speed Internet traffic to keep up with
ever-growing demand. This would be accomplished in part by auctioning
off space on the radio spectrum to commercial wireless carriers. The
White House says this would raise nearly $30 billion over 10 years, and
the money could be spent on initiatives that include $10 billion to
develop a national broadband network for public safety agencies and $5
billion for infrastructure to help rural areas access high-speed
wireless. Additional money could be used to reduce the deficit, the
White House says.
It's all conditioned on congressional approval, and the proposals may
get cold-shouldered by the Republicans who now control the House and
have made clear they want to decrease spending in most areas, not go
along with the targeted increases in areas like infrastructure and
education that the president is pursuing.
Portions of the plan will be included in the 2012 budget proposal Obama
comes out with next week.
Vint Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, considered the
father of the Internet
Internet running out of addresses, new
set needed
San Francisco CHRONICLE
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Thirty years ago, when the Internet was just getting started, it seemed
a safe bet that 4.3 billion addresses would be more than enough. After
all, that was roughly the world's population at the time.
"Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?" said Vint Cerf,
Google's chief Internet evangelist, considered the father of the
Internet, in an interview last month with Australian journalists. "I
thought it was an experiment, and I thought that 4.3 billion
(addresses) would be enough to do an experiment."
But now it appears the number was too small.
"It turns out the experiment got out of the lab," said Leo Vegoda,
number resources manager at the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN), in an interview Thursday. "There is a big mismatch
between 4 billion and what we need today for a global-spanning
telecommunications network that's good for transmitting data packets.
We need more addresses."
Every website, computer, smart phone, network printer, cable TV and
wireless device out there has a unique numerical IP (Internet protocol)
address. As devices and data multiply and the world's population hovers
around 7 billion, those IP addresses are now almost exhausted.
On Thursday, the international groups that coordinate Net addresses
officially allocated the last blocks of them to five regional
registries that in turn distribute to Internet service providers,
websites and so forth. Those final allocations could be used up within
months.
That means the Internet must now switch to a new address protocol. It's
a bit like an overpopulated area code that's out of phone numbers - but
instead of just creating a new area code, the behind-the-scenes IP
addresses will become a lot more complex.
Seamless - for now
For most users, the transition should be seamless - until a few years
from now, when people with older modems may need to upgrade them to
recognize the new addresses.
The current system, IPv4 (version 4) uses "dotted quads" - four numbers
separated by periods. For instance, the IP address for www.sfgate.com
is 66.35.240.8. (Domain names, such as sfgate, essentially act as an
address book, providing an easy way to look up IP addresses.)
The new system, IPv6, uses 128-bit addresses. A typical IPv6 address
might look like this: 2001:0db8:0234:AB00:0123:8a2e:0370:7334.
It can handle a huge number of addresses, 340 undecillion, to be
precise. That number can be expressed as writing 3.4 followed by 38
zeroes, said David Ulevitch, founder and CEO of OpenDNS, a San
Francisco company that translates domain names into numbers.
"The (IPv4) trough is now empty," Ulevitch said. "The Internet
continues to grow, and the only way to grow is to use IPv6."
The new protocol
In fact, enterprises have been experimenting with the new protocol for
over a decade, but the imminent exhaustion of IP addresses provides
motivation to step up those efforts, he said.
June 8 has been designated as the ultra-nerdy "Test Flight Day" when
Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other major companies will offer their
content over IPv6 to motivate ISPs, hardwaremakers, operating system
vendors and others to handle the new addresses.
"It's drawing a line in the sand as to when everyone supports this
important technology," said Greg Smith, senior director of technical
marketing for Citrix Systems, which sells products to translate the
older version of IP addresses to the new ones. "There's a
chicken-and-egg dynamic: it requires some investment on the part of
websites and companies and they don't want to make it until they see
demand."
"This is not sneaking up on anybody," said Bill Woodcock, research
director at San Francisco's Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit that
researches Internet traffic and global network development. "IPv4
addresses will continue working exactly as they always have."
Some people with older modems may be affected eventually once the new
protocol becomes the default.
"A lot of DSL modems and cable modems out there right now don't support
v6 because they are the cheapest and most commodity pieces of gear and
vendors didn't require their hardware providers to do that engineering
until recently," Woodcock said. "At some point those may need to be
swapped out."
G.O.P. to Open House to Electronic
Devices
NYTIMES
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
December 24, 2010
WASHINGTON — The iPad is coming to Capitol Hill.
Tucked into new rules proposed by the incoming House Republican
majority is one that could fling the chamber — for good or ill — into
the 21st century: Members may use an electronic device on the House
floor as long as it doesn’t “impair decorum.”
The new rule would relax the complete ban on the use of gadgets like
the iPad, iPhone or BlackBerry on the floor. Mobile phones, tablet
computers and the whole universe of applications that run on them will
be officially available to House members as they conduct business.
Members still may not talk on the phone in the chamber and are supposed
to use the devices for official business only, according to a spokesman
for the soon-to-be speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. But as
long as the mute switch is on, lawmakers will be free to tap away.
“Mr. Boehner has deep respect for the institution and its traditions,”
said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the Republicans. “This is not free
license to Skype or pay bills online. But we recognize that people
consume information electronically these days. It’s just silly that the
House wouldn’t accommodate that.”
The decision represents a vivid concession of old-fashioned tradition
to new technology. But while the nation’s lawmakers will be fully
plugged in, they will also be in danger of tuning one another out.
As the Emily Post etiquette Web site states: “Tapping on a hand-held
device is O.K. if it’s related to what’s being discussed, but taking
care of personal business is unprofessional. Your associates might
think that you were more interested in your gadget than the business at
hand.”
Mobile technology has already started to sneak onto the floors of both
the House and the Senate. While the rules of the 111th Congress
officially banned iPads and other devices from the floor, there has
been a “wink and a nod” approach to a lawmaker who takes furtive
glances at his BlackBerry, according to a senior Republican aide.
That was obvious last week, when Senator John Kerry, Democrat of
Massachusetts, was seen, head down, tapping out messages as he sat
directly behind Senator Arlen Specter, Democrat of Pennsylvania, who
was giving his farewell address. Earlier this month, Representative
Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, took his iPad to the speaker’s
rostrum as he presided over the chamber. And Representative Eric
Cantor, Republican of Virginia, was caught using his BlackBerry during
President Obama’s health care address in 2009.
In the Senate, a leadership aide said that no changes were planned, but
that the rules committee could look into loosening the rules at some
point. But in the House, members will be free to whip out their mobile
phones any time.
That prospect worries Jaron Lanier, the author of “You Are Not A
Gadget: A Manifesto.”
“This notion of the deliberative body being insulated and being a
little bit removed was there for a reason,” Mr. Lanier said Friday in
an interview. “Real-time Tweets? Do we want that?”
Apparently, we do. Mobile devices are everywhere these days. The one on
Mr. Obama’s hip can often be seen in photographs snapped as he emerges
from Air Force One. Even Laura Bush, the former first lady and a lover
of paper-bound books, admitted recently that she was hooked.
“I had not used a computer in the eight years I spent in the White
House, and I didn’t know a thing about BlackBerrys,” Mrs. Bush told
Advertising Specialty Institute Radio. “And now, like everyone in the
U.S., I have one in my hand every moment. I’m addicted to it.”
The new rules in the House, first reported by Nancy Scola of
techPresident.com, will be clarified early next month in a document
called the Speaker’s Announced Policies. For example, Mr. Buck, the
Republican spokesman, said the use of the ubiquitous white iPod
earphones would probably not be allowed.
The intent, he said, was to let lawmakers look up the text of a bill,
check a fact or keep up on the news of the day. Their advisers could
also send them important messages. And, especially with the iPad’s
bigger screen, lawmakers could abandon paper copies of bills in favor
of electronic versions. Or they could use Google on their smartphone to
check the accuracy of something a colleague had just said.
On the other hand, less-high-minded members could use the devices to
play games, do their Amazon shopping or find movie listings. In
Florida, where laptop computers are already allowed to sit on the desks
of state senators, one member was caught with pictures of naked women
on his screen.
Still, Mr. Lanier envisioned a bright side, even if lawmakers are not
using the devices strictly for work. Recalling the many scenes of
lawmakers’ speaking to a mostly empty chamber, he said, “At least if
they have a little game to play, maybe they will attend more.”
FAMILY FEUD..."What's good for me, Al
Franken" - on the losing end this time.
Divided FCC adopts Internet traffic
rules
YAHOO
By Jasmin Melvin
21 December 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. communications regulators adopted Internet
traffic rules on Tuesday that prevent providers from blocking lawful
content but still let them ration access to their networks.
The Federal Communications Commission approved the "Open Internet"
order after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan got the support of
fellow Democrats Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn.
The rules aim to strike a balance between the interests of Internet
service providers, content companies and consumers, but some industry
analysts think a court challenge is still likely.
At issue is whether regulators need to guarantee that all stakeholders
continue to have reasonable access to the Internet, a principle often
called "net neutrality," or whether the Internet is best left to
flourish unregulated.
The FCC's ability to regulate the Internet has been in doubt since an
appeals court in April said the agency lacked the authority to stop
cable company Comcast Corp from blocking bandwidth-hogging applications.
Senior FCC officials have said they will invoke new legal arguments not
employed in the Comcast case.
The two Republican commissioners at the agency opposed the latest
rule-making effort, saying it was unnecessary and would stifle
innovation. Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker told an FCC open
meeting that they believed the rules would fail in court.
High-speed Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon Communications
can "reasonably" manage their networks under the rules and perhaps
charge consumers based on levels of Internet usage.
The rules, to be somewhat looser for wireless Internet, could help
cable companies in competition with plans by Microsoft Corp, Google Inc
and Amazon.com to deliver competing video content over the same
Internet lines the cable companies run to customers' homes.
Adoption of the measure had been expected after Copps and Clyburn had
issued statements on Monday saying they would support the proposal
despite some misgivings.
But McDowell warned on Tuesday that the FCC was defying the court and
also circumventing the will of Congress. Republicans will be in control
of the U.S. House of Representatives come January and made gains
against Democrats in the Senate in November's elections.
"Litigation will supplant innovation. Instead of investing in
tomorrow's technologies, precious capital will be diverted to pay
lawyers' fees," McDowell warned.
Genachowski, speaking last at the meeting, said the Internet currently
was unprotected and invoked the names of his Republican predecessors to
back adoption of the rules.
"The rules of the road we adopt today are rooted in ideas first
articulated by Republican Chairmen Michael Powell and Kevin Martin, and
endorsed in a unanimous FCC policy statement in 2005," said Genachowski.
Internet rules
to get go ahead by US
regulators
By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
21 December 2010 Last updated at 05:34 ET
Controversial new rules affecting the running of the internet are
expected to be approved by US regulators today.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote on a principle
known as net neutrality; a tenet that ensures all web traffic is
treated equally.
The rules have been criticised for setting different standards for
fixed line broadband and mobile operators.
Officials said the regulations are "the first time the Commission has
adopted enforceable rules" to govern the web.
Tuesday's vote is the culmination of five years of fighting over how
best to ensure the free flow of information in all its forms over the
internet.
The proposal also comes at a time when consumers are increasingly
accessing the web via smart phones and turning to the internet to watch
TV shows.
'Rules of the road'
The Commission's ability to regulate the internet was thrown into doubt
following an appeals court decision earlier this year that said the
agency lacked the authority to stop cable firm ComCast from blocking
bandwidth-hogging applications.
The FCC's agenda said the vote will address "basic rules of the road to
preserve the open internet as a platform for innovation, investment,
competition and free expression".
That is a view backed by chairman Julius Genachowski.
"We're adopting a framework that will increase certainty for
businesses, investors and entrepreneurs," Mr Genachowski said in
remarks prepared for the meeting.
"We're taking an approach that will help foster a cycle of massive
investment, innovation and consumer demand both at the edge and in the
core of our broadband networks."
The five member Commission is expected to vote 3-2 along party lines.
Michael Copps, a Democrat, said in a written statement that he will not
block the plan after weeks of what senior FCC officials called "robust
engagement" with the Commission to toughen the rules.
"The item we will vote on is not the one I would have crafted but I
believe we have been able to make the current iteration better than
what was originally circulated," said Mr Copps.
"If vigilantly and vigorously implemented by the commission, it could
represent an important milestone in the ongoing struggle to safeguard
the awesome opportunity-creating power of the open internet."
Fellow Democrat Mignon Clyburn is also expected to concur on the rules,
whilst Mr Genachowski's vote is expected to push it through.
Republicans Meredith Baker and Robert McDowell are expected to vote
against the order.
The regulations are expected to be challenged in court.
'Squandered'
A number of interested parties including internet providers, developers
and companies like Google have said the rules will provide some
regulatory certainty going forward. Many have acknowledged that the
proposal could have been much worse.
The new regulations would prohibit telecommunications companies that
provide high-speed internet service from blocking access by customers
to any legal content, applications or service.
But, for the first time, there will be a policy that will allow for
what has been termed "paid-prioritisation", where companies will be
able to pay for a faster service.
The FCC proposal would also place tougher restrictions on wired
services from cable and phone companies than on wireless carriers,
which have more limited bandwidth.
It comes at a time when an increasing number of people are using smart
phones or tablet devices to access the web or watch TV shows.
The rules would allow mobile firms to block access to sites or
applications that specifically compete with a carrier's voice or video
services.
Supporters of net neutrality feel the new regulations should have gone
further and have slammed them as "fake net neutrality".
"I think today is a tremendously important day in the fight to preserve
a free and open internet," Aparna Sridhar of advocacy group the Free
Press, told BBC News.
"Chairman Genachowski has completely squandered a golden opportunity to
make this vote meaningful. Until now we have had a certain amount of
regulatory uncertainty and the carriers have had an incentive to stay
on their best behaviour.
"This rule will endorse bad practices in the wireless space and I think
we will see the flood gates open from the blocking of applications to
the slowing down of competitors' apps to monetising every application
that seeks to travel over their network," added Ms Sridhar.
In an opinion piece for the Huffington Post, Al Franken, US Senator for
Minnesota, called the FCC vote "the most important free speech issue of
our time" and the draft order the FCC will vote on a "badly flawed
proposal".
4 November 2010 Last updated at 11:33 ET
Burma hit
by massive net attack ahead of election
An ongoing computer attack has knocked Burma off the internet, just
days ahead of its first election in 20 years. The attack started
in late October but has grown in the last few days to overwhelm the
nation's link to the net, said security firm Arbor Networks.
Reports from Burma say the disruption is ongoing.
The attack, which is believed to have started on 25 October, comes
ahead of closely-watched national elections on 7 November.
International observers and foreign journalists are not being allowed
into the country to cover the polls. It will raise suspicions
that Burma's military authorities could be trying to restrict the flow
of information over the election period. The ruling generals say
the polls will mark a transition to democratic civilian rule.
But as the BBC's Sue Lloyd-Roberts reports from Burma, many believe the
election is a sham designed to cement the military's grip on
power. In the last elections in 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi's National
League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory but the junta
ignored the result and have remained in power ever since.
Cyber attack
The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, as it is known, works
by flooding a target with too much data for it to handle.
The "distributed" element of it means that it involves PCs spread all
over the world. These networks of enslaved computers - known as
"botnets" - are typically hijacked home computers that have been
compromised by a virus. They are typically rented out by cyber
criminals for various means, including web attacks. They can be called
into action and controlled from across the internet.
Burma links to the wider net via cables and satellites that, at most,
can support data transfers of 45 megabits of data per second.
At its height, the attack was pummelling Burma's connections to the
wider net with about 10-15 gigabits of data every second. Writing
about the attack, Dr Craig Labovitz from Arbor Networks said the volume
of traffic traffic was "several hundred times more than enough" to
swamp these links. The result, said Dr Labovitz, had disrupted
network traffic in and out of the nation. He said the attack was
sophisticated in that it rolled together several different types of
DDoS attacks and traffic was coming from many different sources.
At time of writing, attempts to contact IP addresses in the block owned
by Burma and its telecoms firms timed out, suggesting the attack is
still under way.
"Our technicians have been trying to prevent cyber attacks from other
countries," a spokesperson from Yatanarpon Teleport told the AFP news
agency.
"We still do not know whether access will be good on the election day."
Mr Labovitz said that he did not know the motivation for the attack but
said that analysis of similar events in the past had found motives that
ran the gamut "from politically motivated DDoS, government censorship,
extortion and stock manipulation."
He also noted that the current wave of traffic was "significantly
larger" than high-profile attacks against Georgia and Estonia in 2007.
BlackBerry CEO suggests route to
eavesdropping
YAHOO
By ANDREW VANACORE, AP Business Writer
Mon Sep 27, 5:45 pm ET
NEW YORK – BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. says it has no way
of providing government officials with the text of encrypted corporate
e-mails its devices serve up. But if the companies that employ
BlackBerry phones want to hand over the encryption keys to their
e-mail, it won't object.
In a recent interview, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said he could envision
countries that want access to BlackBerry e-mails setting up a kind of
national registry where companies doing business within their borders
would have to provide government officials with the ability to peek at
encrypted messages.
"We would support that if it's applied equitably to everyone,"
Balsillie said, while warning that governments that use too heavy of a
hand on the issue risk scaring away businesses.
The issue comes up as a growing list of countries — including the U.S.
— raise concerns that communications technology has outpaced the
ability of authorities to eavesdrop.
The controversy drew wide public attention last month when the United
Arab Emirates announced plans to block BlackBerry e-mail, messaging and
Web browsing services. Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Indonesia and India are
considering or planning similar steps.
In the U.S., the Obama administration plans to propose legislation next
year that would require online communications providers to be
technically equipped to comply with a wiretap order, according to a
report in The New York Times on Monday. Along with BlackBerry service,
the new rules would apply to social media sites including Facebook and
direct person-to-person services such as Skype, the Times reported.
Balsillie took pains to emphasize that these security concerns extend
beyond BlackBerry service. He pointed out that most corporate e-mail is
encrypted in a similar way.
Because of how BlackBerry e-mail service is set up, it isn't
technically possible for RIM to give government officials access to
company e-mail that its users send back and forth. And RIM will not
remove the layers of encryption that protect corporate e-mail because
its customers put a high value on privacy.
While RIM won't give details of discussions with any particular
government, the type of national registry that Balsillie mentioned
helps outline one area of potential compromise.
The idea would leave RIM out of the decision-making process when it
comes to government surveillance requests. A foreign government would
collect the keys that it needs from companies whose employees use
company e-mail on their BlackBerrys. It would be up to any individual
company whether to hand over those keys.
"They're not ours to give," Balsillie said. "That's a decision for the
company that is operating within that jurisdiction."
Balsillie warned, however, that demanding access to encryption keys
would be a "blunt instrument" and could spook companies that want tight
security around their communications.
"Will companies just leave and say this is not commercial practice
that's acceptable?" he said. "Strong encryption for corporate data is
the norm in all business."
Report: US would make Internet
wiretaps easier
YAHOO
27 September 2010
WASHINGTON – Broad new regulations being drafted by the Obama
administration would make it easier for law enforcement and national
security officials to eavesdrop on Internet and e-mail communications
like social networking Web sites and BlackBerries, The New York Times
reported Monday.
The newspaper said the White House plans to submit a bill next year
that would require all online services that enable communications to be
technically equipped to comply with a wiretap order. That would include
providers of encrypted e-mail, such as BlackBerry, networking sites
like Facebook and direct communication services like Skype.
Federal law enforcement and national security officials say new the
regulations are needed because terrorists and criminals are
increasingly giving up their phones to communicate online.
"We're talking about lawfully authorized intercepts," said FBI lawyer
Valerie E. Caproni. "We're not talking about expanding authority. We're
talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority
in order to protect the public safety and national security."
The White House plans to submit the proposed legislation to Congress
next year. The new regulations would raise new questions about
protecting people's privacy while balancing national security
concerns. James Dempsey, the vice president of the Center for
Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the new
regulations would have "huge implications."
"They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services
function the way that the telephone system used to function," he told
the Times.
The Times said the Obama proposal would likely include several requires:
-Any service that provides
encrypted messages must be capable of unscrambling them.
-Any foreign communications providers that do business in the
U.S. would have to have an office in the United States that's capable
of providing intercepts.
-Software developers of peer-to-peer communications services
would be required to redesign their products to allow interception.
The Times said that some privacy and technology advocates say the
regulations would create weaknesses in the technology that hackers
could more easily exploit.
FCC to open up vacant TV airwaves for
broadband
YAHOO
By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer
Mon Sep 13, 12:35 am ET
WASHINGTON – A new flavor of Wi-Fi, with longer range and wall-piercing
power, could show up in wireless gadgets a year from now if the Federal
Communications Commission works out the last details of new spectrum
rules that have been long in the making.
Nearly two years ago, the FCC voted to open up the airwaves between
broadcast TV channels — so-called "white spaces" — for wireless
broadband connections that would work like Wi-Fi on steroids. But
wrangling over key technical details, including concerns about
interference with TV signals and wireless microphones, has prevented
exploitation of these spaces.
On Sept. 23, the FCC plans to vote on rules meant to resolve those
issues. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski predicts electronics makers
will jump at this "super Wi-Fi" technology, as the agency calls it, and
make it just as popular as conventional Wi-Fi.
"We're hoping history will repeat itself," Genachowski said. "White
spaces are a big deal for consumers and for investment and innovation."
The commission's plan would make white spaces available for free,
without specific permission, just as it already does for Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth. Last year's transition from analog to digital
television broadcasting freed up enough spectrum to make this possible,
but the plan faced serious opposition from television broadcasters
worried that their signals could be disrupted. Wireless microphone
manufacturers and users — including churches, theatres, karaoke bars
and all types of performers — also raised concerns about interference.
To address these issues, the FCC has been working with broadcasters and
white-spaces proponents to map TV channels across the country. The
current FCC plan would require installers to configure white-spaces
devices to use a frequency that's vacant in their area — a white space.
Alternatively, the devices themselves could figure out their location
using such technologies as GPS; a database would then help the devices
figure out the right frequencies for their area.
In addition, the agency hopes to set aside at least two channels for
minor users of wireless microphones. And it plans to put big wireless
microphone users, such as Broadway theaters and sports leagues, in the
database, so devices would know to avoid their airwaves. The
upcoming FCC vote is a welcome development for some of the country's
biggest technology companies, including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp.
and Dell Inc. The tech industry hopes that white-spaces networks will
create a multibillion market for advanced wireless devices, including
laptops, set-top boxes and smart phones.
"We've all been chomping at the bit in the tech community ... to get
going with white spaces," said Richard Whitt, Google's Washington-based
counsel for telecommunications and media. "These are highly valuable,
open, unused airwaves."
If all goes according to plan, Liam Quinn, chief technology officer for
client business at Dell, expects to see "proof of concept" products at
the Consumer Electronics Show in January, followed by early products in
about a year and mass production a year after that. White spaces
are particularly well suited to providing broadband, tech companies
say, because they can penetrate walls, have plenty of network capacity
and are able to cover large areas. According to Quinn, the signals can
travel several miles and deliver Internet speeds ranging from 15 to 20
megabits per second — as fast as a cable modem.
Technology companies envision all sorts of uses for white spaces:
providing emergency services in disaster zones and creating home
wireless networks that can send video between television sets and
computers, to name just a few possibilities.
Wilmington, N.C., one of a handful of U.S. communities testing the
technology, is using white-spaces connections to send live video feeds
from traffic and surveillance cameras.
The city's network also gathers real-time data from a sensor in a
remote part of the local watershed to monitor water quality and levels.
Previously, Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo said, the city had to send a
worker out in a boat once a month to collect the data, as the city's
Wi-Fi network could not reach the sensor.
"There are a million and one possibilities for this spectrum," Saffo
said.
Neeraj Srivastava, a vice president at a Florida company called
Spectrum Bridge Inc., noted that white-spaces networks could be used to
bring high-speed Internet access to remote corners of the country where
the phone and cable companies don't offer landline broadband. That's a
high priority for the FCC.
Indeed, Spectrum Bridge, which helped build the Wilmington network,
also helped build a test system in rural Claudeville, Va., a community
that had only dial-up Internet and costly satellite-based broadband
service before.
For now, it remains unclear whether the FCC's plan for dealing with
interference will go far enough for the broadcast industry, which wants
the FCC to require that white-spaces devices include spectrum-sensing
technology that can detect when airwaves are already being used. The
FCC left that requirement out amid opposition from the tech industry.
"This is still a work in progress," said David Donovan, head of the
Association for Maximum Service Television, which handles technical
issues facing broadcasters. "But we're trying to make it work."
Government report: 4 cos. control
wireless market
YAHOO
By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer
26 August 2010
WASHINGTON – A government report finds that mergers and acquisitions
over the past decade have left just four big carriers in control of 90
percent of the wireless market, thus making it harder for small and
regional companies to compete.
A study from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative
arm of Congress, also found that despite the consolidation, consumers
are benefiting from better wireless coverage and prices that are half
what they were in 1999.
The GAO report, released Thursday, comes as the Federal Communications
Commission is ramping up oversight of the wireless industry. The report
says the number of cell phone subscribers in the U.S. stood at 285
million at the end of 2009, up from 3.5 million in 1989.
Protesters denounce Google plan for
'two-tier internet'
By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
14 August 2010 Last updated at 00:57 ET
Around 100 people have rallied outside Google's California
offices to protest against controversial proposals to alter how data is
treated over the web. Google and Verizon suggest treating fixed
line services differently to wireless and some specialised
content. This would allow net providers to give priority to
certain online traffic. Protesters outside the famed Googleplex
said this would create a "pay-to-play" service and urged Google to live
up to its famous motto "don't be evil".
"Companies like Google have benefited from a free and open internet and
their plan will destroy that," said James Rucker of ColourofChange.org,
one of many consumer and public advocacy groups taking part in the
event.
"They are talking about producing a fast lane, essentially a higher
tier, for premium content that means if you want to play in the 21st
Century internet you will have to pay."
The proposals unveiled this week by the search giant and telecom titan
Verizon champion an open net for wireline services but suggest
loopholes for wireless and what they called "differentiated"
content. Critics have said this would undermine the principle of
net neutrality where all web data is treated equally and no-one is
given preferential treatment or discriminated against.
"Whether you are a blogger, an entrepreneur, a journalist or someone
trying to organise a community, the internet is precious," said Mr
Rucker.
"We all want to stand together to ensure it is protected for the
future. We would expect Google to take leadership in making that
happen, not be on the front line of undoing that."
'In mourning'
Google and Verizon made their announcement after the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) ended closed-door talks with service
providers and internet companies to find a consensus on the principle
of net neutrality. The FCC is trying to navigate what it has
called a "third way" to resolve the issue after its authority was
called into question when a court ruled it had no power to sanction
Comcast for slowing some net traffic.
Net neutrality is seen as central to the government's broadband plan to
provide high speed access to every citizen by 2020. Protestor
Christine Springer criticised the lack of leadership coming from the
agency.
"The FCC is sitting on their hands. They are hoping nobody will notice
but unless we make a lot of noise the corporate giants will prevail.
The job of the FCC is to regulate not negotiate with giant
corporations."
Those taking part in the rally agree and chanted slogans like "net
neutrality is under attack, stand up and fight back" and "we demand our
internet rights, together we stand together we fight".
There was also some singing to the tune of "Clementine" organised by a
group of senior citizens calling themselves the Raging Grannies.
"We want to raise awareness about this issue and shine a light on how
important it is to keep the internet free and open to one and all,"
said Raging Granny Gail Sredanovic.
Martha Champion donned a heavy black Victorian costume to drive home
her concerns.
"I am in mourning for the death of the internet and believe this plan
will lock out those that can't afford to pay a premium for their
content to load faster or for their site to go quickly."
The rally also attracted the very young. Seven year old Alexis Buggs
said she took part "to help save the internet".
Her mum Erin Hodgson told BBC News "I'm a stay at home mom and so it
was either go to the park or come out here and take a stand and teach
my kids about putting our voice out there and being proud to be
American."
'Fierce supporter'
The rally organisers presented Google with boxes of petitions they
claimed held the signatures of 300,000 people opposed to anything that
would harm the principle of net neutrality.
guy carrying a box of petitions with Google don't be evil sign The
petition signatures were collected over the last couple of weeks
Google asked those that took part in the protest to fill out a form and
submit their own comments about the proposals. Afterwards the
company's head of public policy, Nicklas Lundblad spoke to reporters.
"This is an important issue, a complex issue and it deserves to be
discussed. Google is a fierce supporter of an open internet and we see
that we have a couple of key enforceable protections in our proposal
with Verizon and that is much better than no protections at all.
"This issue has been at a standstill for quite some time and we think
this proposal is a way to advance that discussion."
In a move that comes as no surprise, telecom company AT&T has given
its backing to the plan while firms like Facebook and Skype have
denounced it.
FCC draws
fire over talks with
Internet, telecom giants on 'net neutrality'
By Cecilia Kang, Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 5, 2010; A13
Thwarted in his campaign to set government control over consumer access
to the Internet, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius
Genachowski has been trying to salvage his efforts by negotiating
directly with a handful of the biggest Web firms and network service
providers.
His goal is for those firms to put aside their differences on how
Internet service providers control content on their networks and agree
on legislation that Genachowski can present to Congress.
But critics say that by handpicking Google, AT&T, Verizon and Skype
for seven closed-door meetings that continue this week at the FCC,
Genachowski could be determining the future of how consumers access the
Web in a manner more favorable to those businesses.
Massive corporate interests are at stake as the firms and the agency
discuss so-called net neutrality provisions, or regulations that would
prevent Internet providers from blocking or slowing access to Web
sites. The talks could determine, for instance, whether Verizon could
provide YouTube online video with better resolution than competitor
Netflix, or whether Google and Skype have to pay extra to get their
online voice services onto AT&T broadband networks.
"These big companies can make deals for themselves, but they are
leaving out the rest of us," said Susan Crawford, a communications law
professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Wider discussions
Genachowski's chief of staff, Eddie Lazarus, has been running the
meetings and said he has also talked to dozens of consumer groups,
start-ups, venture capitalists and smaller network operators. Those
discussions have taken place outside the hours-long sessions that
continue this week with officials from Google, Skype, AT&T, Verizon
and a cable trade association and coalition advocating Genachowski's
net neutrality rules.
"That one room is not privileged, in my view. There have been dozens of
stakeholder discussions with varied interests who are all important to
this process," Lazarus said.
Free Press, Public Knowledge, Amazon.com and Sony Electronics are among
parties represented by the Open Internet Coalition, which has a place
at the meetings. Cable firms are also represented by a trade group, the
National Cable and Telecommunications Association.
"I can't presume to speak for all of them on any given issue," said
Markham Erickson, executive director of the Open Internet Coalition,
which also represents Google. "We try to be a consensus-based
coalition, but the challenge is that there is a diversity of points of
view on any given issue when you get to very specific points."
Matt Polka, president of American Cable Association, a group that
represents smaller cable broadband operators, said he agrees with the
National Cable and Telecommunications Association that the FCC
shouldn't pursue open-Internet rules. But, he said, "you have to hope
that the interests of smaller rural providers are also being
represented in these discussions and not just the biggest cable firms."
Analysts said agreements made between those parties could encourage
Congress to introduce legislation as the FCC grapples with questions
over its ability to regulate broadband providers.
Wireless partners Google and Verizon are close to announcing an
agreement on ground rules that they hope to hold as an example of
successful self-regulation, according to sources familiar with those
negotiations. The firms are expected to announce a deal soon that would
allow Verizon to offer more room on its networks to content providers
that pay more. But any promises regarding open-Internet access wouldn't
apply to mobile phones, sources close to the companies said.
Verizon said in a statement that it will continue to participate in FCC
talks. Google did not respond to requests for comment. The two firms
have stood on opposite ends of the net neutrality debate but have
partnered on Android phones, based on Google's operating system and
applications. In recent months, Verizon chief executive Ivan Seidenberg
and Google chief Eric Schmidt have announced in op-eds and speeches
that they are finding "common ground" in the debate.
The FCC chief's goal
Such an agreement could frame discussion on legislation in Congress.
And it would enable Genachowski to address his biggest policy goal --
open Internet access -- without having to follow through on a separate,
controversial proposal to redefine broadband access providers as
telecommunications services. That promise of open-Internet rules was
touted by President Obama during his campaign but was derailed by a
federal court decision that questioned the FCC's authority over
broadband. And amid growing opposition in Congress, the FCC has sought
to find a way out by asserting its authority to regulate broadband.
"These matters clearly are important to both network and apps
providers, and it remains to be seen whether the difference can be
overcome," said Paul Gallant, an analyst at Concept Capital. "If they
are not, Chairman Genachowski is expected to move toward a
reclassification ruling that would be negative for cable, telcos and
possibly telecom equipment suppliers."
Apple to give iPhone 4 owners free
'bumper' case
NYPOST
Last Updated: 2:26 PM, July 16, 2010
Posted: 1:31 PM, July 16, 2010
Apple Inc., answering mounting criticism over the reception issue and
antenna design of its recently launched iPhone 4, admitted Friday the
phone drops more calls than the previous version, and said it would
give away protective cases as a remedy.
Apple "screwed up" with the signal algorithm of the phone, Chief
Executive Steve Jobs said during a press conference at the company’s
Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. But he stuck to the company line
regarding the antenna problems being common with all smartphones, and
said the problem was blown "so out of proportion, it's incredible."
Customers that buy an iPhone 4 through Sept. 30 will get a free
protective cover, or bumper. Anyone who has already purchased a bumper
will get a refund.
"We're not perfect," Jobs said. He went on to say the company has sold
more than 3 million iPhones since it went on sale in June 24, and
defended it as the "perhaps the best product made by Apple."
He acknowledged that the iPhone 4 loses signal strength when touched in
the lower left corner, but argued the problem is not unique to his
company's device. He went on to show videos of other smartphones,
including the BlackBerry Bold and HTC Droid Eris, that appear to lose
reception when gripped in certain ways.
"This is life in the smartphone world," he said. He said 1.7 percent of
customers have returned their iPhone 4 to AT&T Inc., a lower rate
than the predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.
The iPhone 4, which has an unusual antenna design, was immediately
dogged by complaints about its reception, particularly when owners held
the device in a particular way.
The problems cascaded into a full-blown public relations challenge for
Apple, which initially told owners to hold the phone differently and
then blamed the reception difficulties on software. The company's
problems worsened when influential product review publication Consumer
Reports said it could not recommend the phone.
The publication determined that touching the iPhone's antenna, which
wraps around the sides of the device, degrades the device's signal. It
later recommended sheathing the iPhone in a case that covers the
sensitive lower left section to remedy the situation.
Apple's stock has taken a beating since the release of the new iPhone,
dropping nearly 8 percent from record highs just a month ago.
The bumpers currently sell for $29 on its website. The product is sold
out; the website says it will ship in five to seven business days.
How Do
We Stop the Internet From Making Us Stupid?
By Niraj Chokshi, Atlantic Monthly
We found this article via the Courant on June 11, 2010
When it comes to focus, turning on the spotlight may not matter as much
as our ability to dim the ambient light.
Nicholas Carr argued on Saturday in The Wall Street Journal that the
Internet is making us dumber and on Monday The New York Times had a
front-page feature on the mental price we pay for our multi-tasked
lifestyles. If we are indeed losing our ability to think deeply, the
key to fighting back may lie in a subtlety: focus may be more about our
ability to filter out distractions than our ability to home in on the
issue at hand.
Carr posed his idea that technology is making us stupid in a 2008
Atlantic cover story and his forthcoming book "The Shallows" is a
longer rumination on the theory. According to professors and research
cited in The Times piece "the idea that information overload causes
distraction was supported by more and more research." And those
distractions, according to research Carr cites, are forcing us to
change the way we think. Deep thought is losing ground to
superficiality.
So, if our multitasking lifestyle causes distraction, and distraction
leads to superficial thinking, how do we fight back? Carr offers some
advice:
Reading a long
sequence of pages
helps us develop a rare kind of mental discipline. The innate bias of
the human brain, after all, is to be distracted. Our predisposition is
to be aware of as much of what's going on around us as possible. Our
fast-paced, reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival.
There is some noteworthy subtlety here. Carr doesn't argue that reading
directly increases our ability to focus, but that it "helps us develop
a rare kind of mental discipline." That's because focus may be less
about highlighting what matters and more about the discipline of
ignoring what doesn't.
This view of focus is supported by research. For example, in a 2009
paper published in the well-regarded Journal of Neuroscience, Theodore
P. Zanto and Adam Gazzaley, who is cited in The Times piece, reach a
similar conclusion. Filtering out the irrelevant, they suggest, may
improve accuracy and speed in a short-term memory test, but
attention-directing skills may not have a similar effect.
So, abandoning the distractions of technology for a single task may not
do as much to retrain our brains as improving our ability to brush
those distractions away.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/06/how-do-we-stop-the-internet-from-making-us-stupid/57796/
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic
Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
AT&T caps phone data usage with
new wireless plans
YAHOO
By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer
2 June 2010
NEW YORK – In time for the widely expected launch of a new iPhone
model, carrier AT&T Inc. is pulling in the reins on data usage by
its customers with smart phones and iPads.
The sole U.S. carrier of the iPhone is introducing two new data plans,
starting June 7, with limits on data consumption. They'll replace the
$30 monthly plan with unlimited usage that it has required for all
smart phones, including the iPhone.
With the change, AT&T is adopting a carrot-and-stick approach to
assuage the data congestion on its network, which has been a source of
complaints, especially in cities such as New York and San Francisco
that are thick with iPhone users. The new plans will take effect just
as Apple is expected to unveil the next generation of its iPhone at an
event Monday in San Francisco.
Subscribers who use little data or learn to limit their consumption
will pay slightly less every month than they do now, while heavy users
will be dinged with extra consumption fees.
One new plan will cost $25 per month and offer 2 gigabytes of data per
month, which AT&T says will be enough for 98 percent of its smart
phone customers. Additional gigabytes will cost $10 each.
A second plan will cost $15 per month for 200 megabytes of data, which
AT&T says is enough for 65 percent of its smart phone customers. If
they go over, they'll pay another $15 for 200 megabytes.
With that plan and voice service, a smart phone could cost as little as
$55 per month before taxes and add-on fees, down from $70 per month.
Ralph de la Vega, the head of AT&T's consumer business, said that
means smart phones can become accessible to more people.
"Customers are getting a good deal, and if they can understand their
usage, they can save some money," de la Vega said in an interview.
Current AT&T subscribers will be allowed to keep the unlimited
plan, even if they renew their contracts. But all new subscribers will
have to choose one of the two new plans.
Figuring out which one to choose may not be easy, given that many
people have only a hazy notion of the size of a gigabyte and how many
they use now. A gigabyte is enough for hundreds of e-mails and Web
pages, but it's quickly eaten up by Internet video and
videoconferencing.
De la Vega said AT&T is doing its part to educate consumers, by
letting them track their usage online. The iPhone contains a data usage
tracking tool. The carrier will also text-message subscribers to let
them know they're getting close to their limits.
Data usage over Wi-Fi, including AT&T's public Wi-Fi hot spots,
will not count toward the limits.
The new $25-per-month plan will replace the current $30 plan with
unlimited usage that is available for the iPad, the tablet computer
Apple Inc. released just a few months ago, though iPad owners can keep
the old plan as long as they keep paying $30 per month, AT&T said.
Paradoxically, the data caps arrive at time when carriers have started
to lift the limits on other forms of wireless use, by selling plans
with unlimited calling and unlimited text messaging. That's not a big
gamble, because not many people have the time to talk phone for eight
hours a day or spend every waking minute sending text messages. But
smart phones can draw a lot of data, depending one where and how
they're used. With the new plans, de la Vega hopes to see
high-consumption applications like Internet video being steered toward
hot spots, where they don't clog up AT&T's cellular network.
Consumers have rebelled against the idea of data usage caps on home
broadband, at least when the limits are set low enough to make online
video consumption expensive. Time Warner Cable Inc. was forced to back
away from trials of data caps last year after consumer protests and
threats of legislative action.
In the wireless world, where data capacity is more constrained, usage
caps are more common. Most wireless carriers, for instance, limit data
cards for laptops to 5 gigabytes per month.
But with intense competition for smart phone users, phone companies
have been reluctant to impose similar limits on those devices, although
Sprint Nextel Corp. reserves the right to slow down or disconnect users
who exceed 5 gigabytes per month. It remains to be seen whether
AT&T's rivals will join it in imposing caps or use their own
"unlimited" plans as a marketing advantage.
Instant messaging: This
conversation is terminated
Page last updated at 12:32 GMT, Monday, 24 May
2010 13:32 UK
|
By Jon Kelly,
BBC News Magazine
|
Instant messaging was once tipped to replace
e-mail, but recent figures suggest that it has lost ground sharply. Why?
OMG. Instant messaging (IM), once the mainstay of teenage
gossips, techie know-it-alls and office time-wasters everywhere, looks
as though it is in trouble.
Just a few years ago, it was meant to be the future.
More immediate than e-mail, less fiddly than texting, sending
an IM was widely expected by many technology pundits to become our
preferred mode of online communication, whether socially or in the
office - or socially in the office, for that matter.
 |
WHAT IS INSTANT MESSAGING?
Lets users send notes back and forth in
real time while online
Displays which friends and contacts are
online
Most popular providers include AOL
Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, Windows Live
Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger)
|
But how times change.
In 2007, 14% of Britons' online time was spent on IM,
according to the UK Online Measurement company - but that has fallen to
just 5%, the firm says, basing its findings on the habits of a panel of
40,000 computer users.
The study was released shortly after AOL sold its ICQ instant
messaging service $187.5m (£124m) - less than half what the
company paid for it in 1998.
And in September 2009, a survey of internet use by the New
York-based Online Publishers Association found that the amount of time
spent by surfers on traditional communications tools, including IM and
e-mail, had declined by 8% since 2003.
It is a far cry from the early days of the decade when this
very website anticipated that IM would overtake e-mail by 2004 [see
internet links].
Cast your mind back to the early noughties - a time when
dial-up was still widespread and the Apple G3s looked futuristic - and
it becomes easier to recall why IM looked like it was about to conquer
the world.
It was, after all, instant. It let users see if their friends
and contacts were online and, if so, communicate with them in real
time.
Tech-savvy office staff could chase up a query and expect an
answer straight away, without having to pick up the phone. Teenagers in
their bedrooms could exchange schoolyard tittle-tattle without the
encumbrance of having to press "refresh" on the browser screen to their
web-based e-mail account.
It also offered workers a handy means of circumventing their
employers' e-mail usage policies.
Chat's all folks
Chris Green, a technology journalist turned industry analyst,
recalls the heady days of IM's ascendency.
"That was the way it was going," he remembers. "E-mail had
peaked. And IM offered additional value over e-mail."
There were niggles, however. Initially, IM systems were
"proprietary" and non-compatible, so those using Microsoft's MSN
Messenger were unable to reach friends on Aim, ICQ, or Yahoo!
Messenger.
The firms would subsequently allow cross-pollination of their
systems, but, says Mr Green, the delay in "finding something that was
ubiquitous across all platforms" - in the same way that sending an
e-mail from a Yahoo! to a Hotmail account was seamless - cost the
format dearly.
Google Talk was supposed to revive IM. It
didn't
|
Into the vacuum stepped social networking sites.
Paul Armstrong, director of social media with the PR agency
Kindred, believes that the rise of the likes of Facebook and Twitter -
which allow users to do much more than just send messages - simply had
more to offer.
"With instant messaging you have to stay at your computer,"
he says. "With social networking, you can use your phone's web browser
or SMS.
"Rather than shifting away from instant messaging, people are
using the functions of instant messaging on different platforms."
Even though Facebook's own instant messaging system - not
covered in the UK Online Measurement habits - was widely-regarded as
inferior to those provided by the established IM networks, users were
tied into a one-stop shop for sharing thoughts, photos, and being
re-introduced to long-forgotten former colleagues and classmates.
Return to sender
The effect on IM, says Chris Green, has been catastrophic.
Windows Live Messenger - formerly MSN Messenger - was no
longer "bundled" with Vista and Windows 7, becoming instead an optional
extra, he says. Google may be bullish about Google Talk, the search
engine's attempt to blend IM with e-mail, insisting that millions of
its users "love the convenience and simplicity" of the service.
But Mr Green says its modest success represents a "flop" when
put alongside the company's dominance elsewhere on the web.
"People have moved on," he says. "The novelty value has worn
off. If you look at teenagers today, they are using Twitter on their
mobiles."
But has IM died out altogether? The figures would suggest
that although its market share has fallen, its raw numbers have not.
California-based IT research firm The Radicati Group
estimates that there are 2.4 billion IM accounts worldwide, rising to
3.5 billion by 2014.
Plenty of browers, it seems, still value the speed and
simplicity of IM.
Technology journalist and BBC Click presenter LJ Rich notes
that, in many countries where internet use is censored, BlackBerry
Messenger is used to bypass state-sponsored snoops.
And she believes that the principles of IM survive - it is
just that sites such as Facebook and Twitter let us talk to a wider
audience via a wider range of platforms, including mobiles.
"With social networks, we've gone from instant messaging to
something that's more like conference calls," she says.
Maybe IM will have the last laugh after all. Or, rather, the
last LOL.
White House sees no cyber attack on
Wall Street
YAHOO
By DANIEL WAGNER, AP Business Writer
Sun May 9, 12:45 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The White House's homeland security and counterterrorism
adviser says there is no evidence that a cyber attack was behind the
chaos that shook Wall Street last Thursday...full story here.
Apple's Jobs unveils 'intimate' $499
iPad tablet
YAHOO
By JESSICA MINTZ and RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writers
January 27, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO – Apple Inc. will sell the newly unveiled tablet-style
iPad starting at $499, a price tag far below the $1,000 that some
analysts were expecting.
The iPad, which is larger in size but similar in design to Apple's
popular iPhone, was billed by CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday as "so much
more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smart
phone."
Jobs, 54, a pancreatic cancer survivor who got a liver transplant
during a 5 1/2-month medical leave last year, looked thin as he
introduced the highly anticipated gadget, though he seemed to have more
energy than he did at Apple's last event in September.
The iPad has a 9.7-inch touch screen, is a half-inch thick, weighs 1.5
pounds and comes with 16, 32 or 64 gigabytes of flash memory storage.
It comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in. Jobs said the
device has a battery that lasts 10 hours and can sit for a month on
standby without needing a charge.
The basic iPad models will cost $499, $599 and $699, depending on the
storage size, when it comes out worldwide in March.
Apple will also sell a version with data plans from AT&T Inc. in
the U.S.: $14.99 per month for 250 megabytes of data, or $29.99 for
unlimited usage. Neither will require a long-term service contract.
Those 3G iPad models will cost more — $629, $729 and $829, depending on
the amount of memory — and will be out in April. International cellular
data details have not yet been announced.
Apple had kept its "latest creation" tightly under wraps until
Wednesday's unveiling, though many analysts had correctly speculated
that it would be a one-piece tablet computer with a big touch screen,
larger than an iPhone but smaller than a laptop.
Raven Zachary, a contributing analyst with mobile researchers The 451
Group, considered the iPad a laptop replacement, especially because
Apple is also selling a dock with a built-in keyboard.
But Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said he doesn't believe
the iPad added enough for consumers to justify buying yet another
gadget, or to call this a new category of devices. In an e-mail, he
criticized its lack of social features such as ways to share photos and
home video and recommend books.
Sitting on stage in a cozy leather chair, Jobs demonstrated how the
iPad is used for surfing the Web with Apple's Safari browser. The CEO
typed an e-mail using an on-screen keyboard and flipped through photo
albums by flicking his finger across the screen. He also showed off a
new electronic book store and a book-reading interface that emulates
the look of a paper book, putting the iPad in competition with
Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle and other e-book
readers.
Like iPods and the iPhone, the iPad can sync with Apple's Macintosh and
Microsoft's Windows computers. Jobs said the iPad will also be better
for playing games and watching video than either a laptop or a smart
phone. Software coming with the iPad includes a calendar, maps, a video
player and iPod software for playing music. All seem to have been
slightly redesigned to take advantage of the iPad's bigger screen.
Tablet computers have existed for a decade, with little success. Jobs
acknowledged Apple will have to work to convince consumers who already
have smart phones and laptops that they need this gadget.
"In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are
going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks," Jobs said. "We
think we've got the goods. We think we've done it."
Applications designed for the iPhone can run on the iPad. Apple is also
releasing updated tools for software developers to help them build
iPhone and iPad programs.
"We think it's going to be a whole 'nother gold rush for developers as
they build applications for the iPad," said Scott Forstall, an iPhone
software executive.
A new newspaper reader program from The New York Times and a game from
Electronic Arts Inc. were also demonstrated during the event. The
audience, which included many journalists and bloggers, clapped and
even gave Jobs a standing ovation.
Shares in Apple rose $2.04, or 1 percent, to close Wednesday at
$207.98. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company's shares have more than
doubled over the past year, partly on anticipation of the tablet
computer. Shares in Amazon rose $3.27, or 2.7 percent, to $122.75.
Pew study hints at what Web users will
pay for
YAHOO
Thu Dec 30, 12:13 am ET
NEW YORK – The Web may seem like the land of something for nothing.
Free video. Free news. Even free tools such as word processing and
spreadsheets.
But almost two-thirds of adult Internet users in the U.S. have paid for
access to at least one of these intangible items online, according to a
new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Whether people will pay for different types of material on the Web is
among the most pressing questions facing media companies in the 21st
century.
As people shift their attention to the Internet from more traditional
ways of enjoying media, the companies that provide everything from
movies to mystery novels want to make sure they can still get paid for
what they do. The big TV networks want viewers to pay for full access
to episodes of their favorite shows. Newspaper companies want readers
to pay for news. Book publishers want higher prices for digital
editions of new releases.
The new figures from Pew suggest paying for content online is at least
not a completely foreign idea for most people.
About a third of respondents said they have paid for digital music.
Same for software.
Behind that came mobile apps for cell phones or tablet computers at 21
percent. Then digital games at 19 percent and newspaper, magazine or
journal articles at 18 percent.
The survey found that among people who paid for content, the typical
user spent about $10 a month. However, there are some extremely
high-end users, such that the average among those who have paid for
content is about $47 a month. That includes subscriptions and
individual files downloaded or accessed.
The survey of 755 Internet users in the U.S. was conducted Oct. 28-Nov.
1 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage
points.
The
Times to Charge for Frequent
Access to
Its Web Site
NYTIMES
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
January 21, 2010
The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge
frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated
across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared
to take.
Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain
number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat
fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition
will receive full access to the site.
But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet
answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would
cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the
amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic
conditions and reader demand.
“This announcement allows us to begin the thought process that’s going
to answer so many of the questions that we all care about,” Arthur
Sulzberger Jr., the company chairman and publisher of the newspaper,
said in an interview. “We can’t get this halfway right or
three-quarters of the way right. We have to get this really, really
right.”
Any changes are sure to be closely watched by publishers and other
purveyors of online content who scoffed at the notion of online
charging until advertising began to plummet in 2007, battering visions
of Internet businesses supported solely by ads. Few general-interest
publications charge now, but many newspapers and magazines are studying
whether to make the switch.
Still, publishers fear that income from digital subscriptions would not
compensate for the resulting loss of audience and advertising revenue.
NYTimes.com is by far the most popular newspaper site in the country,
with more than 17 million readers a month in the United States,
according to Nielsen Online, and analysts say it is easily the leader
in advertising revenue, as well. That may make it better positioned
than other general-interest papers to charge — and also gives The Times
more to lose if the move backfires.
The Times Company has been studying the matter for almost a year,
searching for common ground between pro- and anti-pay camps — a debate
mirrored in dozens of media-watching blogs — and the system will not go
into effect until January 2011. Executives said they were not bothered
by the prospect of absorbing barbs for moving cautiously.
“There’s no prize for getting it quick,” said Janet L. Robinson, the
company’s president and chief executive. “There’s more of a prize for
getting it right.”
This would not be the first time the company has attempted an online
pay model. In the 1990s it charged overseas readers, and from 2005 to
2007 the newspaper’s TimesSelect service charged for access to
editorials and columns. TimesSelect attracted about 210,000 subscribers
who paid $49.95 a year but it was scrapped to take advantage of the
boom in online advertising.
Company executives said the current decision was not a reaction to the
ad recession but a long-term strategy to develop new revenue.
“This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is
going,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “This is not going to be something that is
going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”
Two specialized papers charge already: The Wall Street Journal, which
makes certain articles accessible only to subscribers, and The
Financial Times, which allows non-paying readers to see up to 10
articles a month, a system close to what is planned by The Times.
Most readers who go to the Times site, as with other news sites, are
incidental visitors, arriving no more than once in a while through
searches and links, and many of them would be unaffected by the new
system. A much smaller number of committed readers account for the bulk
of the site visits and page views, and the essential question is how
many of them will pay to continue that habit.
Executives said the computerized subscription service must work
smoothly and communicate seamlessly with the computer systems that
handle the database of print subscribers. The Times will not use one of
the pay systems being marketed by other companies, like Journalism
Online, led by Steven Brill, or the News Corporation, instead choosing
to create the system essentially from scratch.
“There’s a lot of technical work that we need to do over the next year
to get this right,” said Martin A. Nisenholtz, the company’s senior
vice president for digital operations. “And I think if you were to
benchmark this against other, similar implementations, you would find
that a year is not excessive.”
Bill Keller, the executive editor, embraced the plan.
“It underscores the value of what we do — trustworthy, aggressively
reported professional journalism, which is an increasingly rare and
precious thing,” Mr. Keller said. “And it gives us a second way to
sustain that hard, expensive work, in addition to our healthy
advertising revenue.
Company executives would not release estimates of how many subscribers
and how much revenue an online system would attract, how many visitors
the site might lose because of it, or how much ad revenue would decline.
The Times Company looked at several approaches, including a
straightforward pay wall similar to The Journal’s; various “metered”
systems, including the one they chose; a “membership” format similar to
the one used in public broadcasting, with rewards for supporters but
little or no limit on access to the site; and a hybrid among those
options.
The approach the company took is “the one that after much research and
study we determined has the most upside in both” subscriptions and
advertising, Mr. Nisenholtz said. “We’re trying to maximize revenue.
We’re not saying we want to put this revenue stream above that revenue
stream. The goal is to maximize both revenue streams in combination.”
Who has to hack anymore - just go on FACEBOOK
Companies Fight Endless War
Against
Computer Attacks
NYTIMES
By STEVE LOHR
January 18, 2010
The recent computer attacks on the mighty Google left every corporate
network in the world looking a little less safe.
Google’s confrontation with China — over government censorship in
general and specific attacks on its systems — is an exceptional case,
of course, extending to human rights and international politics as well
as high-tech spying. But the intrusion into Google’s computers and
related attacks from within China on some 30 other companies point to
the rising sophistication of such assaults and the vulnerability of
even the best defenses, security experts say.
“The Google case shines a bright light on what can be done in terms of
spying and getting into corporate networks,” said Edward M. Stroz, a
former high-tech crime agent with the F.B.I. who now heads a computer
security investigation firm in New York.
Computer security is an ever-escalating competition between so-called
black-hat attackers and white-hat defenders. One of the attackers’ main
tools is malicious software, known as malware, which has steadily
evolved in recent years. Malware was once mainly viruses and worms,
digital pests that gummed up and sometimes damaged personal computers
and networks.
Malware today, however, is likely to be more subtle and selective,
nesting inside corporate networks. And it can be a tool for industrial
espionage, transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer
lists, future plans and contracts.
Corporations and government agencies spend billions of dollars a year
on specialized security software to detect and combat malware. Still,
the black hats seem to be gaining the upper hand.
In a survey of 443 companies and government agencies published last
month, the Computer Security Institute found that 64 percent reported
malware infections, up from 50 percent the previous year. The financial
loss from security breaches was $234,000 on average for each
organization.
“Malware is a huge problem, and becoming a bigger one,” said Robert
Richardson, director of the institute, a research and training
organization. “And now the game is much more about getting a foothold
in the network, for spying.”
Security experts say employee awareness and training are a crucial
defense. Often, malware infections are a result of high-tech twists on
old-fashioned cons. One scam, for example, involves small U.S.B. flash
drives, left in a company parking lot, adorned with the company logo.
Curious employees pick them up, put them in their computers and open
what looks like an innocuous document. In fact, once run, it is
software that collects passwords and other confidential information on
a user’s computer and sends it to the attackers. More advanced malware
can allow an outsider to completely take over the PC and, from there,
explore a company’s network.
With this approach, the hackers do not need to break through a
company’s network defenses because a worker has unknowingly invited
them inside.
Another approach, one used in the Google attacks, is a variation on
so-called phishing schemes, in which an e-mail message purporting to be
from the recipient’s bank or another institution tricks the person into
giving up passwords. Scammers send such messages to thousands of people
in hopes of ensnaring a few. But with so-called spear-phishing, the
bogus e-mail is sent to a specific person and appears to come from a
friend or colleague inside that person’s company, making it far more
believable. Again, an attached file, once opened, unleashes the spy
software.
Other techniques for going inside companies involve exploiting
weaknesses in Web-site or network-routing software, using those
openings as gateways for malware.
To combat leaks of confidential information, network security software
looks for anomalies in network traffic — large files and rapid rates of
data transmission, especially coming from corporate locations where
confidential information is housed.
“Fighting computer crime is a balance of technology and behavioral
science, understanding the human dimension of the threat,” said Mr.
Stroz, the former F.B.I. agent and security investigator. “There is no
law in the books that will ever throw a computer in prison.”
As cellphones become more powerful, they offer new terrain for malware
to exploit in new ways. Recently, security experts have started seeing
malware that surreptitiously switches on a cellphone’s microphone and
camera. “It turns a smartphone into a surveillance device,” said Mark
D. Rasch, a computer security consultant in Bethesda, Md., who formerly
prosecuted computer crime for the Justice Department.
Hacked cellphones, Mr. Rasch said, can also provide vital corporate
intelligence because they can disclose their location. The whereabouts
of a cellphone belonging to an investment banker who is representing a
company in merger talks, he said, could provide telling clues to rival
bidders, for example.
Security experts say the ideal approach is to carefully identify a
corporation’s most valuable intellectual property and data, and place
it on a separate computer network not linked to the Internet, leaving a
so-called air gap.
“Sometimes the cheapest and best security solution is to lock the door
and don’t connect,” said James P. Litchko, a former government security
official who is a manager at Cyber Security Professionals, a consulting
firm.
Some companies go further, building “Faraday cages” to house their most
critical computers and data. These cages typically have a metal grid
structure built into the walls, so no electromagnetic or cellphone
transmissions can come in or out. Defense contractors, aerospace
companies and some automakers have built Faraday cages, named for the
19th-century English scientist Michael Faraday, who designed them to
shield electrical devices from lightning and other shocks.
But in the Internet era, isolationism is often an impractical approach
for many companies. Sharing information and knowledge with industry
partners and customers is seen as the path to greater flexibility and
efficiency. Work is routinely done by far-flung project teams. Mobile
professionals want vital company data to be accessible wherever they
are.
Most of that collaboration and communication is done over the Internet,
increasing the risk of outside attacks. And the ubiquity of Internet
access inside companies has its own risks. In a case of alleged
industrial theft that became public recently, a software engineer at
Goldman Sachs was accused last year of stealing proprietary software
used in high-speed trading, just before he left for another firm. The
engineer, who pleaded not guilty, had uploaded the software to a server
computer in Germany, prosecutors say.
The complexity of software code from different suppliers, as it
intermingles in corporate networks and across the Internet, also opens
the door to security weaknesses that malware writers exploit. One quip
among computer security experts is: “The sum of the parts is a hole.”
But, security experts say, the problem goes well beyond different kinds
of software not playing well together. The software products
themselves, they say, are riddled with vulnerabilities — thousands of
such flaws are detected each year across the industry. Several
weaknesses, it seems, including one in the Microsoft Internet Explorer
browser, were exploited in the recent attacks on Google that were aimed
at Chinese dissidents.
The long-term answer, some experts assert, lies in setting the software
business on a path to becoming a mature industry, with standards,
defined responsibilities and liability for security gaps, guided by
forceful self-regulation or by the government.
Just as the government eventually stepped in to mandate seat belts in
cars and safety standards for aircraft, says James A. Lewis, a computer
security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
the time has come for software.
Mr. Lewis, who advised the Obama administration about online security
last spring, recalled that he served on a White House advisory group on
secure public networks in 1996. At the time, he recommended a hands-off
approach, assuming that market incentives for the participants would
deliver Internet security.
Today, Mr. Lewis says he was mistaken. “It’s a classic market failure —
the market hasn’t delivered security,” he said. “Our economy has become
so dependent on this fabulous technology — the Internet — but it’s not
safe. And that’s an issue we’ll have to wrestle with.”
B'way broadband brawl center
stage
New York Post
By BILL SANDERSON
Last Updated: 10:59 AM, January 16, 2010
Posted: 2:44 AM, January 16, 2010
There's new drama on Broadway over the federal government's decision to
reallocate radio frequencies used by stage crews and performers.
Verizon and AT&T are taking over radio frequencies allotted to
wireless microphones used in theaters, churches, sports arenas and
stadiums, among other places.
On Broadway, the wireless systems are used by stage crews to
communicate scenery moves and by performers to amplify voices.
Theaters have until June 12 to switch to new frequencies. On some big
shows, the changeover could end up costing $100,000, the Broadway
League says.
Long-running shows like "Wicked" will have the hardest time, since
their producers bought equipment before the FCC contemplated changing
the airwave rules.
Broadway producers were unhappy with the change, but say that in return
for giving up their frequencies the FCC may impose new protections on
their new systems.
Verizon and AT&T won a government auction in 2008 to use the
theaters' frequencies for high-speed Internet services.
Also yesterday, Verizon and AT&T announced they'll cut prices for
voice cellphone services.
Verizon moved first, slashing the cost of an unlimited voice plan by
$30, to $69.99 before taxes. AT&T quickly matched it.
Pa. district took 56,000
images on student laptops
YAHOO
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer
20 April 2010
PHILADELPHIA – A suburban school district secretly captured at
least 56,000 webcam photographs and screen shots from laptops issued to
high school students, its lawyer acknowledged Monday.
"It's clear there were students who were likely captured in their
homes," said lawyer Henry Hockeimer, who represents the Lower Merion
School District.
None of the images, captured by a tracking program to find missing
computers, appeared to be salacious or inappropriate, he said. The
district said it remotely activated the tracking software to find 80
missing laptops in the past two years. The Philadelphia Inquirer
first reported Monday on the large number of images recovered from
school servers by forensic computer experts, who were hired after
student Blake Robbins filed suit over the tracking practice.
Robbins still doesn't know why the district deployed the software
tracking program on his computer, as he had not reported it lost or
stolen, his lawyer said. The FBI has opened a criminal
investigation into possible wiretap violations by the district, and
U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania, has introduced a bill to
include webcam surveillance under the federal wiretap statute.
The district photographed Robbins 400 times during a 15-day period last
fall, sometimes as he slept in bed or was half-dressed, according to
his lawyer, Mark Haltzman. Other times, the district captured screen
shots of instant messages or video chats the Harriton High School
sophomore had with friends, he said.
"Not only was Blake Robbins being spied upon, but every one of the
people he was IM chatting with were spied upon," said Haltzman, whose
lawsuit alleges wiretap and privacy violations. "They captured pictures
of people that have nothing to do with Harriton. It could be his cousin
from Connecticut."
About 38,000 of the images were taken over several months from six
computers the school said were stolen from a locker room. The
tracking program took images every 15 minutes, usually capturing the
webcam photo of the user and a screen shot at the same time. The
program was sometimes turned on for weeks or months at a time,
Hockeimer said.
"There were no written policies or procedures governing the
circumstances surrounding activating the program and the circumstances
regarding turning off the activations," Hockeimer said.
Robbins was one of about 20 students who had not paid the $55 insurance
fee required to take the laptops home but was the only one tracked,
Haltzman said. The depositions taken to date have provided
contradictory testimony about the reasons for tracking Robbins' laptop.
One of the two people authorized to activate the program, technology
coordinator Carol Cafiero, invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to
answer questions at the deposition, Haltzman said.
About 10 school officials had the right to request an activation,
Hockeimer disclosed Monday.
The tracking program helped police identify a suspect not affiliated
with the school in the locker room theft, Hockeimer said. The affluent
Montgomery County district distributes the Macintosh notebook computers
to all 2,300 students at its two high schools, Hockeimer said. As
part of the lawsuit, a federal judge this week is set to begin a
confidential process of showing parents the images that were captured
of their children.
The school district expects to release a written report on an internal
investigation in the next few weeks, Hockeimer said. School board
President David Ebby has pledged the report will contain "all the facts
— good and bad."
Specter pushes in Pa. for electronic
privacy laws
YAHOO
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer
29 March 2010
PHILADELPHIA – Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is pushing for new
federal laws on electronic privacy as a school district back home
struggles with a lawsuit over attempts to locate missing laptops by
turning on webcams — something that could have enabled it to film
students at home.
Specter, a Democrat, said at a field hearing of a Senate subcommittee
that he believes existing wiretap and video-voyeurism statutes do not
adequately address concerns in an era marked by the widespread use of
cell-phone, laptop and surveillance cameras.
"My family and I recognize that in today's society, almost every place
we go outside of our home we are photographed and recorded by traffic
cameras, ATM cameras, and store surveillance cameras," Blake Robbins,
the Harriton High School student who sued, wrote in a statement read
into the record at the hearing of the crime and justice subcommittee of
the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"This makes it all the more important that we vigilantly safeguard our
homes, the only refuge we have from this eyes everywhere onslaught," he
wrote.
Robbins accuses the Lower Merion School District of spying by secretly
activating webcams on the school-issued laptops; officials admit they
did so but said they were trying only to locate 42 lost or stolen
computers.
Neither Robbins nor his parents attended the session, which did not
specifically focus on the Lower Merion case — the subject of ongoing
county and FBI investigations. Instead, five experts debated how best
to strike a balance between privacy and security concerns.
Lawyer Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that
wiretap laws, which now cover audio recordings, should be broadened to
include videotaped surveillance. But others disagreed, arguing that
wiretap charges should not apply, lest they entangle innocent people
using software tracking programs to try to find their own stolen phones
or laptops.
"If it does fall under (the Wiretap Act) in the new legislation, we
hope there will be an exception for stolen devices," said John
Livingston, chairman of Absolute Software Corp., the Vancouver, British
Columbia-based company that acquired the LANrev TheftTrack software
program deployed by Lower Merion.
The panel debated whether any new law should focus on the intent of the
person using the camera; whether the subject's location affords them an
expectation of privacy, such as a home or locker room; or the full
context of the situation.
Only one person from the Lower Merion district testified, a parent
opposed to the Robbins family's lawsuit who urged a middle ground
between security and privacy concerns.
Bob Wegbreit said a warning might suffice to let families know the
district might activate webcams without a student's knowledge. Students
could then choose to keep the computers in other parts of the house,
instead of their bedrooms, said Wegbreit, whose group fears the lawsuit
will damage the upscale district's finances and reputation.
Federal legislation might help clarify what school districts, employers
or others can and cannot do, he said.
"There's no question that I believe the federal government should be
legislating in this area," said Fred H. Cate, an Indiana University law
school professor who specializes in cybersecurity issues. "We've seen a
proliferation of video cameras in every aspect of our lives."
Specter, the only senator in attendance Monday, agreed to lead the
effort, noting that at least one federal judge voiced concerns a
quarter century ago that privacy laws were not keeping up with emerging
technology.
"My sense is my colleagues will be responsive," Specter said. "If there
is a gap, it ought to be closed ... after 25 years."
Pa.
school district is asked not to
wipe computers
YAHOO
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer
Feb. 22, 2010
PHILADELPHIA – A student who accuses his suburban Philadelphia school
district in a lawsuit of spying on students via their school-issued
webcams will ask district officials not to remove any potential
evidence from student computers, his lawyer said Monday.
Lawyers for the Lower Merion School District are due in federal court
on the issue Monday afternoon, on an emergency petition from student
Blake Robbins of Penn Valley.
Lower Merion officials confirmed last week they had activated the
webcams to try to find 42 missing laptops, without the knowledge or
permission of students and their families. Both the FBI and local
authorities are investigating whether the district broke any wiretap,
computer-use or other laws.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief in support of the
student Monday, arguing that the photo amounts to an illegal search.
"That school officials' warrantless, non-consensual use of a camera,
embedded in students' laptops, inside the home is a search cannot be
doubted," the ACLU wrote in a brief filed Monday morning.
Students at the district's two high schools have taken to taping over
the webcam and microphone, even as school officials insist they have
stopped the practice.
Robbins sued last week, alleging that Harriton High School officials
took a photo of him inside his home. He learned of it when an assistant
principal said she knew he was engaging in improper behavior at home,
according to his potentially class-action lawsuit. Robbins and his
family have told reporters that an official mistook a piece of candy
for a pill and thought he was selling drugs.
In the wake of the outcry over the alleged spying, school district
officials have said they have abandoned the practice of remotely
activating the webcams. Still, the Robbinses' lawyer does not want the
district to remove any information or programs from the 2,300 laptops
issued to students at its two high schools.
"Defendants intend to reclaim each laptop from the possession of
members of the class for the purpose of wiping clean the hard drive or
otherwise engaging in the spoliation of evidence," family lawyer Mark
S. Haltzman wrote in the emergency petition.
Lawyer Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., who represents the district, urged
families and community members not to jump to conclusions.
"These are important issues, and we view them seriously," Hockeimer, a
former federal prosecutor, said in a statement.
While courts have held that students can be searched at school given
"reasonable suspicion" of a crime — a more relaxed standard than
"probable cause," designed to ensure school safety — the lower standard
does not apply in the home, the ACLU argued in its brief.
The district recovered 18 of the 42 laptops that disappeared in the
past 14 months, district spokesman Doug Young said Monday. He did not
immediately know whether any were found — after the webcam pictures
were taken — in student homes.
Young has declined to discuss whether Blake Robbins' laptop was
reported missing, because of the litigation, but said the district did
not violate its policy to activate webcams only for that purpose.
Robbins insists in court filings that it was never reported missing.
The district has no plans to take back the student laptops, Young said.
"To the extent any mistakes were made, we will make recommendations for
any needed changes in policies and procedures," Hockeimer said.
Nationwide:
Computers Increase
Students' Temptation To Cheat
Hartford Courant
By JESSE LEAVENWORTH
October 30, 2009
The link between teenagers' computer abilities and an increase in
academic cheating is evident across the nation.
From Manchester to Newport Beach, Calif., high school students have
been accused of tapping into school computer systems to change grades,
erase absences and lift exams before they're given.
Two Manchester High School students — both boys, ages 15 and 17 — are
suspected of altering online grade books and attendance records,
officials said this week. No charges have been filed, but police are
investigating.
Asked Thursday if the boys had confessed, police spokesman Lt. Chris
Davis would say only that they "have been cooperative."
There's nothing new about cheating, said Lt. James Wardwell, a computer
forensics expert with the New Britain Police Department, "and the
computer is just another tool to help someone accomplish a bad deed."
What is new is that cheating in America's high schools has become
"rampant, and it's getting worse," according to a 2008 nationwide
survey by the Josephson Institute, the California-based nonprofit
organization that runs the Character Counts! youth ethics program in
schools in Connecticut and throughout the country.
The survey of 30,000 high school students found that 64 percent said
they had cheated on a test during the past year, up from 60 percent in
2006. The survey did not address school computer hacking, but 36
percent of respondents said they had used the Internet to plagiarize an
assignment, an increase from 33 percent in 2006.
Some students have been lured into cyber-cheating by the apparent cloak
that computers and personal communication devices provide, Michael
Josephson, president of the ethics institute, said. Armed with stolen
information, kids can enter school record systems from their bedrooms,
or they can photograph copies of tests with their cellphones and send
them to others who have to take the same test.
"Technology has made it easier to cheat" and is driving the upward
trend in cheating, Josephson said.
But most of the increase, he said, is due to a passive indifference and
cynicism among both schools staff and parents.
"It's a mistake to focus on the tools," Josephson said. "If they had
the moral fiber, they wouldn't do it no matter how easy it was."
Newspaper reports from throughout the country show that the methods
students use to crack school computer programs range from simply
watching a school staff member entering a password — the method used in
Manchester, according to police — to sneaking spyware onto school
computers. "Key-logger" programs, for instance, record all strokes on a
computer keyboard and send a record to another computer.
In some cases, cyber-cheating students have lifted user names and
passwords from hard copy lists left in school offices. Some school
staff members use their own names, or slightly altered variations, as
passwords, enabling a student to enter a grading or attendance site
after a few guesses.
That was the case in Naples, Fla., recently, where police say a
16-year-old boy slipped into school district computers by guessing an
employee's password. The boy was then able to change the grades of five
or six students, according to Florida news reports.
Students often share stolen passwords with friends, expanding illicit
record changes and the resultant costs to taxpayers in lost staff time
and security upgrades. In Sugar Land, Texas, last year, four high
school students were suspected of changing the grades of at least 60
students, according to the Houston Chronicle. Investigators estimated
the cost to the school district at about $190,000.
Manchester school officials have been close-mouthed about the alleged
cheating at the high school and have not commented about the students'
possible punishment. Davis said police must analyze the three computers
they seized from the boys before any charges are filed.
Just as a burglar leaves tracks in the mud, computer crime leaves
trails, Wardwell said. In most cases of school cyber-cheating, police
have seized computers to track that digital path.
Sometimes, however, evidence literally pops up.
In Eau Claire, Wis., last year, a high school student altered grade and
attendance records for himself and two friends, according to the St.
Paul Pioneer Press. School officials were tipped to the activity when a
box twice appeared on a teacher's computer screen indicating that she
was logging out while she was entering grades. The teacher also noticed
in her log-in history that she had logged in at times when she wasn't
using her computer, according to the newspaper report.
Alert teachers and school staff also have noticed discrepancies between
online and hard copy records, and sometimes their memories of students'
grades and absences didn't match the online record.
Classmates also reveal the schemes. Manchester police said another
student told officials about the alleged record changes.
Of course, there's always simple deduction.
A Kentucky high school student's scheme unraveled in 2007 when school
officials found tests and quizzes from seven teachers had been copied
from the school system. Those seven teachers had only one student in
common, according to The Courier-Journal newspaper in Louisville.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski
FCC opens up unused TV signals
for broadband
YAHOO
By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer
23 September 2010
WASHINGTON – The Federal Communications Commission is opening up unused
airwaves between television stations for wireless broadband networks
that will be more powerful and can travel farther than today's Wi-Fi
hotspots.
The five-member FCC voted unanimously Thursday to allow the use of
so-called "white spaces" between TV stations to deliver broadband
connections that can function like Wi-Fi networks on steroids. The
agency is calling the new technology "super Wi-Fi" and hopes to see
devices with the new technology start to appear within a year.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said white spaces networks will serve
as "a powerful platform for innovation," driving billions in industry
investment.
Leading technology companies, including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp.
and Dell Inc., are eager to develop the market. They say television
white spaces are ideally suited for broadband because they are able to
penetrate walls, have plenty of capacity and can travel several miles.
Just like the spectrum used by Wi-Fi, the white spaces will be
available to all users for free, with no license required. The FCC
hopes they will help ease strain on the nation's increasingly crowded
airwaves as more consumers go online using laptops and data-hungry
smart phones.
Although the FCC first voted to allow the use of white spaces for
broadband nearly two years ago, the plan ran into serious opposition
from television broadcasters worried about interference with their
over-the-air signals. Wireless
microphone manufacturers and users — including churches, theatres,
karaoke bars and all types of performers — raised similar concerns.
Thursday's vote mandates the creation of a database with a map of TV
channels across the country as well as big wireless microphone users,
such as Broadway theaters and sports leagues. White spaces networks and
devices would be required to determine their own location and then
consult the database to find vacant frequencies to use. The FCC is also
setting aside at least two channels for minor users of wireless
microphones.
David Donovan, president of the Association for Maximum Service
Television, said the group will work with the FCC to develop the
technical protections to safeguard television signals.
FCC,
public safety at odds
over broadband plan
YAHOO
By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer
25 July 2010
WASHINGTON – Two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission
stumbled as it tried to create a nationwide wireless broadband network
for police officers, firefighters and emergency medical workers,
delaying the construction of what everyone agrees is an urgently needed
system.
Now the agency is hoping to rework the plan, which relies on a prime
slice of airwaves called the D Block. But many public safety officials
say the commission is, once again, going about it the wrong way.
In 2008, the FCC attempted to auction off the block to the wireless
industry, with a requirement that the winning bidder help build out a
sturdy communications network that would be shared with first
responders and give them priority in an emergency. But those conditions
proved too onerous, and the auction failed to attract any serious
bidders.
So this time around, the agency hopes to auction off the D Block to
wireless carriers and use the proceeds — projected to be as much as $4
billion — to help pay for a public safety network on a separate slice
of spectrum already set aside for first responder broadband use. In
frequency terms, the existing public safety airwaves are right next
door to the D Block and just as big. Both pieces of spectrum were freed
up in last year's transition from analog to digital TV signals.
The existing public safety block, the FCC says, provides plenty of
capacity for day-to-day operations — letting first responders access
everything from surveillance video to fingerprint databases using
laptops and handheld devices in the field. And in an emergency, the FCC
proposal would give public safety users priority access to the D Block
and other airwaves from the digital transition.
The FCC says its proposal would fulfill a Congressional requirement to
auction off the D Block and ensure public safety benefits from the
latest wireless technology.
"We have a brief technological window to get everybody on the same page
from the beginning and build a 21st Century ... broadband system," says
Rear Admiral James Barnett, head of the FCC's Public Safety and
Homeland Security Bureau.
But the FCC proposal has run into fierce resistance from public safety
leaders who warn that their current spectrum holdings are not big
enough to meet their needs. They are wary of relying on commercial
networks to fill the gap, particularly in emergencies, and are calling
on the government to give the D Block to them so they can combine it
with the adjacent airwaves and double the amount of spectrum dedicated
to public safety broadband.
"If they auction this spectrum, we've lost it forever," says Rob Davis,
head of the San Jose Police Department and president of the Major
Cities Chiefs of Police Association. "We need to control this network
ourselves."
Public safety officials have powerful allies in Congress, including
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen.
John McCain, R-Ariz. But House Commerce Committee leaders are drafting
legislation based on the FCC plan.
The big wireless carriers have also joined the fray. T-Mobile USA and
Sprint Nextel Corp., eager for more spectrum, support the FCC proposal.
Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc., both flush with spectrum from 2008
auctions of other airwaves from the digital transition, want to see the
D Block go to public safety. So does Motorola Inc., which dominates the
market for first responder communications equipment and handsets.
The one thing everyone agrees on is the need to bring nation's public
safety communications networks into the digital age.
The shortcomings of the existing networks became apparent after the
9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, when police officers, fire fighters
and other first responders could not talk to one another because they
were using incompatible — and sometimes antiquated — systems. One
recommendation of the 9/11 Commission was the construction of a
nationwide "interoperable" wireless network that would let public
safety workers across agencies and jurisdictions communicate with each
other.
The FCC insists its proposal, part of its national broadband plan,
would meet the needs of first responders. The spectrum already
dedicated to public safety, Barnett says, can handle day-to-day
operations since advanced 4G wireless technology can make far more
efficient use of airwaves than public safety networks do today.
And in a big emergency, he warns, even the bigger block of spectrum
envisioned by the public safety plan might not be enough. The FCC's
proposal would give public safety first dibs on at least three times
more spectrum in a crisis.
But Chuck Dowd, deputy chief in the communications division of the New
York City Police Department, says commercial networks are just not
reliable enough for first responders who deal with life-and-death
matters. Richard Mirgon, president of the Association of Public-Safety
Communications Officials International, adds that in a mass emergency,
commercial networks are often already overwhelmed — making it
impossible for first responders to even connect to them.
With the dispute now heading to Congress, the focus is on funding.
Bruce Gottlieb, chief counsel to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, says
the FCC plan would drive down the cost of a first responder network by
allowing public safety to piggyback on the massive investments being
made by commercial wireless carriers as they upgrade their technology.
The agency's plan puts the cost of building the public safety network
at roughly $6.5 billion and the cost of operating and maintaining it at
between $6 billion and $10 billion over 10 years — less than half the
cost of a stand-alone network, the FCC says.
In the face of a ballooning federal deficit and state and local budget
cuts, Barnett insists, the FCC plan offers the best way to come up with
this funding.
But public safety officials are confident they can find the resources
to pay for a broadband network even without D Block auction proceeds.
If they get the D Block, they say, they would be able to lease excess
airwaves to commercial carriers since they would not always need all of
it.
What's more, another key recommendation in the FCC's national broadband
plan is a proposal to free up a lot more spectrum for wireless
broadband over the next 10 years. That, public safety officials say,
will produce plenty of revenue to pay for a first responder network.
Gov't
plans to double available wireless spectrum
YAHOO
28 June 2010
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration intends to nearly
double the available amount of wireless communications spectrum over
the next 10 years in an effort to keep up with the ever-growing demand
for high-speed video and data transmission to cell phones, laptops and
other mobile devices.
President Barack Obama on Monday committed the federal government to
auctioning off 500 megahertz of federal and commercial spectrum.
Revenue from the auctions would be spent on public safety,
infrastructure investments and deficit reduction.
In a memo to heads of federal agencies and departments, Obama said he
wanted to unleash the full potential of wireless broadband and spur
innovation.
"This new era in global technology leadership will only happen if there
is adequate spectrum available to support the forthcoming myriad of
wireless devices, networks and applications that can drive the new
economy," Obama wrote.
National Economic Council director Lawrence H. Summers was to explain
the new policy in a speech Monday at the New America Foundation, a
Washington think tank. In an excerpt released by the White House,
Summers said the initiative could "help to create hundreds of thousands
of jobs."
The administration said it hopes to encourage the spread of wireless
broadband across the country, including rural areas. The auction is
intended, in part, to counter fears of a potential "spectrum crunch" as
smart phones and laptop computers become more popular and new wireless
devices hit the market.
FCC
asks: Do media ownership limits
make sense?
YAHOO
By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer
21 June 2010
WASHINGTON – Even the news industry's free fall probably will not be
enough to wipe out complicated federal rules designed to restrain the
power of media companies. For decades, the Federal Communications
Commission has imposed strict limits preventing any company from
controlling too many media properties in the same market. These limits
were established to ensure that communities have choices of newspapers
and local TV and radio stations.
Congress requires the FCC to take a hard look at the rules every four
years to determine whether they still serve the public interest. If
they don't, the FCC has to rewrite them. Now, as the FCC kicks
off its latest review, it faces calls to pare the limits because
traditional media companies are no longer the almighty players that
they were when the ownership rules were first enacted.
Newspaper readers and advertisers have migrated to the Internet, where
a lot of content is free and advertising costs less. As a result,
newsrooms have shrunk and newspapers have sought bankruptcy protection
or shut down. Television broadcasters are suffering too as cable,
satellite TV and the Internet splinter audiences and siphon ad dollars
— forcing stations to seek new revenue streams and even raising
questions about the future of free, over-the-air TV.
Against this backdrop, media companies argue that the FCC's ownership
limits no longer make sense and should be relaxed, or even scrapped, so
that the companies can get bigger in order to better compete and
survive.
"These rules need to fall away," says Jerry Fritz, general counsel for
Allbritton Communications, an Arlington, Va., company that owns eight
TV stations in seven markets, a cable station in Washington, D.C., and
Politico, a successful online and print publication that covers
politics. Allbritton is also launching a local news website to cover
the Washington region. "The FCC rules make no sense anymore," Fritz
says.
But the FCC is unlikely to toss out media ownership restrictions
entirely. The agency is also under pressure from public interest groups
that support strong limits. Andrew Schwartzman, head of the group Media
Access Project, argues that such rules remain critical because
democracy relies on a vibrant press with many voices.
These groups have a key ally in Michael Copps, one of the three
Democrats on the five-member FCC. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has
said little publicly about his views on the existing rules, and his
staff has promised a fresh look at the entire media ownership
framework. But Genachowski was an architect of the Obama campaign's
technology platform, which included a pledge to encourage diversity in
media ownership.
Complicating the situation: Even as the FCC launches the 2010 review,
the agency still is tied up in a legal battle in the 3rd U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals over the media ownership reviews of Genachowski's
Republican predecessors.
The case goes back to the 2002 review under then-FCC chairman Michael
Powell. Powell tried to raise the caps on TV and radio station
ownership and relax the so-called "cross-ownership" ban, a rule adopted
in 1975 that prohibits common ownership of a broadcast station and a
newspaper in the same market. (Holdings in some markets, such as
Chicago, where Tribune Co. owns WGN radio and TV and the Chicago
Tribune, were grandfathered in.)
But Powell's plan drew legal challenges from public interest groups
that said he had gone too far and media companies that said he had not
gone far enough. So the 3rd Circuit sent the matter back to FCC,
telling it to rewrite the rules. And that led Powell's successor, Kevin
Martin, to try to ease the cross-ownership ban in the 20 largest media
markets. That drew more challenges from both sides.
After Genachowski came to the FCC last year, the agency urged the 3rd
Circuit to hold off on considering the case because Martin's rules
would soon be superseded by the 2010 review. For a time, the court
complied and prevented those rules from going into effect. But in
March, the court got tired of waiting for the agency to act and allowed
Martin's rules to take force, which could pave the way for
cross-ownership deals in the biggest markets. So now, the FCC must
decide how to respond in court to the challenges to Martin's actions —
even as it launches its own media ownership review.
On both fronts, public interest groups are pushing to roll back
Martin's cross-ownership rules and leave the rest of the restrictions
in place. Meanwhile, media companies are fighting to lift the
cross-ownership ban entirely. They also want some relief from rules
that prohibit one company from owning more than one TV station in
smaller markets and more than two TV stations in larger markets,
including only one of the top four.
Such rules, opponents say, reflect a time when the news business was
dominated by just three TV networks and local newspapers — before
cable, satellite and the Internet transformed the media, providing
outlets for all sorts of viewpoints and voices. Indeed, some of the
current ownership rules date in some form to as early as the 1940s. So
why, critics ask, should the FCC continue to measure competition by
counting broadcast stations and newspapers in individual markets?
"I don't think the average consumer sees the market the way we regulate
it," Powell says. "This isn't the way Americans consume media."
Critics also say the rules do more harm than good by artificially
inflating the number of media outlets fighting for a limited pool of
readers, viewers and advertisers in individual markets. Allowing
consolidation, says Harold Furchtgott-Roth, a former Republican FCC
commissioner, would let media companies build larger audiences to
attract advertisers and spread hefty newsgathering costs by repurposing
content across more platforms.
"If we want robust local news, we need to give media companies the
opportunity to achieve scale, since producing local news is not cheap,"
says Rebecca Duke, vice president of distribution for LIN Media, a
company based in Providence, R.I., that owns 29 TV stations.
Lifting the rules could help save struggling newspapers or TV stations
looking for a buyer, Furchtgott-Roth adds, because often the only
potential suitor might be the other major media outlet in town.
One irony not lost on media executives is that the FCC and the Justice
Department are expected to approve Comcast Corp.'s proposal to buy a
majority stake in NBC Universal from General Electric Co. That deal,
which would give the nation's largest cable TV operator control of
NBC's media empire, would dwarf the types of local media mergers
prohibited by the FCC's current rules.
Still, Corie Wright, policy counsel for the public interest group Free
Press, insists there is not enough competition in most markets to
permit consolidation. Even as cable and the Internet offer many more
choices for general news and commentary, most local reporting is still
done by newspapers and TV stations, she notes.
Georgetown Law professor Angela Campbell, who represents several public
interest groups defending strong ownership limits, fears more
consolidation would lead to newsroom layoffs as media companies combine
operations and feed the same content to different outlets.
"Every time you have one of these deals, at the end of the day it means
one newsroom closes, another lost voice, less local coverage and less
diversity of perspective," says FCC Commissioner Copps.
Schwartzman, head of Media Access Project, is also skeptical of the
argument that the industry's troubles justify deregulation. After all,
he noted, the economy is still emerging from a deep recession that has
hit major advertisers in the auto, real estate and retailing sectors
particularly hard. As those sectors recover, he says, media companies
may recover too.
"I am concerned about enacting policy changes based on temporary
economic conditions," Schwartzman says. "We don't know what the new
normal is."
But whatever the new normal turns out to be, it figures to look very
different from the traditional media landscape. That's why some
observers are asking whether all the debate over media consolidation
may be beside the point, given the huge problems facing the industry.
"Media companies are struggling and the government is standing in their
way," says Kenneth Ferree, a former FCC official who pushed to relax
the ownership limits under Powell and is now a senior fellow with The
Progress & Freedom Foundation, a free-market think tank. "But even
if the FCC got rid of the rules, would it matter anyway? That's the
$64,000 question."
Editorial: The
F.C.C. and the Internet
April 19, 2010
With the Internet fast becoming the most important communications
channel, it is untenable for the United States not to have a regulator
to ensure nondiscriminatory access, guarantee interconnectivity among
rival networks and protect consumers from potential abuse.
Yet that’s exactly where the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit left us all when it said this month that
the Federal Communications Commission didn’t have the authority to
regulate the Internet — and specifically, could not force the cable
giant Comcast to stop blocking peer-to-peer sites.
The decision, in the words of the F.C.C.’s general counsel, Austin
Schlick, undermines the agency’s ability to serve as “the cop on the
beat for 21st-century communications networks.” It also puts at risk
big chunks of the F.C.C.’s strategy for increasing the reach of
broadband Internet to all corners of the country and fostering more
competition among providers.
Chairman Julius Genachowski said the commission is not planning to
appeal the decision, and is studying its options. The F.C.C. could try
to forge ahead with its broadband plan despite the court’s decision. Or
Congress could give the F.C.C. specific authority to regulate broadband
access.
But the court tightly circumscribed the F.C.C.’s actions. And with
Republicans determined to oppose pretty much anything the
administration wants, the odds of a rational debate on the issues are
slim.
Fortunately, the commission has the tools to fix this problem. It can
reverse the Bush administration’s predictably antiregulatory decision
to define broadband Internet access as an information service, like
Google or Amazon, over which it has little regulatory power. Instead,
it can define broadband as a communications service, like a phone
company, over which the commission has indisputable authority.
The F.C.C. at the time argued that a light regulatory touch would
foster alternative technologies and aggressive competition among
providers. It assumed that the Internet of the future would be
dominated by companies like AOL that bundle access with other services,
justifying its conflation of access and information. And it
claimed that it could still regulate broadband access even if it was
classified as a service. All it had to do was convince the courts that
it was necessary to further other statutory goals, like promoting the
roll-out of competitive Internet services. This legal argument did not
hold up.
Any move now by the F.C.C to redefine broadband would surely unleash a
torrent of lawsuits by broadband providers, but the commission has
solid legal grounds to do that. To begin with, the three arguments
advanced by the F.C.C. during the Bush years have proved wrong.
Rather than seeing an explosion of new competition, the broadband
access business has consolidated to the point that many areas of the
country have only one provider. Broadband Internet has unbundled into a
business with many unrelated information service providers vying for
space on the pipelines of a few providers.
And most persuasively: broadband access is probably the most important
communication service of our time. One that needs a robust regulator.
Telecom
Report: FCC unveils grand plan for speedy Internet everywhere
Far-reaching goals called laudable, but stiff opposition to plan is
likely
By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch
March 15, 2010, 4:38 p.m. EDT
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Federal regulators are set to unveil an
ambitious plan to make the Internet faster and more affordable to all
Americans, but their efforts are likely to draw sizable opposition, and
the process could take years.
On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission will reveal its
long-awaited national broadband plan. The goals: connect every American
home to high-speed Internet service and make broadband in U.S. the
fastest in the world.
Hopes are fading that Google will be able to reach an agreement with
China to remain in business there. With an exit by Google, a big chunk
of the search market would be up for grabs, Ben Worthen reports on
Digits with Stacey Delo, Eric Savitz and Marcelo Prince.
The FCC, for example, envisions download speeds reaching as high as 100
megabits a second within 10 years in at least 100 million U.S. homes.
Current speeds range from 1.5 megabits to 12 megabits, with FCC data
showing that as many as one-third of all Americans lack broadband in
their homes.
In a summary of the plan released on Monday, the FCC said improved
broadband access would improve the lives of Americans in virtually
every area, including work, education, health care and access to
government services. Click here to read plan summary.
"Like electricity a century ago, broadband is a foundation for economic
growth, job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life,"
the FCC summary said.
The FCC's far-ranging proposal, however, touches a number of hot-button
issues that are sure to provoke resistance from some members of
Congress as well as industry groups such as broadcasters and phone
companies.
The agency, for example, wants to make 500 megaherz of spectrum
available to wireless carriers - 10 times the amount of airwaves now in
FCC hands. Mobile carriers such as AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and Verizon
Wireless (NYSE:VZ) say they will eventually need more spectrum to
provide reliable and superfast Internet connections to every customer.
Yet much of that spectrum is now in the hands of television
broadcasters, which won't give up the badly needed airwaves without
compensation.
"The problem is most of the spectrum is occupied by somebody else,"
said Adam Thierer, president of the free-market leaning Progress &
Freedom Foundation. "They are going to want a lot of money for this."
The agency suggests giving broadcasters a portion of the cash raised
when the FCC resells the spectrum to carriers, but analysts say that
might be a hard sell in Congress. Lawmakers have used proceeds from
past auctions to fund other priorities, including deficit reduction or
new programs.
The FCC also wants to overhaul the "universal service fund," which
subsidizes phone service for rural inhabitants and poorer Americans, to
include broadband. Yet past efforts at reform have been foiled by
disputes over how to pay for the multibillion-dollar fund and how to
divvy up the subsidies.
"There is a general consensus that the system is broken and needs to be
fixed," said Jeffrey Silva, a technology analyst at Washington,
D.C.-based Medley Global Advisors. "That doesn't mean it's not subject
to political infighting. It will be."
Other potential landmines include new FCC proposals to safeguard the
privacy of consumers, alter rules on competition and force network
operators to disclose more data on how they price Internet service.
"As with any report of this size, variety and complexity, we expect
that we will have points of agreement and disagreement on specific
issues," said Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable and
Telecommunications Association.
Despite the likelihood of some stiff opposition, many technology
companies strongly support the FCC's wider goals of making broadband
service faster and more affordable.
Jeff Campbell of Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) , the nation's
largest seller of Internet-networking gear, said world-class broadband
networks would make the U.S. more competitive globally and spur the
creation of millions of jobs in the long run, especially in small and
medium businesses.
Cisco and dozens of other large companies such as Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) ,
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) , eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) are
members of the TechNet alliance that backs the general thrust of the
FCC plan.
Campbell acknowledged that change won't come easily, but he said the
FCC "has the fortitude to do it if they try to see it through." Given
the usual long lag in translating FCC plans into policy, however, major
changes won't take effect anytime soon.
"The impact for companies and investors is not going to ascertained for
at least a year," Silva said.
Another potential obstacle: an already jammed calendar for Congress.
Analysts say lawmakers would prefer the FCC to focus on the parts of
its plan that the agency can enact without congressional approval or
new funding.
I BBC
Icann oversees the structure of the net
Page last updated at 15:07 GMT,
Wednesday, 30 September 2009 16:07 UK
US relaxes grip on
the internet
|
By Jonathan Fildes, Technology reporter, BBC News
|
The US government has relaxed its control over
how the internet is run.
It
has signed a four-page "affirmation of commitments" with the net
regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.
Previous agreements gave the US close oversight of Icann -
drawing criticism from other countries and groups.
The
new agreement comes into effect on 1 October, exactly 40 years since
the first two computers were connected on the prototype of the net.
"It's a beautifully historic day," Rod Beckstrom, Icann's
head, told BBC News.
The European Commission, which has long been critical of
Icann's alliance with the US government, welcomed the new deal.
"Internet
users worldwide can now anticipate that Icann's decisions...will be
more independent and more accountable, taking into account everyone's
interests," said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for information
society and media.
'Global system'
The Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is a not-for-profit
private sector corporation - set up by the US government - to oversee
critical parts of the internet, such as the top-level domain (TLD) name
system. Top level domains include .com and .uk.
Since its
inception in 1998, it has periodically signed accords - known
collectively as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) - with the US
Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information
Administration.
|
 we endorse this
Affirmation and applaud the maturing of Icann's role in the provision
of internet stability 
|
These papers meant that the US government was responsible for
reviewing the work of the body.
These
have now been abandoned in favour of the new "affirmation of
commitments", a brief document which turns the review process over to
the global "internet community".
"Under the JPA, Icann staff would conduct reviews and hand
them over to the US government," explained Mr Beckstrom.
"Now we submit those reviews to the world and post them
publically for all to comment."
In
addition, independent review panels - including representatives of
foreign governments - would specifically oversee Icann's work in three
specific areas: security, competition and accountability.
The US will retain a permanent seat on the accountability
panel.
Mr
Beckstrom said the decision to break away from the US government in all
other areas had been made "over the last year and a half".
"Stakeholders
told us that the JPA should not be renewed and that it wasn't
appropriate for it to be renewed," he told BBC News.
"It is also recognition by the US government that the
internet is a global system."
The internet began as a research project by the US military,
known as Arpanet.
On
1 October 1969, the second computer was connected to the network, said
Mr Beckstrom. Ever since, the US has played close attention to the
workings and growth of the net.
"Today's announcement bolsters
the long-term viability of the internet as a force for innovation,
economic growth, and freedom of expression," said US Assistant
Secretary for communications and information Lawrence Strickling.
"This framework puts the public interest front and centre."
Businesses have also welcomed the change of direction by the
US.
"Google
and its users depend every day on a vibrant and expanding internet; we
endorse this affirmation and applaud the maturing of Icann's role in
the provision of internet stability," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.
However, the new agreement does not totally sever the links
between the US government and Icann entirely.
In
addition, Icann also has a separate agreement with the US - to run the
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) - that expires in 2011.
The IANA oversees the net's addressing system.
$100M-plus broadband map runs into
cost questions
By PETER SVENSSON and JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writers
Peter Svensson And Joelle Tessler, Ap Technology Writers
Sat Sep 12, 12:37 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The national stimulus package passed by Congress in
February may have been too enthusiastic about spending money on one
particular project: figuring out where broadband Internet access is
available and how fast it is.
The $787 billion stimulus bill championed by the Obama administration
set aside up to $350 million to create a national broadband map that
could guide policies aimed at expanding high-speed Internet access.
That $350 million tag struck some people in the telecommunications
industry as excessive, compared with existing, smaller efforts. The map
won't even be done in time to help decide where to spend much of the
$7.2 billion in stimulus money earmarked for broadband programs.
Now it appears the final cost won't be as high as $350 million — though
just how much it will be is unclear.
To ensure the mapping money is used "in a fiscally prudent manner," the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration signaled
Wednesday it would initially spend more than $100 million, and then
reassess the program.
The agency, which is part of the Commerce Department, said it has
received requests for $107 million in funding for projects that would
map broadband in individual states over the first two years. The states
want another $26 million for various purposes over five years,
including steps to encourage broadband demand. On top of that, the NTIA
will have to spend more money to collate the statewide maps into a
national one.
But while the map should run much less than the $350 million cap set by
Congress, the total still looks like it will be far higher than
estimates based on the costs of smaller mapping programs in individual
states.
In North Carolina, for instance, state broadband authority e-NC spends
at most $275,000 per year on maintaining a map of broadband
availability in the state, detailed enough to list individual
addresses, according to executive director Jane Smith Patterson.
Rory Altman, director at telecommunications consulting firm Altman
Vilandrie & Co., which has helped clients map broadband
availability in some areas, said $350 million was a "ridiculous" amount
of money to spend on a national broadband map.
Even $100 million might be high. The firm could create a national
broadband map for $3.5 million, and "would gladly do it for $35
million," Altman said.
Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime broadband industry newsletter,
believes a reasonable cost for the map would be less than $30 million.
The map should reveal what most individuals already know: whether their
homes can get broadband, and how fast it is. Officially, the goal for
the map is to help shape broadband policy and determine where best to
invest government funds. It may also help consumers shopping for
Internet service.
However, the map won't be ready in time to influence the first round of
broadband grants and loans funded by the stimulus package. That money
will start going out this fall. And the map likely won't be finished
before February's scheduled release of a national broadband plan being
developed by the Federal Communications Commission, which is also
mandated by the stimulus bill.
About two-thirds of U.S. homes already have broadband. It's available
to many more, perhaps 90 percent of homes, but the figure is uncertain
because of the lack of authoritative nationwide studies. The cable
industry alone says it covers 92 percent of U.S. households.
When the Pew Internet and American Life Project surveyed people who
didn't have broadband in 2007 and 2008, it found that most of them
aren't interested in it, find the Internet too hard to use, or don't
have computers. Lack of available broadband was the third most common
reason.
Still, there is concern that the U.S. is falling behind other countries
in the reach and speed of its Internet connections, and that this might
hinder economic growth. Advocates of expanding broadband also worry
that some rural areas might never get high-speed Internet because
service providers don't see a payoff in extending their lines there.
Identifying those areas will be a major thrust of the mapping project.
The maps will show broadband availability, type (phone or cable, for
example) and speeds for each small cluster of homes, roughly equivalent
to a city block in urban areas.
Each state's grant for mapping will go to either a nonprofit or a
government agency. Internet service providers have already committed to
handing over data about where they have broadband coverage, so the main
job will be to collect and translate that information into a map.
Mark Seifert, who is overseeing the broadband grant and mapping
programs at the NTIA, offers several reasons why the federal government
may spend proportionally more on mapping than some states. For one
thing, he said, most efforts that have been done in states have focused
on so-called "last-mile" connections that link homes and businesses
with the broader infrastructure of the Internet. The NTIA also wants
extensive data on that behind-the-scenes Internet infrastructure.
What's more, since much of the mapping data will come from phone and
cable companies, the NTIA wants the information to be independently
verified — which could involve knocking on doors to confirm where
broadband is and is not available and conducting other on-the-ground
checks.
"You can spend less money on a map ... but you get what you pay for,"
he said. "Data costs money."
Although the map will not be done in time to guide this round of
broadband funding in the stimulus package, it could prove useful for
later broadband deployment programs. And it could help set priorities
in the years ahead for huge federal programs such as the Universal
Service Fund and the Rural Utilities Service, which spend billions of
dollars annually to subsidize telecom services.
In addition to the NTIA's mapping project, there's a parallel push at
the FCC to gather more detailed data on broadband subscribers. Both
efforts are designed to aid the Obama administration's goal of
"data-driven decision making" in setting telecom policy, said Colin
Crowell, a senior counselor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
"There is a voracious appetite for all kinds of broadband data," said
Crowell, who helped write the broadband mapping legislation as a
staffer on a House subcommittee overseeing telecommunications.
"Policymakers have been wringing their hands for several years that we
don't have accurate data on broadband deployment and adoption."
How does this relate to
ACORN, if at all...for example, some people get off easy?
Legal Battle Plays Out: Online
Attitude vs. Rules of the Bar
NYTIMES
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
September 13, 2009
Sean Conway was steamed at a Fort Lauderdale judge, so he did what
millions of angry people do these days: he blogged about her, saying
she was an “Evil, Unfair Witch.”
But Mr. Conway is a lawyer. And unlike millions of other online
hotheads, he found himself hauled up before the Florida bar, which in
April issued a reprimand and a fine for his intemperate blog
post. Mr. Conway is hardly the only lawyer to have taken to
online social media like Facebook, Twitter and blogs, but as officers
of the court they face special risks. Their freedom to gripe is limited
by codes of conduct.
“When you become an officer of the court, you lose the full ability to
criticize the court,” said Michael Downey, who teaches legal ethics at
the Washington University law school.
And with thousands of blogs and so many lawyers online, legal ethics
experts say that collisions between the freewheeling ways of the
Internet and the tight boundaries of legal discourse are inevitable —
whether they result in damaged careers or simply raise eyebrows.
Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University Law
School, sees many more missteps in the future, as young people who grew
up with Facebook and other social media enter a profession governed by
centuries of legal tradition.
“Twenty-somethings have a much-reduced sense of personal privacy,”
Professor Gillers said. Younger lawyers are, predictably, more
comfortable with the media than their older colleagues, according to a
recent survey for LexisNexis, the legal database company: 86 percent of
lawyers ages 25 to 35 are members of social networks like Facebook,
LinkedIn and MySpace, as opposed to 66 percent of those over 46. For
those just out of law school, “this stuff is like air to them,” said
Michael Mintz, who manages an online community for lawyers,
Martindale-Hubbell Connected.
In Mr. Conway’s case, the post that got him in trouble questioned the
motives and competence of Judge Cheryl Aleman, and appeared on a rowdy
blog created by a criminal defense lawyers’ group in Broward County.
The judge regularly gave defense lawyers just one week to prepare for
trials, when most judges give a month or more. To Mr. Conway, the move
was intended to pressure the lawyers to ask for a delay in the trials,
thus waiving their right under Florida law to have a felony trial heard
within 175 days, pushing those cases to the back of the line.
“All I had left were my words,” Mr. Conway said, adding that he decided
to use the strongest ones he had.
Mr. Conway initially consented to a reprimand from the bar last year,
but the State Supreme Court, which reviews such cases, demanded briefs
on First Amendment issues. The American Civil Liberties Union of
Florida argued that Mr. Conway’s statements were protected speech that
raised issues of legitimate public concern. Ultimately the court
affirmed the disciplinary agreement and Mr. Conway paid $1,200.
That penalty is light compared with the price paid by Kristine A.
Peshek, a lawyer in Illinois who lost her job as an assistant public
defender after 19 years of service over blog postings and who now faces
disciplinary hearings as well. According to the complaint by
officials of the state’s legal disciplinary body, Ms. Peshek wrote
posts to her blog in 2007 and 2008 that referred to one jurist as
“Judge Clueless” and thinly veiled the identities of clients and
confidential details of a case, including statements like, “This stupid
kid is taking the rap for his drug-dealing dirtbag of an older brother
because ‘he’s no snitch.’ ”
Another client testified that she was drug free and received a light
sentence with just five days’ jail time, and then complained to Ms.
Peshek that she was using methadone and could not go five days without
it. Ms. Peshek wrote that her reaction was, “Huh? You want to go back
and tell the judge that you lied to him, you lied to the presentence
investigator, you lied to me?”
The complaint, first noted by the Legal Profession Blog, said that not
only did Ms. Peshek seem to reveal confidential information about a
case, but that her actions might also constitute “assisting a criminal
or fraudulent act.”
Ms. Peshek declined to comment, citing the pending inquiry “for which I
am currently seeking representation.”
Frank R. Wilson, a lawyer in San Diego, caused a criminal conviction to
be set aside and sent back to a lower court because of his blog
postings as a juror. According to a decision published recently in the
California Law Journal and picked up by the Legal Profession Blog, Mr.
Wilson, while serving on a jury in 2006, posted details of the case on
his blog. Any juror who blogs about the details of a trial risks
trouble and even civil contempt charges. But lawyers like Mr. Wilson
also face professional penalties that can threaten their livelihood.
Mr. Wilson received a 45-day suspension, paid $14,000 in legal fees and
lost his job. He said that warnings not to discuss the case did not ban
blogging; the bar disagreed. Mr. Wilson also had not disclosed during
jury selection that he was a lawyer. In an interview, Mr. Wilson said
he had not been working as a lawyer at the time and had only been asked
his occupation.
Judges,
too, can get into trouble online. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in California,
was investigated for off-color humor that was accessible on his
family’s Web server, though not intended to be public. He was cleared
of wrongdoing, but a three-judge panel admonished him for not
safeguarding the site, which they said was “judicially imprudent.”
Of course, some lawyers’ online problems are the same as everyone
else’s, like getting caught in a fib. Judge Susan Criss of the Texas
District Court in Galveston recalled in an interview a young lawyer who
requested a trial delay because of a death in the family. The judge
granted the delay, but checked the lawyer’s Facebook page.
“There was a funeral, but there wasn’t a lot of grief expressed
online,” Judge Criss said. “All week long, as the week is going by, I
can see that this lawyer is posting about partying. One night drinking
wine, another night drinking mojitos, another day motorbiking.” At the
end of the delay, the lawyer sought a second one; this time the judge
declined, and disclosed her online research to a senior partner of the
lawyer’s firm.
Judge Criss, who first told the story at a panel during an American Bar
Association conference, said that the lawyer has since removed her from
her friends list.
For his part, Mr. Conway noted that the judge he criticized was
reprimanded last year by the Florida Supreme Court, which affirmed a
state panel’s criticism of what it called an “arrogant, discourteous
and impatient” manner with lawyers in another case. (Judge Aleman did
not return calls seeking comment.) Mr. Conway said his practice was
“probably enhanced by the experience” of going public.
But the State Supreme Court ultimately concluded that his online
“personal attack” was “not uttered in an effort to expose a valid
problem” with the judicial system. And so, the court concluded, the
statements “fail as protected free speech under the First Amendment.”
ALERT:
Danger to the Internet
ACORN fires 2 in DC after video footage
Washington Times
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, September 12, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The advocacy group ACORN said Friday it fired two
more employees over hidden camera videos that show the group's workers
giving financial advice to women posing as prostitutes. The
latest
firings, in the Washington office, come a day after two other ACORN
workers in Baltimore were fired over hidden camera footage. Fox
News
Channel aired parts of the latest video and posted it online Friday. It
shows a man and woman at the group's Washington office, asking for help
in buying a house for her prostitution business.
Fox News said the video was provided by conservative activist James
O'Keefe, who appears in both videos.
The workers tell the woman not to list prostitution as her profession
on housing loans. Instead, they suggest she create a false business
name and tell banks that she's a consultant for her own company.
The
couple tells the workers they plan to bring several girls from Central
America to work in the house. Another option the workers suggest is
that the man could buy the house and act as a landlord unaware of
what's happening in the home.
Because of his political ambitions, the workers tell the supposed law
student and potential office-seeker to avoid the house. They say the
couple must be low-key about the business, or people could "call Fox."
On Thursday, two other ACORN workers in Baltimore were fired after a
they were recorded in a similar incident. O'Keefe, the filmmaker, has
told FOX he posed as a pimp in the first video and that he was shocked
by the ACORN employees' helpfulness. In Maryland, Delegate
Anthony J.
O'Donnell, House Minority Leader on Friday called for an investigation
into ACORN by the state's attorney general, Baltimore's state's
attorney, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for Maryland.
In a statement, ACORN's President of Housing Alton Bennett and
Executive Director Mike Shea, said they were "appalled and angry" to
see the latest video. They said there were no loan documents completed,
no bank loans arranged and no new business established. They said the
two workers were fired and an internal review of practices will be done.
But Bennett and Shea said the video was "slanted to misinform the
public about ACORN Housing." The video fails to mention that the same
people who made the tape went to at least five other ACORN Housing
offices where they were either turned away or where employees responded
by calling police, they said.
"It is part of a long-term plan to smear ACORN Housing for political
reasons and provide entertainment in the process," Bennett and Shea
said. "But that does not excuse the behavior of the employees."
ACORN
officials are asking Fox News to disclose its relationship with
O'Keefe. An attorney for the group sent a letter to Fox News on Friday
saying the filming and broadcast of the conversations violate secret
recording laws. The letter demands that the network stop broadcasting
the videos on air and the Internet in advance of litigation.
ACORN -- which stands for the Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now -- advocates for poor people. It conducted a massive
voter registration effort last year and became a target of
conservatives when some employees were accused of submitting false
registration forms with names such as "Mickey Mouse." ACORN has said
only a handful of employees submitted false registration forms and did
so in a bid to boost their pay.
On its Web site, Fox News reported that the first videotape was made
public Thursday on a political blog, BigGovernment.com.
Op-Ed Columnist
Stung by the Perfect Sting
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYTIMES
August 26, 2009
WASHINGTON
If I read all the vile stuff about me on the Internet, I’d never come
to work. I’d scamper off and live my dream of being a cocktail waitress
in a militia bar in Wyoming.
If you’re written about in a nasty way, it looms much larger for you
than for anyone else. Gossip goes in one ear and out the other unless
you’re the subject. Then, nobody’s skin is thick enough.
“The velocity and volume on the Web are so great that nothing is
forgotten and nothing is remembered,” says Leon Wieseltier, the
literary editor of The New Republic. “The Internet is like closing time
at a blue-collar bar in Boston. Everyone’s drunk and ugly and they’re
going to pass out in a few minutes.”
Those are my people, I protested, but I knew what he meant. That’s why
I was interested in the Case of the Blond Model and the Malicious
Blogger.
Sooner or later, this sort of suit will end up before the Supreme Court.
It began eight months ago when Liskula Cohen, a 37-year-old model and
Australian Vogue cover girl, was surprised to find herself winning a
“Skankiest in NYC” award from an anonymous blogger. The online
tormentor put up noxious commentary on Google’s blogger.com, calling
Cohen a “skank,” a “ho” and an “old hag” who “may have been hot 10
years ago.”
Cohen says she’s “a lover, not a fighter.” But the model had stood up
for herself before. In 2007, at a New York club, she tried to stop a
man named Samir Dervisevic who wanted to drink from the vodka bottle on
her table. He hit her in the face with the bottle and gouged a hole
“the size of a quarter,” as she put it, requiring plastic surgery.
This time, she punched the virtual bully in the face, filing a
defamation suit to force Google to give up the blogger’s e-mail. And
she won.
“The words ‘skank,’ ‘skanky’ and ‘ho’ carry a negative implication of
sexual promiscuity,” wrote Justice Joan Madden of State Supreme Court
in Manhattan, rejecting the Anonymous Blogger’s assertion that blogs
are a modern soapbox designed for opinions, rants and invective.
The judge cited a Virginia court decision that the Internet’s
“virtually unlimited, inexpensive and almost immediate means of
communication” with the masses means “the dangers of its misuse cannot
be ignored. The protection of the right to communicate anonymously must
be balanced against the need to assure that those persons who choose to
abuse the opportunities presented by this medium can be made to answer
for such transgressions.”
Cyberbullies, she wrote, cannot hide “behind an illusory shield of
purported First Amendment rights.”
Once she had the e-mail address, Cohen discovered whence the smears: a
cafe society acquaintance named Rosemary Port, a pretty 29-year-old
Fashion Institute of Technology student.
Cohen called and forgave Port, but did not get an apology. She had her
lawyer, Steve Wagner, drop her defamation suit. But now Port says
she’ll file a $15 million suit against Google for giving her up.
Port contends that if Cohen hadn’t sued, hardly anyone would have seen
the blog. (If a skank falls in the forest and no one hears it ... ?)
But Cohen says the Internet is different than water-cooler gossip.
“It’s there for the whole world to see,” she told me. “What happened to
integrity? Why go out of your way solely to upset somebody else? Why
can’t we all just be nice?”
She said she may become an activist, and has been e-mailing with Tina
Meier, mother of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who killed herself after
getting cyberbullied by the mother of a classmate who pretended to be a
teen suitor named “Josh.”
“If that woman had started a MySpace page as herself, that little girl
would still be in her mother’s arms,” Cohen said.
The Internet was supposed to be the prolix paradise where there would
be no more gatekeepers and everyone would finally have their say. We
would express ourselves freely at any level, high or low, with no
inhibitions.
Yet in this infinite realm of truth-telling, many want to hide. Who are
these people prepared to tell you what they think, but not who they
are? What is the mentality that lets them get in our face while wearing
a mask? Shredding somebody’s character before the entire world and not
being held accountable seems like the perfect sting.
Pseudonyms have a noble history. Revolutionaries in France, founding
fathers and Soviet dissidents used them. The great poet Fernando Pessoa
used heteronyms to write in different styles and even to review the
work composed under his other names.
As Hugo Black wrote in 1960, “It is plain that anonymity has sometimes
been assumed for the most constructive purposes.”
But on the Internet, it’s often less about being constructive and more
about being cowardly.
ORWELL LIVES! ("Big Brother is watching you" department)
Editorial: The Government and
the Web
NYTIMES
August 25, 2009
The Obama administration is considering new rules to make it easier for
government Web sites to use “cookies” and other technology to track
visitors. There are valid reasons for using such tools, but the
government has to build in robust privacy protections.
The Clinton administration adopted a rule severely limiting tracking on
federal Web sites. Tracking could be done only if officials could prove
a compelling need and the agency head had personally authorized it.
Tracking technology can help improve the quality of Web sites by
monitoring how many people are visiting and how they use the site, and
by personalizing the experience. For example, the Parks Service could
offer information based on where a user lives.
Browser makers have made it easier for users to remove cookies or even
reject them wholesale. But tracking technology can still present a real
privacy risk, especially for the uninitiated. If users give personal
information on one government Web site, the government could track
visits to its other Web sites, like one offering information on drug
addiction or H.I.V./AIDS. It could do this with cookies, or by keeping
track of users’ IP addresses, which may be tied to specific individuals.
In recent years, the government has monitored some Americans’ library
use and illegally eavesdropped on telephone calls and e-mail. Privacy
groups are concerned that the new rules could pave the way for third
parties to collect large amounts of data through government sites — for
example, if an agency site posted a YouTube video carrying its own
cookies.
The Office of Management and Budget is developing the new rules.
Officials say they recognize that people must be told that their use of
Web sites is being tracked — and be given a chance to opt out. More is
needed. The government should commit to displaying such notices
prominently on all Web pages — and to making it easy for users to
choose not to be tracked.
It must promise that tracking data will be used only for the purpose it
was collected for: if someone orders a pamphlet on living with cancer,
it should not end up in a general database. Information should be
purged regularly and as quickly as possible. These rules must apply to
third parties that operate on government sites.
The Obama administration is working to better harness the power of the
Internet to deliver government services. That is good. But it needs to
be mindful that people should be able to get help and be assured that
their privacy is being vigilantly protected.
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart
Man
NYTIMES
By JOHN MARKOFF
July 26, 2009
A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge
itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which,
though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine
that can kill autonomously.
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group
of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on
research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based
systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging
war to chatting with customers on the phone.
Their concern is that further advances could create profound social
disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.
As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as
diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to
simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy
extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach”
stage of machine intelligence.
While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal,
the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,”
they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress
would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs,
as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that
increasingly copy human behaviors.
The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence
researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds
on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of
highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence
might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that
robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be
soon.
They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could
exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed.
What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could
masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence
technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?
The researchers also discussed possible threats to human jobs, like
self-driving cars, software-based personal assistants and service
robots in the home. Just last month, a service robot developed by
Willow Garage in Silicon Valley proved it could navigate the real world.
A report from the conference, which took place in private on Feb. 25,
is to be issued later this year. Some attendees discussed the meeting
for the first time with other scientists this month and in interviews.
The conference was organized by the Association for the Advancement of
Artificial Intelligence, and in choosing Asilomar for the discussions,
the group purposefully evoked a landmark event in the history of
science. In 1975, the world’s leading biologists also met at Asilomar
to discuss the new ability to reshape life by swapping genetic material
among organisms. Concerned about possible biohazards and ethical
questions, scientists had halted certain experiments. The conference
led to guidelines for recombinant DNA research, enabling
experimentation to continue.
The meeting on the future of artificial intelligence was organized by
Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is now president of the
association.
Dr. Horvitz said he believed computer scientists must respond to the
notions of superintelligent machines and artificial intelligence
systems run amok.
The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would
design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician
I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the
computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when
humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid
change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the
Singularity.
This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible
and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun
Microsystems. Other technologists, notably Raymond Kurzweil, have
extolled the coming of ultrasmart machines, saying they will offer huge
advances in life extension and wealth creation.
“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr.
Horvitz said. “Technologists are replacing religion, and their ideas
are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.”
The Kurzweil version of technological utopia has captured imaginations
in Silicon Valley. This summer an organization called the Singularity
University began offering courses to prepare a “cadre” to shape the
advances and help society cope with the ramifications.
“My sense was that sooner or later we would have to make some sort of
statement or assessment, given the rising voice of the technorati and
people very concerned about the rise of intelligent machines,” Dr.
Horvitz said.
The A.A.A.I. report will try to assess the possibility of “the loss of
human control of computer-based intelligences.” It will also grapple,
Dr. Horvitz said, with socioeconomic, legal and ethical issues, as well
as probable changes in human-computer relationships. How would it be,
for example, to relate to a machine that is as intelligent as your
spouse?
Dr. Horvitz said the panel was looking for ways to guide research so
that technology improved society rather than moved it toward a
technological catastrophe. Some research might, for instance, be
conducted in a high-security laboratory.
The meeting on artificial intelligence could be pivotal to the future
of the field. Paul Berg, who was the organizer of the 1975 Asilomar
meeting and received a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980, said it was
important for scientific communities to engage the public before alarm
and opposition becomes unshakable.
“If you wait too long and the sides become entrenched like with
G.M.O.,” he said, referring to genetically modified foods, “then it is
very difficult. It’s too complex, and people talk right past each
other.”
Tom Mitchell, a professor of artificial intelligence and machine
learning at Carnegie Mellon University, said the February meeting had
changed his thinking. “I went in very optimistic about the future of
A.I. and thinking that Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil were far off in their
predictions,” he said. But, he added, “The meeting made me want to be
more outspoken about these issues and in particularly be outspoken
about the vast amounts of data collected about our personal lives.”
Despite his concerns, Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial
intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate
for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that
he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with
empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on
the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”
A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system
responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he
was told. “I have no time for that.”
Tight Budget? Look to the ‘Cloud’
NYTIMES
By VIVEK KUNDRA
August 30, 2011
Cambridge, Mass.
AS the global economy struggles through a slow and painful recovery,
governments around the world are wasting billions of dollars on
unnecessary information technology. This problem has worsened in recent
years because of what I call the “I.T. cartel.” This powerful group of
private contractors encourages reliance on inefficient software and
hardware that is expensive to acquire and to maintain.
In one particularly egregious example of waste, the Defense Department
last year pulled the plug on a personnel system devised by Northrop
Grumman after spending approximately $850 million on it in 10 years.
When I joined the Obama administration as the chief information
officer, we quickly discovered vast inefficiencies in the $80 billion
federal I.T. budget. We also saw an opportunity to increase
productivity and save costs by embracing the “cloud computing”
revolution: the shift from hardware and software that individuals,
businesses and governments buy and then maintain themselves, to
low-cost, maintenance-free services that are based on the Internet and
run by private companies.
Examples of cloud computing companies include Web behemoths like Amazon
and Google, which offer a variety of services (data storage or e-mail,
for example), as well as companies like salesforce.com, which helps
businesses manage customer relationships via social networks. Other
services and applications include health care access, mobile energy
management and storm recovery assistance. Most cloud-based services are
either free for consumers or delivered via a monthly subscription
service for businesses. According to the research firm Gartner, cloud
computing will be a $149 billion industry by 2015.
Like a large office building, cloud data centers are efficient: many
different tenants occupy the same space, sharing the same critical
infrastructure, yet each tenant still has its own secure, customizable
space. For example, in preparation for the 2010 census, the Census
Bureau used the cloud computing services of salesforce.com to expand
its I.T. capabilities, saving the cost and time of purchasing,
designing and installing a brand-new I.T. infrastructure.
Shortly after the Obama administration took office, we instituted a
“Cloud First” policy, which advocates the adoption of cloud services by
government agencies and mandates the transition of at least three
projects for every agency to the cloud by next summer.
Some agencies, like the General Services Administration, have embraced
cloud computing; the agency has cut the I.T. costs on things as simple
as its e-mail system by over 50 percent. But other agencies have
balked. The State Department, for instance, has raised concerns about
whether the cloud approach introduces security risks, since data is
stored off site by private contractors.
But cloud computing is often far more secure than traditional
computing, because companies like Google and Amazon can attract and
retain cyber-security personnel of a higher quality than many
governmental agencies. And government employees are so accustomed to
using cloud services like Dropbox and Gmail in their personal lives
that, even if their agencies don’t formally permit cloud computing,
they use it for work purposes anyway, creating a “shadow I.T.” that
leads to a more vulnerable organization than would a properly overseen
cloud computing system.
The United States cannot afford to be left behind in the cloud
computing revolution. In health care alone, a productivity increase of
1 percent in the next 10 years — much of which could be achieved with
cloud-based services — represents a $300 billion value. Similar
efficiencies could be realized in sectors like financial services,
education and manufacturing.
Consider the example of Japan, which has faced significant economic
challenges for two decades. The government’s Ministry of Economy, Trade
and Industry estimates that the Japanese cloud computing market is
likely to reach $20.1 billion by 2015 and is implementing a cloud
initiative as a key tenet of its national economic strategy.
Similar growth is predicted for India, where the cloud market is
projected to grow to $3 billion by 2015 and create 100,000 jobs. As
foreign governments prioritize investment in the cloud, the United
States cannot hesitate because of hypothetical security threats that
serve the entrenched interests of the I.T. cartel.
One of the critical remaining issues concerning cloud computing is
whether cloud data can and should flow between nations and what
restrictions should be placed upon it. The next step should be the
creation of a global Cloud First policy that forces nations to work
together and resolve these critical issues. The United States, along
with leading nations in Europe and Asia, has an opportunity to announce
such an initiative at the World Economic Forum meeting in January.
The budget crisis will accelerate the move toward cloud services.
Governments, businesses and consumers all have a lot to gain, but not
everyone will have an equal say at the table. Public and private
organizations that preserve the status quo of wasteful spending will be
punished, while those that embrace the cloud will be rewarded with
substantial savings and 21st-century jobs.
Vivek Kundra, the Obama
administration’s chief information officer from 2009 until this month,
is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, both at
Harvard.
Salesforce
shares soaring on cloud
computing craze
YAHOO
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer
Fri Nov 19, 2010 6:04 pm ET
SAN FRANCISCO – A hot high-tech concept known as "cloud computing" is
lifting Salesforce.com Inc.'s stock to lofty heights.
The shares rocketed more than 18 percent Friday after Salesforce issued
a strong third-quarter earnings report and an optimistic management
forecast that persuaded several analysts that the stock is bound to
climb even higher. As it is, Salesforce in nearly 6 1/2 year as a
public company is proving to be more fruitful than high-tech darling
Google Inc.
The fervor surrounding Salesforce has been swelling during the past
year because the company appears to be sitting in a sweet spot as more
businesses and government agencies change the way they buy and use
software.
After years of paying huge upfront fees to install and maintain
applications on individual computers in their offices, more companies
are embracing the idea of subscribing to software that can be accessed
from any machine with an Internet connection. The trend is becoming so
popular that it has been tagged with the catchphrase "cloud computing"
to replace its more geeky shorthand of "SaaS, an abbreviation of
"software as a service."
The transition has enriched and vindicated Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff,
who faced widespread ridicule when he started the company 11 years ago
on the presumption that the old way of installing software made by the
likes of Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and SAP was doomed. Skeptics
abounded at the time, contending that businesses would never be willing
to trust a vendor to run their critical programs and applications on
computers far away from their own premises.
But now Salesforce is seen as being ahead of the curve, as Microsoft,
Oracle and SAP all scramble to build their own online subscription
services. At the end of its latest quarter, Salesforce boasted 87,200
customers, including personal computer manufacturer Dell Inc. and
health insurer Kaiser Permanente.
Wall Street has become so enamored with Salesforce that its stock is
outshining Internet search leader Google, a much more renowned company
that went public just two months after Salesforce did in 2004.
A $10,000 investment in Salesforce's June 2004 initial public offering
would now be worth $124,000 after Friday's surge left shares with a
gain of 85 percent so far this year. A $10,000 investment in Google's
August 2004 IPO would be worth about $70,000.
Even Google has latched on to some of Salesforce's ideas as it tries to
expand its own cloud computing service. Google now offers a suite of
word processing, spreadsheet and calendar programs in hopes of luring
people away from Microsoft's Office bundle of applications. Salesforce
and Google have also teamed up on some cloud computing projects.
Google remains the far larger company with more than 23,000 employees
and revenue expected to approach $30 billion this year. Salesforce
employs about 5,000 people and is on track for about $1.7 billion in
revenue in its fiscal year, which ends in January. Salesforce stirred
excitement late Thursday when it topped off the release of
better-than-expected third-quarter earnings with a prediction that its
revenue for the year ending in January 2012 would reach $2 billion for
the first time.
Salesforce shares soared $20.97, or 18.1 percent, Friday to close at
$136.74 after hitting a new record high of $137.31 earlier in the
session. The run-up has left Salesforce with an exceptionally high
price-to-earnings, or "p/e," ratio, a wildly used yardstick for sizing
up a company's value. Based on its projected earnings for fiscal 2012,
Salesforce's p/e is 90; Google's is 18. An extremely high p/e ratio
sometimes signals investors are becoming irrationally exuberant about a
company's prospects, but most analysts don't seem to believe that's
what's happening with Salesforce.
Benioff, 46, has relied on some of the marketing skills that he picked
up while working at Oracle to win over potential customers and
investors. He's a protege of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who has blended
a flair for the dramatic with technological savvy and ruthless
negotiating tactics to build his software empire. Ellison was among
Salesforce's early investors and served on the company's board until
Benioff fired him because he thought his former boss was stealing
secrets to help Oracle develop a competing product.
Ellison also is the largest shareholder in another cloud computing
service, NetSuite Inc., which competes with Salesforce.
Investors are now betting NetSuite will also prosper from the cloud
computing craze: NetSuite shares gained $2.57, or nearly 12 percent, to
close Friday at $24.57.
Ellison recently has been publicly criticizing Salesforce, something he
has done to other companies that Oracle has ended up buying. A suitor
interested in making a bid would have to have deep pockets, as Oracle
does, because Salesforce's market value now stands at $15 billion.
With Salesforce flying high, Benioff's stake in the company is now
worth about $1.4 billion. The fortune has allowed Benioff to build a
huge home in Hawaii, where he says he likes to swim with dolphins to
clear his mind. Although Salesforce has its headquarters in San
Francisco, Benioff sometimes runs the company from Hawaii, using
high-definition videoconferencing technology.
One of Benioff's latest ideas has been focused on building a business
version of Facebook's social networking tools. That effort appears to
be paying off as 60,000 Salesforce customers use a new tool called
"Chatter." Although Chatter is free, analysts believe its popularity
will make workers even more reliant on Salesforce's money-making
services that help companies manage their customer relationships.
Op-Ed Contributor - we
note the interrelationship between
"cloud" computing and another concern...
Lost in the Cloud
NYTIMES
By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
July 20, 2009
Cambridge, Mass.
EARLIER this month Google announced a new operating system called
Chrome. It’s meant to transform personal computers and handheld devices
into single-purpose windows to the Web. This is part of a larger trend:
Chrome moves us further away from running code and storing our
information on our own PCs toward doing everything online — also known
as in “the cloud” — using whatever device is at hand.
Many people consider this development to be as sensible and inevitable
as the move from answering machines to voicemail. With your stuff in
the cloud, it’s not a catastrophe to lose your laptop, any more than
losing your glasses would permanently destroy your vision. In addition,
as more and more of our information is gathered from and shared with
others — through Facebook, MySpace or Twitter — having it all online
can make a lot of sense.
The cloud, however, comes with real dangers.
Some are in plain view. If you entrust your data to others, they can
let you down or outright betray you. For example, if your favorite
music is rented or authorized from an online subscription service
rather than freely in your custody as a compact disc or an MP3 file on
your hard drive, you can lose your music if you fall behind on your
payments — or if the vendor goes bankrupt or loses interest in the
service. Last week Amazon apparently conveyed a publisher’s
change-of-heart to owners of its Kindle e-book reader: some purchasers
of Orwell’s “1984” found it removed from their devices, with nothing to
show for their purchase other than a refund. (Orwell would be amused.)
Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice
and under the law. A hacker recently guessed the password to the
personal e-mail account of a Twitter employee, and was thus able to
extract the employee’s Google password. That in turn compromised a
trove of Twitter’s corporate documents stored too conveniently in the
cloud. Before, the bad guys usually needed to get their hands on
people’s computers to see their secrets; in today’s cloud all you need
is a password.
Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has been able
to demand some details of your online activities from service providers
— and not to tell you about it. There have been thousands of such
requests lodged since the law was passed, and the F.B.I.’s own audits
have shown that there can be plenty of overreach — perhaps wholly
inadvertent — in requests like these.
The cloud can be even more dangerous abroad, as it makes it much easier
for authoritarian regimes to spy on their citizens. The Chinese
government has used the Chinese version of Skype instant messaging
software to monitor text conversations and block undesirable words and
phrases. It and other authoritarian regimes routinely monitor all
Internet traffic — which, except for e-commerce and banking
transactions, is rarely encrypted against prying eyes.
With a little effort and political will, we could solve these problems.
Companies could be required under fair practices law to allow your data
to be released back to you with just a click so that you can erase your
digital footprints or simply take your business (and data) elsewhere.
They could also be held to the promises they make about content sold
through the cloud: If they sell you an e-book, they can’t take it back
or make it less functional later. To increase security, companies that
keep their data in the cloud could adopt safer Internet communications
and password practices, including the use of biometrics like
fingerprints to validate identity.
And some governments can be persuaded — or perhaps required by their
independent judiciaries — to treat data entrusted to the cloud with the
same level of privacy protection as data held personally. The Supreme
Court declared in 1961 that a police search of a rented house for a
whiskey still was a violation of the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of
the tenant, even though the landlord had given permission for the
search. Information stored in the cloud deserves similar safeguards.
But the most difficult challenge — both to grasp and to solve — of the
cloud is its effect on our freedom to innovate. The crucial legacy of
the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or
sell that code to you — and the vendors of the PC and its operating
system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about
which answering machine you decide to buy. Microsoft might want you to
run Word and Internet Explorer, but those had better be good products
or you’ll switch with a few mouse clicks to OpenOffice orFirefox.
Promoting competition is only the tip of the iceberg — there are also
the thousands of applications so novel that they don’t yet compete with
anything. These tend to be produced by tinkerers and hackers. Instant
messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing and the Web itself all exist
thanks to people out in left field, often writing for fun rather than
money, who are able to tempt the rest of us to try out what they’ve
done.
This freedom is at risk in the cloud, where the vendor of a platform
has much more control over whether and how to let others write new
software. Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site
but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a
fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court
controversy or that they simply don’t like. The iPhone’s outside apps
act much more as if they’re in the cloud than on your phone: Apple can
decide who gets to write code for your phone and which of those
offerings will be allowed to run. The company has used this power in
ways that Bill Gates never dreamed of when he was the king of Windows:
Apple is reported to have censored e-book apps that contain
controversial content, eliminated games with political overtones, and
blocked uses for the phone that compete with the company’s products.
The market is churning through these issues. Amazon is offering a
generic cloud-computing infrastructure so anyone can set up new
software on a new Web site without gatekeeping by the likes of
Facebook. Google’s Android platform is being used in a new generation
of mobile phones with fewer restrictions on outside code. But the
dynamics here are complicated. When we vest our activities and
identities in one place in the cloud, it takes a lot of dissatisfaction
for us to move. And many software developers who once would have been
writing whatever they wanted for PCs are simply developing less
adventurous, less subversive, less game-changing code under the
watchful eyes of Facebook and Apple.
If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose
proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to
ensure that their platforms do not discriminate. Such a demand could
take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more
subtle set of incentives — tax breaks or liability relief — that nudge
companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a
level playing field on which they could lure users from competing,
mighty incumbents.
We’ve only just begun to measure this problem, even as we fly directly
into the cloud. That’s not a reason to turn around. But we must make
sure the cloud does not hinder the creation of revolutionary software
that, like the Web itself, can seem esoteric at first but utterly
necessary later.
Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at
Harvard, is the author of “The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop
It.”
U.S. Justice Department Eyeing Telecom
Probe: Report
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Filed at 3:20 p.m. ET
July 6, 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has begun looking at
big telecom companies to try to determine if they have abused their
market power, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on
Monday.
The journal, which cited people familiar with the matter, said the
Antitrust Division's review was in its very early stages and was not a
formal probe of any specific company.
The country's biggest operators are AT&T Inc <T.N> and
Verizon <Communications <VZ.N>.
Lawmakers have recently raised questions about whether large wireless
carriers were hurting smaller rivals by entering exclusive agreements
with the makers of popular phones. Deals like AT&T's multiyear
agreement with Apple Inc <AAPL.O> for exclusive rights to sell
the iPhone in the U.S. are at the center of some lawmakers' concerns.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel referred questions on any probe to the
Department of Justice. But he defended the practice of exclusive
agreements between carriers and phone makers, saying they spurred
competition and helped companies collaborate on new features.
Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said that his company, which
is the biggest U.S. mobile service, had had no notice from the Justice
Department about any probe into handset exclusivity. Verizon Wireless
is a venture of Verizon Communications <VZ.N> and Vodafone Group
Plc <VOD.L>.
John Taylor, a spokesman for Sprint Nextel <S.N>, the No. 3 U.S.
mobile service which has an exclusive agreement to sell Palm Inc's
<PALM.O> high-profile Pre phone, declined comment on the reported
probe.
He also defended exclusive handset agreements as pro-competitive. "We
think that without these exclusivity arrangements carriers are less
likely to risk the investment necessary to develop and promote devices
like these," he said.
The new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius
Genachowski, plans to review the deals. According to a copy of
the
written responses to questions from Senator John Kerry obtained by
Reuters in mid-June, Genachowski said he would "promote competition and
consumer choice."
Lawmakers have also raised questions about the pricing of text messages.
Plugging In $40 Computers
NYTIMES
By Saul Hansell
May 21, 2009, 7:45 am
What would you do with a $40 Linux computer the size of
a three-prong plug adapter?
Marvell Technology Group is counting on an army of computer engineers
and hackers to answer that question. It has created a “plug computer.”
It’s a tiny plastic box that you plug into an electric outlet. There’s
no display. But there is an Ethernet jack to connect to a home network
and a USB socket for attaching a hard drive, camera or other device.
Inside is a 1.2 gigahertz Marvell chip, called an application
processor, running a version of the Linux operating system.
All this can be yours for $99 today and probably for under $40 in two
years.
“There’s not much in there,” said Sehat Sutardja, Marvell’s chief
executive and co-founder, just a few chips and the sort of power supply
used to charge a cellphone battery. Because this computer uses chips
designed for cellphones, it uses far less power than chips designed for
regular computers.
In its 13 years of existence, Marvell Technology Group has become a
major player in semiconductors, with annual sales of more than $2
billion a year. It makes more than half of the microprocessors that
control hard disk drives and is also a supplier of chips that go into
cellphones.
Mr. Sutardja envisions an explosion of innovation about to hit home
users because of the combination of open-source software and very
powerful chips that are becoming available at very low costs.
The first plausible use for the plub computer is to attach one of these
gizmos to a USB hard drive. Voila, you’ve got a network server.
CloudEngines, a startup, has in fact built a $99 plug computer called
Pogoplug, that will let you share the files on your hard drive, not
only in your home but also anywhere on the Internet.
“This creates a smart data center for the home,” Mr. Sutardja said.
Another application might be to connect a security camera to the
Internet, adding enough intelligence to help analyze images to
distinguish between a stray dog and a cat burglar.
Scientific American asked some “alpha geeks” at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory what they might do with a plug computer. One researcher
imagined a system to automatically turn on and off appliances as people
moved around the house. Another described a “life filter” that might
weed out boring e-mails before sending them on to his computer.
Ultimately, these computers may well be used in more mainstream
devices, especially for home entertainment.
“We wanted to seed the thinking of people in the market place with what
you can do with our processors,” Mr. Sutardja said. “Eventually you
won’t see the plug. We want this device to be in your TV, your stereo
system, your DVD player.”
The Marvell chips are based on designs by ARM Holdings, which have
emerged as the leading rival to Intel’s x86 chip architecture. ARM
dominates the cellphone market because of its chips’ low power usage.
ARM licenses its designs to Marvell and many other chipmakers. A year
ago, Warren East, the chief executive of ARM, predicted what would
happen when the price of ARM’s processors fell from the $10 range to 50
cents. At that level, every light switch may well be an Internet
connected computer, he said.
The plug computer idea is clearly a step in that direction. And it is
part of an even broader array of chips designed initially for phones
that will add features to many other devices.
Mr. Sutardja talked about the sort of digital photo frame you can now
buy for about $50. Add $2 in chips, and it can display high definition
movies, he said. Another $2 adds a camera. And less than a dollar adds
several microphones.
“You now have the sort of video conferencing that corporations buy for
much more money,” he said.
Not surprisingly, in Mr. Sutardja’s view, it is the sort of brain that
Marvell makes that will be in the center of all this.
“The uses of an application processor are endless,” he said. “It is up
to smart people to imagine what it can do.”
Frontier to Buy Rural Verizon Lines for
$5.3B
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:31 a.m. ET
May 13, 2009
NEW YORK (AP) -- Verizon Communications Inc. said Wednesday it reached
a deal to sell scattered phone service areas outside its main
Northeastern and Californian territories for $5.3 billion in
stock.
The buyer is Frontier Communications Corp., based in Stamford, Conn.
The company focuses on serving small towns and rural areas and will
triple in size with the deal.
The deal continues Verizon's strategy of focusing on its core areas,
where it is upgrading its phone lines to fiber optics, enabling it
offer TV service and faster Internet access. It sold off its phone
lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont for $2.3 billion last year to
Fairpoint Communications Inc. The agreement would give Frontier
4.8
million phone lines to residential and small business customers and 1
million broadband connections. Frontier currently has 2.3 million
customers.
The sale includes all of Verizon's phone lines in Arizona, Idaho,
Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon,
South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin as well as some
assets in border areas of California. Verizon shareholders will
receive one share of Frontier stock for approximately every 4.2 shares
of Verizon stock, depending on the price of Frontier shares at closing,
which is expected within a year.
Frontier shares were up 39 cents, or 5.2 percent, at $7.96 in premarket
trading Wednesday. Verizon shares gained 9 cents to $30.49.
Verizon is
also extracting $3.3 billion from the units before selling them off, by
having them pay cash to the parent company and letting them assume
debt. Frontier will issue so much stock to Verizon shareholders
that
they will end up owning 68 percent of the company.
''This is a truly transformational transaction for Frontier,'' Maggie
Wilderotter, Frontier's chief executive, said in a statement. ''With
more than 7 million access lines in 27 states, we will be the largest
provider of voice, broadband and video services focused on rural to
smaller city markets in the United States.''
Frontier also said it is cutting its annual dividend to 75 cents from
$1, freeing cash to invest in the acquired areas, including for
broadband buildouts. The cut takes its dividend yield to 9.9 percent.
Analyst Christopher King at Stifel Nicolaus noted that buyers of
Verizon phone lines have fared badly in the past -- Fairpoint is
struggling with its debt load, and the buyer of Verizon's Hawaiian
business is in bankruptcy. But Frontier will actually reduce its debt
load relative to its earnings through the transaction, King said.
The
roughly 11,000 workers that support the local landlines will move to
Frontier with union contracts intact, Verizon said.
Verizon lines in Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia,
Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia and most of California are not
affected by the deal.
FORMER
LEADER INFO
Oklahoma, Utah
Lead
Going Cell-Only; Calif, NY Lag
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:21 p.m. ET
March 11, 2009
Trendy California isn't a trendsetter when it comes to relying on cell
phones. And while the 1987 movie ''Wall Street'' helped introduce the
then-brick-sized mobile phone to popular culture, New York and other
Northeast states lag in dropping landlines. Surprisingly, Oklahoma and
Utah lead in going wireless, according to federal estimates released
Wednesday.
At least 26 percent of households are now cell-only in Oklahoma and
Utah, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated.
That rate was at least 20 percent in nine other states -- Nebraska,
Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, Texas, South Carolina and
Tennessee -- and the District of Columbia.
The study is sure to be watched closely by telecommunications companies
trying to understand state and local markets better, and by government,
academic and commercial survey researchers using telephone polling to
monitor health trends, politics and much more.
The CDC, blending its own 2007 survey data with Census updates, found
the prevalence of cell-only households varies widely by state --
sometimes within regions and even between neighboring states. This is
tied to differences by state in demographics known to predict
wireless-only ownership, especially being young and renting rather than
owning a home.
States with the fewest cell-only households: Vermont (5 percent) and
Connecticut, Delaware and South Dakota (6 percent each). South Dakota
was near the bottom even though next-door Nebraska was near the top.
Also below 10 percent: Rhode Island, New Jersey, Hawaii, California (9
percent), Montana, Massachusetts and Missouri.
In New York -- where Michael Douglas as corporate raider Gordon Gekko
roamed lower Manhattan barking orders on a huge early cell phone in
''Wall Street'' -- 11 percent of households were cell only.
The study also estimated how many adults only have cell phones. Those
estimates mostly came within a point or two of the household numbers.
The study's lead author, Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the
CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, noted the data are from
2007 and all signs indicate people keep substituting cell phones for
landlines at a steady pace.
''We would expect that today in 2009 the prevalence rates in every
state have increased, perhaps by 5 percentage points or more. What we
don't know is whether the rate of growth is the same in every state,''
Blumberg said in an interview.
By asking about telephone usage in its monthly in-person health
surveys, Blumberg's agency is the only source for data on prevalence of
cell-phone-only households. It estimates more than one in six American
homes -- 17.5 percent -- had only wireless phones as of a year ago.
The health survey doesn't have enough interviews to produce reliable
state-level estimates in most states, so Blumberg's team looked to the
Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, with large state samples.
The researchers compared CPS data on demographic groups known to be
associated with cell phone usage and adjusted the CDC state estimates
to conform.
U.S. telephone surveys, especially on the state level, typically sample
only landline phones. There's growing evidence from the 2008 election
that excluding cell phones could hurt poll accuracy, at least a little.
Blumberg noted that in health surveys omitting cell-only respondents
could, among other things, underestimate the number of smokers and
binge drinkers -- and, paradoxically, those who exercise regularly.
China will limit Internet access
during the Olympic games
DAY
By Andrew Jacobs
Published on 7/31/2008
Beijing - The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to
allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of
journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising
repeatedly that the foreign news media could “report freely” during the
games, Olympics officials acknowledged Wednesday.
Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have
been unable to access scores of Web pages - among them those that
discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown
of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty
International, the BBC, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong
newspapers.
The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places
on the Internet for its own citizens, undermine sweeping claims by
Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, that China had agreed to provide free
Web access for foreign news media during the games.
But a high-ranking IOC official said Wednesday that the committee was
aware that China would continue to censor Web sites carrying content
that Chinese propaganda authorities deemed harmful to national security
and social stability. The committee acquiesced to China's demands to
maintain such controls, said the official, who declined to be
identified.
In its negotiations with the Chinese over Internet controls, the
official said, the IOC insisted only that China provide unfettered
access to sites containing information useful to sports reporters
covering athletic competitions, not to sites that the Chinese and the
Olympic committee negotiators determined had little relevance to sports.
The official said he now believed that the Chinese defined their
national security needs more broadly than the Olympic committee had
anticipated, denying reporters access to some information that they
might need to cover the events and the host country fully.
This week, foreign news media in China were unable directly to access
an Amnesty International report that detailed what it called a
deterioration in China's human rights record in the prelude to the
games.
Chinese officials initially suggested that any troubles journalists
were having with Internet access probably stemmed from the sites
themselves, not any steps that China had taken to filter Web content.
But Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing
committee, acknowledged Wednesday that journalists would not have
uncensored Internet use during the Games.
”It has been our policy to provide the media with convenient and
sufficient access to the Internet,” said Sun. “I believe our policy
will not affect reporters' coverage of the Olympic games.”
Demand for Data Puts Engineers
in Spotlight
NYTIMES
By STEVE LOHR
Published: June 17, 2008
In Silicon Valley, the stars have long been charismatic marketing
visionaries and cool-nerd software wizards. By contrast, mechanical
engineers who design and run computer data centers were traditionally
regarded as little more than blue-collar workers in the high-tech
world. For years, they toiled in relative obscurity in the engine
rooms of the digital economy, amid the racks of servers and storage
devices that power everything from online videos to corporate e-mail
systems. Their mission was to keep the computing power plants humming,
while scant thought was given to rising costs and energy consumption.
Today, data center experts are no longer taken for granted. The torrid
growth in data centers to keep pace with the demands of Internet-era
computing, their immense need for electricity and their inefficient use
of that energy pose environmental, energy and economic challenges,
experts say. That means people with the skills to design, build
and run a data center that does not endanger the power grid are
suddenly in demand. Their status is growing, as are their salaries —
climbing more than 20 percent in the last two years into six figures
for experienced engineers.
“The data center energy problem is growing fast, and it has an economic
importance that far outweighs the electricity use,” said Jonathan G.
Koomey, a consulting professor of environmental engineering at
Stanford. “So that explains why these data center people, who haven’t
gotten a lot of glory in their careers, are in the spotlight now.”
At one time, “we were seen as sheet metal jockeys,” said Chandrakant
Patel, a mechanical engineer at Hewlett-Packard Labs who has worked in
Silicon Valley for 25 years. “But now we have a chance to change the
world for the better, using engineering and basic science.”
There is no letup in the demand for data center computing. Digital
Realty Trust, a data center landlord with more than 70 facilities, says
that customer demand for new space is running 50 percent ahead of its
capacity to build and equip data centers for the next two years. “We’re
building the railroads of the future, and we can’t keep up,” said Chris
J. Crosby, a senior vice president at Digital Realty.
For every new center, new data center administrators need to be hired.
“It takes us eight months to find a guy to run a data center,” said Mr.
Crosby.
Indeed, some data managers with only a degree from a two-year college
can command a $100,000 salary. Trade and professional conferences for
data center experts, unheard of years ago, are now commonplace.
Five-figure signing bonuses, retention bonuses and generous stock
grants have become ingredients in the compensation packages of data
center experts today.
Paul Marcoux knows the feeling of being wanted. Cisco Systems, giant
Silicon Valley maker of equipment used in data centers, recently held a
nationwide search for a vice president for “green engineering.” It
needed someone who could manage the traditional information technology
functions as well as increasingly important mechanical and electrical
systems.
Last November, Cisco found Mr. Marcoux, an electrical engineer with an
M.B.A. working at American Power Conversion, a manufacturer of power
supplies and air-conditioners for data centers. Mr. Marcoux, 57, worked
on the design and construction of about 100 data centers in his 30-year
career.
“To really make progress, we have to bridge the analog and the digital
worlds,” said Mr. Marcoux.
At Cisco, Mr. Marcoux is applying his experience to improving the
company’s data centers and its products, so that its computers
increasingly can communicate with the coolers and power generators.
“Our products need to talk to the power supplies and air-conditioners
instead of being standalone boxes,” he explained.
Cisco is just one of the many companies — and the Energy Department’s
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — working on the challenge of
making data centers operate more like seamless machines, using sensors
and software, for example, so the computers can direct air-conditioners
and fans where and what level of cooling is needed.
Mr. Patel is overseeing H.P.’s programs in energy-efficient data
centers and technology. The research includes advanced projects like
trying to replace copper wiring in server computers with laser beams.
But like other experts in the field, Mr. Patel says that data centers
can be made 30 percent to 50 percent more efficient by applying current
technology.
The pace of the data center buildup is the result of the surging use of
server computers, which in the United States rose to 11.8 million in
2007, from 2.6 million a decade earlier, according to IDC, a research
firm. Worldwide, the 10-year pattern is similar, with the server
population increasing more than fourfold to 30.3 million by 2007.
“For years and years, the attitude was just buy it, install it and
don’t worry about it,” said Vernon Turner, an analyst for IDC. “That
led to all sorts of inefficiencies. Now, we’re paying for that
behavior.”
The problem is that most computers in data centers run at 15 percent or
less of capacity on average, loafing the rest of the time, though
consuming electricity all the while. (In the old days, when they housed
a few large computers, data centers were far more efficient. Mainframe
computers run at 80 percent of capacity or more.)
The computers also generate a lot of heat, so much so that half of the
energy consumed by a typical data center is for enormous
air-conditioners, fans and other industrial equipment used mainly to
cool the high-tech facilities.
The nation’s data centers doubled their energy consumption in the five
years to 2006, exceeding the electricity used by the country’s color
televisions, according to the latest government estimates.
The availability of electricity, not just its cost, presents a threat
to the continued expansion of data center computing that can hamper
companies across the economy, as they increasingly rely on information
technology.
Based on current trends, by 2011 data center energy consumption will
nearly double again, requiring the equivalent of 25 power plants. The
world’s data centers, according to recent study from McKinsey &
Company, could well surpass the airline industry as a greenhouse gas
polluter by 2020.
Because the task ahead, analysts say, is not just building new data
centers, but also overhauling the old ones, the managers who know how
to cut energy consumption are at a premium. Most of the 6,600 data
centers in America, analysts say, will be replaced or retrofitted with
new equipment over the next several years.
They apparently have little choice. Analysts point to surveys that show
30 percent of American corporations are deferring new technology
initiatives because of data center limitations.
Mechanical and electrical engineers with experience in data center
design, air-flow modeling and power systems management are in demand.
“If you have those skills, there are jobs waiting,” says Phil
Calabrese, a mechanical engineer and director of I.B.M.’s real estate
engineering and construction unit.
No company has longer experience in the care and feeding of data
centers than I.B.M., and analysts say improving data center efficiency
will involve applying some mainframe-style management disciplines.
To exploit the opportunity, I.B.M., which built its business on
mainframes and still sells them, last fall introduced a green data
center services unit. The new group signed $300 million in contracts in
the fourth quarter of last year, and the business is growing rapidly
this year, the company says.
Now that costs and energy consumption are priorities, the data center
gurus are getting a hearing and new respect.
“After 25 years, we’re finally elevating mechanical engineering and
adding a lot of electrical engineering, computer science and applied
physics,” said Mr. Patel of Hewlett-Packard. “I wish I were 20 years
younger.”
Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103
Countries
NYTIMES
By JOHN MARKOFF
March 29, 2009
TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers
and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private
offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian
researchers have concluded.
In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the
system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in
China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese
government was involved.
The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International
Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of
the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly
denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or
malware.
Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less
than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103
countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries
and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile
centers in India, Brussels, London and New York.
The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage,
said they believed that in addition to the spying on the Dalai Lama,
the system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on the governments
of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.
Intelligence analysts say many governments, including those of China,
Russia and the United States, and other parties use sophisticated
computer programs to covertly gather information.
The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to
light in terms of countries affected.
This is also believed to be the first time researchers have been able
to expose the workings of a computer system used in an intrusion of
this magnitude.
Still going strong, the operation continues to invade and monitor more
than a dozen new computers a week, the researchers said in their
report, “Tracking ‘GhostNet’: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.”
They said they had found no evidence that United States government
offices had been infiltrated, although a NATO computer was monitored by
the spies for half a day and computers of the Indian Embassy in
Washington were infiltrated.
The malware is remarkable both for its sweep — in computer jargon, it
has not been merely “phishing” for random consumers’ information, but
“whaling” for particular important targets — and for its Big
Brother-style capacities. It can, for example, turn on the camera and
audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to
see and hear what goes on in a room. The investigators say they do not
know if this facet has been employed.
The researchers were able to monitor the commands given to infected
computers and to see the names of documents retrieved by the spies, but
in most cases the contents of the stolen files have not been
determined. Working with the Tibetans, however, the researchers found
that specific correspondence had been stolen and that the intruders had
gained control of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai
Lama’s organization.
The electronic spy game has had at least some real-world impact, they
said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by
the Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government
made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working
for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese
citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back
to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to
stop her political activities.
The Toronto researchers said they had notified international law
enforcement agencies of the spying operation, which in their view
exposed basic shortcomings in the legal structure of cyberspace. The
F.B.I. declined to comment on the operation.
Although the Canadian researchers said that most of the computers
behind the spying were in China, they cautioned against concluding that
China’s government was involved. The spying could be a nonstate,
for-profit operation, for example, or one run by private citizens in
China known as “patriotic hackers.”
“We’re a bit more careful about it, knowing the nuance of what happens
in the subterranean realms,” said Ronald J. Deibert, a member of the
research group and an associate professor of political science at Munk.
“This could well be the C.I.A. or the Russians. It’s a murky realm that
we’re lifting the lid on.”
A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York dismissed the idea
that China was involved. “These are old stories and they are nonsense,”
the spokesman, Wenqi Gao, said. “The Chinese government is opposed to
and strictly forbids any cybercrime.”
The Toronto researchers, who allowed a reporter for The New York Times
to review the spies’ digital tracks, are publishing their findings in
Information Warfare Monitor, an online publication associated with the
Munk Center.
At the same time, two computer researchers at Cambridge University in
Britain who worked on the part of the investigation related to the
Tibetans, are releasing an independent report. They do fault China, and
they warned that other hackers could adopt the tactics used in the
malware operation.
“What Chinese spooks did in 2008, Russian crooks will do in 2010 and
even low-budget criminals from less developed countries will follow in
due course,” the Cambridge researchers, Shishir Nagaraja and Ross
Anderson, wrote in their report, “The Snooping Dragon: Social Malware
Surveillance of the Tibetan Movement.”
In any case, it was suspicions of Chinese interference that led to the
discovery of the spy operation. Last summer, the office of the Dalai
Lama invited two specialists to India to audit computers used by the
Dalai Lama’s organization. The specialists, Greg Walton, the editor of
Information Warfare Monitor, and Mr. Nagaraja, a network security
expert, found that the computers had indeed been infected and that
intruders had stolen files from personal computers serving several
Tibetan exile groups.
Back in Toronto, Mr. Walton shared data with colleagues at the Munk
Center’s computer lab.
One of them was Nart Villeneuve, 34, a graduate student and self-taught
“white hat” hacker with dazzling technical skills. Last year, Mr.
Villeneuve linked the Chinese version of the Skype communications
service to a Chinese government operation that was systematically
eavesdropping on users’ instant-messaging sessions.
Early this month, Mr. Villeneuve noticed an odd string of 22 characters
embedded in files created by the malicious software and searched for it
with Google. It led him to a group of computers on Hainan Island, off
China, and to a Web site that would prove to be critically important.
In a puzzling security lapse, the Web page that Mr. Villeneuve found
was not protected by a password, while much of the rest of the system
uses encryption.
Mr. Villeneuve and his colleagues figured out how the operation worked
by commanding it to infect a system in their computer lab in Toronto.
On March 12, the spies took their own bait. Mr. Villeneuve watched a
brief series of commands flicker on his computer screen as someone —
presumably in China — rummaged through the files. Finding nothing of
interest, the intruder soon disappeared.
Through trial and error, the researchers learned to use the system’s
Chinese-language “dashboard” — a control panel reachable with a
standard Web browser — by which one could manipulate the more than
1,200 computers worldwide that had by then been infected.
Infection happens two ways. In one method, a user’s clicking on a
document attached to an e-mail message lets the system covertly install
software deep in the target operating system. Alternatively, a user
clicks on a Web link in an e-mail message and is taken directly to a
“poisoned” Web site.
The researchers said they avoided breaking any laws during three weeks
of monitoring and extensively experimenting with the system’s
unprotected software control panel. They provided, among other
information, a log of compromised computers dating to May 22, 2007.
They found that three of the four control servers were in different
provinces in China — Hainan, Guangdong and Sichuan — while the fourth
was discovered to be at a Web-hosting company based in Southern
California.
Beyond that, said Rafal A. Rohozinski, one of the investigators,
“attribution is difficult because there is no agreed upon international
legal framework for being able to pursue investigations down to their
logical conclusion, which is highly local.”
Lawmakers say computers were hacked
from China
DAY
By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN
Published on 6/12/2008
Washington - Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by
people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting
the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents.
Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing's record on human
rights, said the compromised computers contained information about
political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said
he'd been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other
U.S. officials. Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf said four of his
computers were compromised, beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris
Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said
two of his computers were attacked, in December 2006 and March 2007.
Wolf said that following one of the attacks, a car with license plates
belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in
Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.
During the same time period, The House International Relations
Committee - now known as the House Foreign Affairs Committee - was
targeted at least once by someone working inside China, said committee
spokeswoman Lynne Weil.
Wednesday's disclosures came as U.S. authorities continued to
investigate whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a
government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce
Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack
into Commerce Department computers. The Pentagon last month
acknowledged at a closed House Intelligence committee meeting that its
vast computer network is scanned or attacked by outsiders more than 300
million times each day.
Wolf said the FBI had told him that computers of other House members
and at least one House committee had been accessed by sources working
from inside China. The Virginia Republican suggested that Senate
computers could have been attacked as well. He said the hacking
of computers in his Capitol Hill office began in August 2006, that he
had known about it for a long time and that he had been discouraged
from disclosing it by people in the U.S. government he refused to
identify.
”The problem has been that no one wants to talk about this issue,” he
said. “Every time I've started to do something I've been told 'You
can't do this.' A lot of people have made it very, very difficult.”
The FBI and the White House declined to comment. The Bush
administration has been increasingly reluctant publicly to discuss or
acknowledge cyber attacks, especially ones traced to China.
In the Senate, the office of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the
Senate's subcommittee on humanitarian issues, asked the sergeant at
arms to investigate whether Senate computers have been compromised.
Wolf said the first computer hacked in his office belonged to the
staffer who works on human rights cases and that others included the
machines of Wolf's chief of staff and legislative director.
”They knew which ones to get,” said Dan Scandling, who currently is on
leave of absence from his job as Wolf's chief of staff. “It was a very
sophisticated operation,” he said. “The FBI verified that it had been
done.”
Smith said the attacks on his office computers were “very much an
orchestrated effort.”
He said that after the first intrusion in December 2006, “that was the
last time” his office put the names of dissidents on its computers.
In Beijing, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no immediate
comment on the allegations by Wolf and Smith. Last week, China
denied the accusations regarding Gutierrez's laptop and the alleged
effort to hack Commerce Department computers. Wolf said he was
introducing a House resolution that would help ensure protection for
all House computers and information systems.
It calls for the chief administrative officer and sergeant at arms of
the House, in consultation with the FBI, to alert members and their
staffs to the danger of electronic attacks. Wolf also wants lawmakers
to be fully briefed on ways to safeguard official records from
electronic security breaches.
”My own suspicion is I was targeted by China because of my long history
of speaking out about China's abysmal human rights record,” Wolf said
in a draft of remarks he prepared to give on the House floor.
He said Congress should hold hearings, specifically the House
Intelligence Committee, Armed Services Committee and Government
Operations Committee. Speaking generally in May 2006, Wolf called
Chinese spying efforts “frightening” and said it was no secret that the
United States is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services.
Wolf thinks that President Bush should stay away from the Olympics
because of China's human rights record. He also has been
outspoken on the subject of violence in the Darfur region of Sudan,
where China has major oil interests. Smith has introduced the
Global Online Freedom Act which would prohibit U.S. Internet companies
from cooperating with countries such as China that restrict information
about human rights and democracy on the Internet.
Wolf and Smith both traveled to Beijing 17 years ago seeking the
release of 77 people imprisoned or under house arrest because of their
religious activities.
Recording Industry Getting Tougher On
State's Students For Illegal Downloads; Settle Now Or Face A Federal
Lawsuit, Lawyers Tell The Accused In Form Letter
DAY
Published on 2/15/2008
Free downloads have never cost so much.
Since last August, 84 University of Connecticut students, along with
many others from Yale, Fairfield University, and Trinity College, have
received letters from attorneys representing several major record
companies threatening heavy fines and legal action against the
students, who have allegedly downloaded music illegally using the
school's Internet server.
The letters state, “You have been infringing copyrights owned by the
Record Companies.”
The correspondence, obtained this week by The Day and addressed Jan. 9
from the Denver-based law firm Holme, Roberts and Owen, goes on to say
that the students had 20 days “to settle the claims for a significantly
reduced amount.”
If the accused students do not settle, the record companies promise to
file a federal lawsuit, according to the letter, and the students would
face much stiffer penalties compared to what the companies' settlement
offers.
A spokesman for the law firm said it doesn't comment on the letters.
One Canterbury man, who is the father of a UConn sophomore, said his
daughter received a presettlement letter. The man asked not to be
identified because he fears retaliation from the record companies. When
he called the settlement hotline, the law firm asked for $3,000
compensation for the 350 songs his daughter had downloaded.
“It's totally ridiculous — it's extortion,” he said. “They're kind of
bullying you.”
The man said his daughter did not pay the fine and now faces $262,000
in penalties from the record companies.
The record companies represented by the law firm are the heavyweights
of the industry — EMI Recorded Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment,
Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as all of their
subsidiaries.
Since last February, the Recording Industry Association of America has
been waging an aggressive campaign against illegal downloads,
especially cracking down on colleges and universities, because there
are disproportionately higher incidences of illegal file sharing on
college campuses. More than 2,350 students have settled with the RIAA
since the stepped-up campaign began, according to the association.
The recording industry does not know the names of the students yet,
just the specific IP addresses of their computers; however, the
companies can compel the university to reveal the names by issuing a
subpoena.
“We're familiar with these kinds of claims, and we have no direct
authority to intervene,” Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said
earlier this week.
According to Blumenthal and an online database for federal court cases,
the university has not yet been served with a subpoena.
Blumenthal said he has been contacted by a relatively small number of
people seeking help, and his office has “successfully moderated or
reduced such penalties in the past by appealing to the companies' sense
of fairness and common sense.”
University officials said that instances of illegal downloading on
campus has drastically decreased over the past years, but combating it
is still a challenge.
“It's a constantly moving target,” said Michael Kerntke, chief
information officer at UConn.
Kerntke said the college has software to prevent the type of
person-to-person file sharing that has led to legal challenges, but
students who are determined to download files illegally will find a way
to do so.
“The RIAA is obviously trying to enforce royalty payments in some way,
shape or form,” Kerntke said. As a way to help students avoid the
temptation of illicit file sharing, the university points students to a
site that allows free, legal downloads, www.ruckus.com.
In a Feb. 6 post on the university's Web site, Dean of Students Lee
Williams warned about the consequences of illegal file sharing.
“When the RIAA contacts the University, and produces a legal subpoena,
we are obliged to give them information about students' identification
and online activity,” Williams wrote in her post. “All we can (and
will) do on your behalf is notify you that the RIAA is after you. At
that point, you'll have to either pay this fine, or hire a lawyer to
fight this.”
The experience of people who have fought that legal battle has not been
good. Just this week Oklahoma State University revealed the names of 11
students accused of illegal downloads. The students and the school were
unsuccessful in trying to quash the RIAA subpoena.
“The bottom line is: illegal downloading is ... illegal. And it will
cost you a bundle,” Williams said in her message.
The Amazon "Kindel" (seen above)
Sony to Launch a Wireless e-Reader
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:42 p.m. ETAugust 25, 2009
NEW YORK (AP) -- Sony Corp. plans to offer an e-book reader with the
ability to wirelessly download books, injecting more competition in a
small but fast-growing market by adopting a key feature of the rival
Kindle from Amazon.com.
Sony's $399 Reader Daily Edition will go on sale by December, Sony
executives said Tuesday at an event at the New York Public Library. The
device has a 7-inch touch screen and will be able to get books, daily
newspapers and other reading material over AT&T Inc.'s cellular
network.
Sony has sold e-book reading devices with ''electronic ink'' displays
in the United States since 2006, but has seen most of the attention
stolen by Amazon.com Inc., which launched the Kindle with similar e-ink
technology a year later. The latest version of the Kindle -- which is
not controlled by touching the screen -- costs $299 and uses Sprint
Nextel Corp.'s wireless network for downloads.
On Tuesday, Sony also began selling a ''Pocket Edition'' e-book reader
with a 5-inch screen, for $199, and a larger $299 touch-screen model.
Neither has wireless capability, so both have to be connected to a
computer to acquire books.
Though Sony is following in Amazon's footsteps by adding wireless
capability, its e-book strategy differs in crucial respects.
The only copy-protected books the Kindle can display are from Amazon's
store, and the only devices the store supports are the Kindle, the
iPhone and the iPod Touch.
Sony, on the other hand, has committed to an open e-book standard,
meaning its Readers can show copy-protected books from a variety of
stores, and the books can be moved to and read on a variety of devices,
including cell phones.
Sony also announced Tuesday that the Readers will be able to load
e-books ''loaned'' from local libraries. A library card will provide
access to free books that expire after 21 days.
The library connection ''would seem to be something Amazon would never
embrace, so that could be a key differentiator,'' said Richard Doherty,
director of research firm The Envisioneering Group.
The alliance with AT&T helps the Dallas-based carrier further
expand the use of its wireless network beyond cell phones. Like other
carriers, AT&T is looking for new avenues of growth now that almost
every adult has a cell phone. In July, it announced that it would
provide the connection to another upcoming e-book reader from Plastic
Logic Ltd., which will use the e-book store of Barnes & Noble Inc.
Reader owners won't be charged a subscription fee for wireless access,
said Steve Haber, head of Sony's U.S. reading division.
Instead, the bookseller will likely have to pay AT&T for the
wireless access, out of money it charges for the books, similar to the
way Amazon pays Sprint. Sony's multi-store strategy makes that
challenging. The Daily Edition will initially have wireless access only
to Sony's e-book store, Haber said.
Sony said the names of the newspapers that will be available on the
device will be announced later. The Kindle already offers 46
newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and
USA Today.
Sony's U.S. shares rose 43 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $27.01 in midday
trading, while Seattle-based Amazon gained 30 cents to $84.80.
7 May 2009
|
By Michael
Fitzpatrick
BBC News
|
The Kindle DX is designed for newspapers
and periodicals - but is only black and white
The rise and rise of e-readers
Amazon's launch of its first dedicated e-reader for
newspapers and magazines points to a future when digital and analogue
publishing begins to merge.
Nearly double the size of the book giant's existing
e-reader, Amazon's wireless Kindle DX has adopted a tabloid-like format
for ease of reading newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times
and the Washington Post which have announced they will launch pilots
editions on Kindle DX this summer.
Although others, most notably the Japanese and the
Dutch, have trials underway that publish tabloid-size digital editions
for other handheld e-reader devices, Amazon with its mighty marketing
clout represents the first mainstream commercial stab at the market.
Increased graphics resolution and the larger size of
the tablet-like, the $489 Kindle DX is also a departure from previous
e-readers on the market, although Japan's Fujitsu has a similar sized
colour reader on the market for twice the price.
"Cookbooks, computer books, and textbooks - anything
highly formatted -shine on the Kindle DX," claims Jeff Bezos,
Amazon.com Founder and CEO underlining the new Kindle's purported
better handling of detail and graphics.
Amazon already has a hit on its hands with the Kindle
2. The same heft as a paperback, weighing about eight ounces, such
e-ink readers are basically handheld screens on which you can read
words page by page reasonably comfortably.
Amazon says it has already sold more than 500,000 of
its $359 Kindle e-readers, which buyers use mostly as a portable
library downloading print media via a wireless connection.
The new Kindle DX, like other popular e-readers such as
the Sony reader, employs "e-ink" technology that far enhances the
reading of digitized print.
Sony has a rival e-reader on the
market
|
As there is no backlight and no glare, the effect is
not unlike reading a page in a regular book. Publications are bought
online making paid subscriptions, along the lines of paid for music on
iTunes, a possibility.
Such benefits have not been lost on newspaper editors
who are desperate to find alternatives to today's failing business
models of newspaper publishing.
Alan Rusbridger, the editor of UK newspaper The
Guardian, for one, has predicted there might be an "iPod moment" for
the industry with the coming of a handheld device on which reading a
newspaper will become commonplace.
However excited some in the ailing newspaper and
magazine industry are over the new Kindle, there are still severe
shortcomings, not least that content offerings still come only in black
and white.
Vastly superior to reading off a computer monitor or
conventional mobile phone screen Amazon's e-readers and their ilk are
products of electronic-ink technology that creates clear, easy-to-read
text even in sunlight.
With electronic ink, charged particles migrate under
the influence of an electric field. Depending on the field applied,
either the white or the black particles move to the front of the screen
to make up the image.
The technology used in most e-readers are adaptations
of this form of "ePaper" and "e-ink" that create bubbles of e-ink by
pushing ink-like particles around under its light-grey plastic skin.
As a leader in the field of e-paper development
Japanese researchers at Fujitsu Frontech have attempted to sidestep the
mono-chromatic drawbacks by creating colour e-ink and went to market
last month with a full colour e-reader.
Dubbed Flepia, the three-quarters of a pound device
displays 260,000 colours - good enough to display magazine-like
graphics, is slightly smaller than a sheet of A4 and just over a
centimetre thick.
Fuji sells a colour e-reader - but
it is expensive
|
Colour for such e-ink technology does not come cheap,
however, and Flepia retails at $1,000 in Japan.
Looking at the Flepia, the future of e-ink digital
e-readers, says Tokyo-based new media journalist Nobuyuki Hayashi, has
a long way to go, not least on price.
"Flepia has a too slow refresh rate (1.8 seconds),
users have to use a stylus to turn pages and its user interface is
no-frill, no-fun and non-intuitive. In my opinion this does not look
like a serious consumer device," he says.
"An easier-to-use device from outside of the country
such as Kindle (or the iPhone), will probably eliminate this somewhat
alien product."
Whatever the outcome of both Fujitsu's and Amazon's new
formats the rivals have entered an increasingly crowded marketplace for
the e- reader.
Sony and a Dutch firm iRex have both experimented with
newspaper subscriptions on their paperback sized e-readers.
The Kindle DX has a 9.7 inche
screen and can display Adobe Acrobat files
|
Since Christmas, iRex has offered over 800 newspapers
from 81 countries on its new monochrome but high- resolution iRex
Digital Reader 1000 series.
While French telecoms provider Orange has just finished
an e-reader trial in partnership with five French newspapers, including
Le Monde and Les Echos, and will be looking to start a proper
commercial service by the end of the year.
But despite having success with using an e-reader with
its e-reading clients, Orange is undecided which platform is best
suited to delivering daily print media subscriptions "as the market is
moving too fast to tell".
With smartphones and net books falling in price, such
all in one devices - suitable for anything from book reading to
watching TV - might prove a more convenient platform for publishing and
even present better business models for publishers as Japan has found.
"Expect a slow beginning and a period of rapid
evolution before e-reader's become ubiquitous, " says Japanese media
consultant David Kilburn.
"They will also need to compete successfully with what
people can already do using their mobile phones."
Already "keitai culture", the pervasiveness of mobile
phone usage, as generated by Japan's early embracing of mobiles is
making its impact felt in other activities such as newsgathering and
newspaper reading.
The popularity of Amazon's Kindle and the Sony e-book
reader suggests there is a market that has been poorly exploited so far
by smartphones in the west while Japan is racing ahead with manga by
e-mail and paid for newspaper subscriptions by phone.
Ryo Shimizu CEO of applications developer UEI in Tokyo
says the phone as book, magazine or sketchpad is already something that
has taken off in Japan.
"The killer application in Japan is CGM, such as novels
or comics, which can be read by mobile phones. Here, mobiles are
already a true alternative to paper."
Looking at Japan's reach for the handier keitais, going
bigger isn't always going to be better, even for Amazon.
|
Click above for on-line "Brave New World" - the
original. After many years the "Revisited" came out...from
Wikipedia:
Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Row,
1958, 1965), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New
World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether
the world had moved towards or away from his vision of the future from
the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a
reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future but in Brave
New World Revisited he concluded that the world was becoming much
more like Brave New World much faster than he thought...
Rell seeks to safeguard citizenry's
private information from online search sites
Manchester Journal Inquirer
By: Harlan Levy
12/25/2007
Complaints about online directory assistance sites that reveal
extensive personal data have prompted Gov. M. Jodi Rell to start
developing a legislative package to help
In a news release, Rell said Monday that she's received complaints
about online search engines that list not only names, addresses, and
telephone numbers but also people's ages, places of work, and other
personal information.
Rell said she plans to propose restrictions that would likely be in the
form of an "opt-out" registry that's an electronic version of the state
and federal "Do Not Call" list, which blocks telemarketing calls to
citizens whose phone numbers are on the list.
"Anyone who goes to WhitePages.com or 411.com will find personal
information published that many people may want protected," Rell said.
"This is a safety and security issue, particularly for our elderly
citizens who too often are targeted by scam artists and other
opportunists."
A third site, veromi.net, provides the names of possible relatives and
roommates, as well as a person's name, address, age, and other
information.
The opt-out registry Rell outlined would establish a centralized,
one-time process for Connecticut residents to remove some or all of
their private information from Internet search sites, credit card
solicitations, direct mail lists, and other records.
"There have long been Web sites that, for a modest fee, specialize in
taking bits and pieces from each of these sources and assembling a
surprisingly complete profile of an individual, including Social
Security number, address history, employer and even the make and model
of their car," Rell said in the release.
"Now some sites are adding even more personal information to search
results ... I am concerned this 'personal information creep' will put
more and more individual privacy at risk."
Rell said she understands that these sites are breaking no law by
gathering and disseminating this information.
Nevertheless, she said, an opt-out registry "will in no way jeopardize
my commitment to transparency in government," because "I believe there
are reasonable protections we can explore without compromising the
Freedom of Information Act and the principles of open government."
One impediment is that the First Amendment of the Constitution
prohibits the restraint of free speech. That means that the
directory-assistance Web sites cannot be forced to remove any data that
is public. And one's name, spouse's name, address (unless unpublished),
age, and workplace are probably all available to the public, whether
they can be easily found or not.
If it's public, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, "there are no
constitutional problems that I would foresee. The government cannot
censor what's in the public realm."
What the government can censor, Blumenthal said, is a party tracking
and selling the private information that comes from an individual's
Internet dealings and purchases without the individual's knowledge.
Three weeks ago Blumenthal proposed a "Do Not Track" list similar to a
Canadian program that would prohibit such conduct by telemarketers and
others who use, buy, or sell such information that they surreptitiously
obtain without consent. Blumenthal wants next year's legislature to
enact the measure.
"The basic concept is to prevent collecting information without the
consumer's consent," Blumenthal said.
"If the consumer objects to collecting the information and says, 'Do
not track me when I travel the Internet,' that wish should be
respected, and this law would compel marketers to protect that right
under consumer privacy."
That protection would come from state law and not under the right to
privacy under the Fourth Amendment, Blumenthal added.
"The Fourth Amendment right is against the government invading my
privacy and telling me what to do," he said.
Privacy laws being scrutinized
Rell noted that many states are examining their privacy laws, security
measures, and the kinds of information they collect, manage, and
distribute in light of identity theft, fraud, and other computer crimes.
The state has endured several recent incidents of misplaced computers
with vast amounts of unprotected personal data. Protective reactions
followed soon thereafter.
In October, Rell announced that the Department of Information
Technology had selected a new encryption tool for use by state agencies
for laptop computers and other mobile computing and storage devices.
On Sept. 10, Rell announced a new mobile computing and storage device
security policy requiring agencies to adhere to new restrictions and
accountability measures, including mandatory risk assessments and
written authorization from the agency head for any instance in which
restricted or confidential data must reside on a mobile device for
business reasons.
Any data residing on a mobile device under these controlled
circumstances must be encrypted, the amount of data and length of time
it may reside on the mobile device must be limited, and protections
from unauthorized access and disclosure are required.
Rell also directed all agencies to assess and purge sensitive data
currently on laptop computers and portable storage devices if there was
no compelling business need for the information to be so stored.
"Privacy concerns are constantly evolving," Rell said. "We must not
only keep up with them but do our best to stay ahead of the curve."
Rell said she will ask state agencies to review private information
about residents that the state collects, manages, and distributes.
"While bearing in mind such traditional functions such as tax
collection, media and freedom-of-Information requests and law
enforcement, I want to ensure that the security of private information
within state government is protected," Rell said.
Recent new laws in other states sharply curtail the business use and
release of Social Security numbers and specify that businesses may not
retain information from the "magnetic stripe" on the back of credit and
debit cards for longer than 48 hours.
On Its Own, Europe
Backs Web Privacy Fights
NYTIMES
By SUZANNE DALEY
August 9, 2011
MADRID — All 90 people wanted information deleted from the Web.
Among them was a victim of domestic violence who discovered that her
address could easily be found through Google. Another, well into middle
age now, thought it was unfair that a few computer key strokes could
unearth an account of her arrest in her college days.
They might not have received much of a hearing in the United States,
where Google is based. But here, as elsewhere in Europe, an idea has
taken hold —individuals should have a “right to be forgotten” on the
Web.
Spain’s government is now championing this cause. It has ordered Google
to stop indexing information about 90 citizens who filed formal
complaints with its Data Protection Agency. The case is now in court
and being watched closely across Europe for how it might affect the
control citizens will have over information they posted, or which was
posted about them, on the Web.
Whatever the ruling in the Spanish case, the European Union is also
expected to weigh in with new “right to be forgotten” regulations this
fall. Viviane Reding, the European Union’s justice commissioner, has
offered few details of what she has in mind. But she has made clear she
is determined to give privacy watchdogs greater power.
“I cannot accept that individuals have no say over their data once it
has been launched into cyberspace,” she said last month. She said she
had heard the argument that more control was impossible, and that
Europeans should “get over it.”
But, Ms. Reding said, “I don’t agree.”
On this issue, experts say, Europe and the United States have largely
parted company.
“What you really have here is a trans-Atlantic clash,” said Franz
Werro, who was born and raised in Switzerland and is now a law
professor at Georgetown University. “The two cultures really aren’t
going in the same direction when it comes to privacy rights. “
For instance, in the United States, Mr. Werro said, courts have
consistently found that the right to publish the truth about someone’s
past supersedes any right to privacy. Europeans, he said, see things
differently: “In Europe you don’t have the right to say anything about
anybody, even if it is true.”
Mr. Werro says Europe sees the need to balance freedom of speech and
the right to know against a person’s right to privacy or dignity,
concepts often enshrined in European laws. The European perspective was
shaped by the way information was collected and used against
individuals under dictators like Franco and Hitler and under Communism.
Government agencies routinely compiled dossiers on citizens as a means
of control.
Court cases over these issues have popped up in many corners of Europe.
In Germany, for instance, Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, who
became
infamous for killing a German actor in 1990, are suing Wikipedia to
drop the entry about them. German privacy laws allow suppression of
criminal identities in news accounts once people have paid their debt
to society. The lawyer for the two killers argues that criminals have a
right to privacy too, and a right to be left alone.
Google has also faced suits in several countries, including Germany,
Switzerland and the Czech Republic, over its efforts to collect
street-by-street photographs for its Street View feature. In Germany,
where courts found that Street View was legal, Google allowed
individuals and businesses to opt out, and about 250,000 have.
The issue, however, has had no traction in the United States, where
anyone has the right to take pictures of anything in plain sight from
the street.
Google declined to discuss the Spanish cases, instead issuing a
statement saying that requiring search engines to ignore some data
“would have a profound chilling effect on free expression without
protecting people’s privacy.”
In a blog post this year, Peter Fleischer, Google’s global privacy
counsel, discussed the subject under the headline, “Foggy thinking
about the Right to Oblivion.” The blog post made clear that he was
speaking for himself, not Google. But he left little doubt that he
considered Europe’s efforts to forge new privacy rights poorly defined
and misguided, raising complex legal and technical questions.
In fact, the phrase “right to be forgotten” is being used to cover a
batch of issues, ranging from those in the Spanish case to the behavior
of companies seeking to make money from private information that can be
collected on the Web.
Some European experts feel that new rules of play need to be drawn up
anyway.
Mr. Werro says many Europeans, including himself, are broadly
uncomfortable with the way personal information is found by search
engines and used for commerce. When ads pop up on his screen, clearly
linked to subjects that are of interest to him, he says he finds it
Orwellian.
A recent poll conducted by the European Union found that most Europeans
agree. Three out of four said they were worried about how Internet
companies used their information and wanted the right to delete
personal data at any time. Ninety percent wanted the European Union to
take action on the right to be forgotten.
Spain’s Data Protection Agency, created in the 1990s to protect
individual rights, believes that search engines have altered the
process by which most data ends up forgotten — and therefore
adjustments need to be made.
The deputy director of the agency, Jesús Rubí, pointed to
the official
government gazette, which used to publish every weekday, including
bankruptcy auctions, official pardons, and who passed the civil service
exams. Usually 220 pages of fine print, it quickly ended up gathering
dust on various backroom shelves. The information was still there, but
not easily accessible.
Then two years ago, the 350-year-old publication went online, making it
possible for embarrassing information — no matter how old — to be
obtained easily.
Mr. Rubí said he doubted that anyone meant for the information
to haunt
citizens forever: “The law obliges us to put this info in the gazette.
But I am sure that if the law was written today, lawmakers would say
O.K., publish this, but it should not be accessible by a search engine.”
The publisher of the government publication, Fernando Pérez,
said it
was meant to foster transparency. Lists of scholarship winners, for
instance, make it hard for the government officials to steer all the
money to their own children. “But maybe,” he said, “there is
information that has a life cycle and only has value for a certain
time.”
Experts say that Google and other search engines see some of these
court cases as an assault on a principle of law already established —
that search engines are essentially not responsible for the information
they corral from the Web, and hope the Spanish court agrees. The
companies believe if there are privacy issues, the complainants should
address those who posted the material on the Web.
But some experts in Europe believe that search engines should probably
be reined in. “They say they are not publishing, so you should address
yourself elsewhere,” said Javier de la Cueva, a Madrid lawyer
specializing in the relationship between law and technology. “But they
are the ones that are spreading the word. Without them no one would
find these things.”
Major Internet hubs see lesser influence
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
October 7, 2007
NEW YORK - The recent rush by major Internet portals to buy advertising
companies and extend their sales networks is a sign that the business
of being a one-stop shop for information and entertainment isn't what
it used to be. Gone are the days of emphasizing ways to attract
and keep visitors — the way television networks long have operated — by
creating destinations with anything people might need for work, leisure
or companionship.
Instead, those companies are now more aggressively trying to follow Web
surfers elsewhere — and bring lucrative advertising to them.
As people increasingly turn to blogs, social-networking sites and other
sources of user-generated media, Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft
Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL have spent more than $10 billion
collectively this year to acquire companies and technologies that help
extend their online advertising networks. So instead of relying
solely on being portals for consumers, the major companies are creating
one-stop shops for advertisers, who are increasingly wanting to buy ads
centrally and place them where the eyeballs are. The networks take care
of feeding the ads to smaller sites.
"We're not interested in building yesterday's portal," said Ron Grant,
AOL's president and chief operating officer. "Consumers are finding
what they are looking for is coming from more and more fragmented
places. We need a way for advertisers to take advantage of that
fragmentation."
That shift is important for the major Internet businesses to grab a
substantial share of the marketing dollars expected to flow at the
expense of television and print. For consumers, the development
means greater freedom and a further erosion of artificial walls
designed to keep visitors from leaving sites. According to
comScore Media Metrix, the U.S. audience for the four major Internet
brands grew over the past year. But the total time spent at Yahoo and
AOL dropped about 10 percent, while Microsoft's MSN-Windows Live
services saw an 8 percent decline.
In other words, these sites are attracting more people but are keeping
them for shorter durations as users find what they need
elsewhere. Google was the exception, with a 57 percent jump in
total time spent, but even the company recognizes that "no individual
property will have all those products and services" a user might want,
said Tim Armstrong, Google's head of North American ad sales.
"The Internet is basically being built and scaling (faster) than any
one property on the Internet is," Armstrong said. "Companies in the
Internet space are changing their business models to have models which
are consumer driven, not property driven."
That's not to say the major Internet destinations are ceding their own
properties. In a few cases, the large companies have bought
wildly popular sites. Google spent about $1.76 billion last November to
absorb the leading video-sharing site, YouTube. It also owns the
blogging service Blogger, while Yahoo has the photo-sharing site
Flickr. They are also innovating. AOL revamped its video search
site in August, while Yahoo retooled its core search engine this month
to try to make it more engaging and lure back those who had defected to
Google.
"Everyone still wants to be your home page. They are always going to
battle for that," said Nick Nyhan, chief executive of market research
firm Dynamic Logic. "But they have to think beyond that. Consumers
aren't going to just take your stuff."
Google, Yahoo and AOL still make most of their ad money from sites they
own and operate (Microsoft did not break down figures in its regulatory
filings). Google and Yahoo even reported relative growth there in the
second quarter. Ad networks set the stage for the future and help
the large Internet companies ensure they will have enough inventory to
sell in the years ahead. Ford Motor Co. can, for instance, come
to Google and buy ads that run not only there but also at The New York
Times' Web site and thousands of others within Google's AdSense
network. Ford wouldn't have to deal with all those sites individually;
third-party sites wouldn't have to expand their sales team.
Meanwhile, Google gets a cut of ad revenues — without spending a dime
developing those specialty sites. Although this concept isn't
new, what is changing is the scale. In agreeing to acquire
DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion, Google is looking for better ways to
deliver multimedia display ads to supplement the small, text-based ads
the company already does well. The still-pending acquisition also
extends Google's reach beyond AdSense to all the outside sites for
which DoubleClick now distributes advertising.
Likewise, in buying Tacoda Inc., AOL not only gets Tacoda's technology
for targeting ads, but also extends its reach to NBC Universal, Scripps
Networks and the Times (sites can join multiple ad networks). AOL also
has a network through its 2004 acquisition of Advertising.com and
separately bought companies this year serving international markets and
wireless devices.
Yahoo, meanwhile, paid about $650 million for the 80 percent of Right
Media Inc. it did not already own and agreed to buy BlueLithium Inc.
for $300 million. Microsoft bought aQuantive Inc. for $6 billion.
"It's not that networks are going to supplant these mass-market sites,
but they will have less influence as networks have more," said David
Hallerman, a senior analyst at the research group eMarketer, which
projects U.S. online advertising spending at $44 billion in 2011, more
than double the $17 billion last year.
The shift didn't happen overnight. Many factors are involved, including
online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.'s MySpace commanding more
of a user's time over the past few years. Web sites big and small are
making features available, through tools called widgets, for viewing
directly at those sites. Of course, the major brands would still
prefer visitors going to them directly, as they wouldn't have to share
ad revenues with another site.
But as audiences disperse, advertisers have become reluctant to
concentrate their spending at a traditional portal.
Besides standardization, efficiency and diversity, advertisers get
better targeting with networks. Say you are trying to reach Seattle
natives with a propensity to fly to the remote Arctic island of
Svalbard. On a portal you might find 10. On a network 100 times larger,
you'd find 1,000 without changing your campaign.
There are drawbacks, though.
U.S. and European regulators are reviewing Google's proposed
acquisition of DoubleClick. Critics complain Google would have too much
control over online advertising and personal information collected on
users.
And despite the efficiencies, consolidation could hamper flexibility,
said Jason Turner, vice president for interactive at advertising agency
Ignited.
"When there were four television networks, you were beholden to those
four, (who could say), `Here are the rules. This is what it's going to
cost and if you don't like it you're not going to get on TV,'" Turner
said.
Nonetheless, ad networks are here to stay.
"Advertisers are going to need to start to use the Internet the way
people always use the Internet, spreading out in hot pursuit of the
things they need and want," said Jarvis Coffin, chief executive of
Burst Media Corp., an independent ad network. "It's much easier to fish
where the fish are."
Intel Unveils New Classmate PCs
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 3, 2008
Filed at 10:50 a.m. ET
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Intel Corp. unveiled new features for its line of
low-cost laptops for schools Wednesday, adding bigger screens and more
data storage capacity as the chip maker ratchets up its rivalry with
the One Laptop per Child organization,
which sells a competing machine.
Intel's new Classmate PCs -- slated to go on sale in April for between
$300 and $500 -- reflect the company's growing efforts to sell
computers equipped with its own chips to schools in developing
countries, a battleground for technology companies because of the
millions of people there just coming online.
But the target market has expanded to include kids in the U.S. as
potential users of cheaper, stripped-down machines.
Classmate PCs also are part of Intel's push to generate interest in a
new class of mobile devices the company is calling ''netbooks,'' which
are smaller and have fewer functions than standard laptops but also use
far less power and are easier to carry around.
Other tweaks to the Classmate that Intel announced Wednesday from its
developer forum in Shanghai include the availability of both 7-inch and
9-inch screens, a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive and an integrated Web
camera.
At the developer forum, Intel executives also rolled out five new
processors under the ''Atom'' brand name. The chips are designed for
pocket-size Internet devices. The chips come in speeds up to 1.86
gigahertz while using less than 3 watts of power.
Intel said its Classmate PCs will eventually use Atom processors.
Classmates are based on Intel's design and include its processors, but
they are built by other manufacturers and sold under a variety of brand
names. The first generation went on sale in March 2007 with the 7-inch
screen and fewer functions. Intel said it has sold ''tens of
thousands'' of the machines but declined to provide more specific data.
Intel and OLPC have feuded furiously over their competing products.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit OLPC says it has sold hundreds of
thousands of its $188 machines.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff's low-cost XO laptop
includes a microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., the world's
No. 2 microprocessor maker behind Intel.
A short-lived truce between Intel and OLPC ended earlier this year when
Intel suddenly pulled out from OLPC's board of directors.
Intel claimed it couldn't continue cooperating with OLPC when founder
Nicholas Negroponte demanded Intel stop selling Classmates overseas.
Negroponte said the dispute stemmed from Intel sales reps disparaging
OLPC products while pushing Intel's own machines.
WORLD-WIDE
INTERNET CONNECTIVITY...BEGUN IN 2007...
One
Laptop Per Child's next move: the $100 tablet
YAHOO
JESSICA MINTZ, AP Technology Writer
Thu May 27, 2:15 pm ET
SEATTLE – The nonprofit organization that has tried to produce a $100
laptop for children in the world's poorest places is throwing in the
towel on that idea __ and jumping on the tablet bandwagon.
One Laptop Per Child's next computer will be based on chipmaker Marvell
Technology Group Ltd.'s Moby tablet design. Marvell announced a
prototype of the device this year and said it costs about $99.
Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child, is optimistic his
organization will be able to keep the price under $100 in part because
Marvell plans to market its tablets widely to schools and health care
institutions.
"We want to see the price drop, and volume is the key to that,"
Negroponte said.
The quirky green and white XO laptop sold by One Laptop Per Child
(OLPC) to governments and organizations in countries such as
Afghanistan and Uruguay wasn't destined for such a broad audience. OLPC
had to repeatedly scale back expectations for how many of the laptops
it could produce, and it didn't get the price much below $200, twice
the price specified by the device's "$100 laptop" nickname.
In 2005, Negroponte envisioned having built 100 million laptops in
about two years. Today, 2 million of the machines are in use.
The XO was also more expensive to produce than a tablet would be
because of its many moving parts and features meant to withstand
glaring sun, blowing sand and spotty access to electricity. In some
cases, OLPC had to change the XO's design by region. For example, the
physical keyboard had to be customized for students in countries that
don't use a Latin alphabet. It would be less expensive to change the
software behind touch-screen keyboards.
Marvell's co-founder, Weili Dai, said the company has also found ways
to cut costs in the way it's designing the chips.
The new tablets will have at least one, and maybe two, video cameras.
They'll sport Wi-Fi connections to the Internet, "multi-touch" screens
and have enough power to play high-definition and 3-D video. Marvel
hopes to make the screens 8.5 inches by 11 inches, the size of a
standard sheet of paper. Unlike Apple Inc.'s iPad tablet, the device
will also work with plug-in peripherals such as mice.
Negroponte said he eventually wants the tablets to run some version of
the free Linux PC operating software. But the first generation of the
"XO 3.0" tablet will likely use Android, the mobile-device operating
system from Google Inc., or something similar.
Although his group, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., worked with
Microsoft Corp. to get its Windows operating system running on the XO
laptops, Negroponte said the new tablets will not use Windows 7 because
the software requires too much memory and computing power.
Negroponte said he plans to unveil the tablet device at the annual
International Consumer Electronics Show in January.
The One Laptop Per Child project has its share of skeptics, who have
questioned the possibility of manufacturing a laptop for $100 and the
point of computers in countries that lack basic infrastructure.
Even so, OLPC's work turned competitors on to the growing market for
technology in developing countries. Companies including Intel Corp.
came up with their own designs for inexpensive laptops for kids, while
other organizations figured out ways to turn regular desktop computers
into multiple workstations, drastically cutting costs for school
computer labs and Internet cafes.
The scramble to produce inexpensive laptops for kids in developing
countries also helped prime the pump for the recent flood of
"netbooks," which are smaller, cheaper and less powerful than laptops.
Negroponte said the last few months have been a turning point for his
group.
"People are no longer asking 'Does this work?'" Negroponte said. "The
one question I hear all the time is, how do I pay for it? How do the
economics work?"
Op-Ed Columnist
The
Land of ‘No Service’
NYTIMES
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
August 16, 2009
Chief’s Island, Botswana
If you travel long enough and far
enough — like by jet to Johannesburg, by prop plane to northern
Botswana and then by bush plane deep into the Okavango Delta — you can
still find it. It is that special place that on medieval maps would
have been shaded black and labeled: “Here there be Dragons!” But in the
postmodern age, it is the place where my BlackBerry, my wireless laptop
and even my satellite phone all gave me the same message: “No Service.”
Yes, Dorothy, somewhere over the
rainbow, there is still a “Land of No Service” — where the only “webs”
are made by spiders, where the only “net” is the one wrapped around
your bed to keep out mosquitoes, where the only “ring tones” at dawn
are the scream of African fish eagles and the bark of baboons, where
the only GPS belongs to the lioness instinctively measuring the
distance between herself and the antelope she hopes will be her next
meal, and where “connectivity” refers only to the intricate food chain
linking predators and prey that sustains this remarkable ecosystem.
I confess, I arrived with enough
devices to stay just a teensy-weensy connected to e-mail. I wasn’t
looking for the Land of No Service. But the Okavango Delta’s managers
and the Wilderness Trust — a South African conservation organization
that runs safaris to support its nature restoration work — take the
wilderness seriously. The staff at our camp on the northwestern tip of
Chief’s Island, the largest island in the delta, did have a radio, but
otherwise the only sounds you heard were from Mother Nature’s symphony
orchestra and the only landscapes, sunsets and color combinations were
painted by the hand of God.
So, like it or not, coming here
forces you to think about the blessings and curses of “connectivity.”
“No Service” is something travelers from the developed world now pay
for in order to escape modernity, with its ball and chain of e-mail.
For much of Africa, though, “No Service” is a curse — because without
more connectivity, its people can’t escape poverty. Can there be a
balance between the two?
For the normally overconnected
tourist, the first thing you notice in the Land of No Service is how
quickly your hearing, smell and eyesight improve in an act of instant
Darwinian evolution. It is amazing how well you can hear when you don’t
have an iPod in your ears or how far you can see when you’re not
squinting at a computer screen. In the wild, the difference between
hearing and seeing with acuity is the difference between survival and
extinction for the animals and the difference between a rewarding
experience and a missed opportunity for photographers and guides.
It was our guide spotting a
half-eaten antelope lodged high in a tree that drew our attention to
its predator, a leopard, calmly licking her paws nearby and then
yawning from her midday meal. The cat’s stomach was heaving up and
down, still digesting her prey. The leopard had suffocated the antelope
— you could still see the marks on its neck — and then dragged it up
the tree, holding it in her jaws, and placed the kill perfectly in the
V between two branches. And there the antelope dangled, head on one
side, dainty legs on the other, with half her midsection eaten away.
The rest would be tomorrow’s leopard lunch, stored high above where the
hyenas could not get it.
But while maintaining “No Service”
in the wild is essential for Africa’s ecotourism industry, the rest of
the continent desperately needs more connectivity. Eric Cantor, who
runs Grameen Foundation’s Application Laboratory in Uganda, explains
what a huge difference cellphones and Internet access can make to
people in Africa:
“A banana farmer previously limited
to waiting for a buyer truck to pass his farm to sell the week’s
harvest can now use a mobile-phone marketplace to publicize the
availability of his stock or to search for buyers who might be in the
market or have truck transport available to a larger market,” said
Cantor. “They can also compare going prices to gain more power in a
negotiation. Teenagers too shy to ask parents about causes and symptoms
of sexually transmitted diseases can research them privately and
improve their own health outcomes. A farmer with no money who needs a
remedy for the pest attacking her primary crop can find one that uses
locally available materials, when they need it.”
Botswana, about the size of Texas,
luckily has enough diamonds to be able to turn 40 percent of its land
into nature preserves. Its urban connectivity with the global diamond
exchanges enables it to maintain “No Service” in its wilderness.
Zimbabwe, by contrast, has become virtually a country of “No Service”
after decades of dictatorship by Robert Mugabe, and, as a result, both
its people and wildlife are endangered species.
The more African countries where “No
Service” can be a choice, not a fate — an offering for the eco-tourist
to enjoy, not a condition for the entrepreneur to overcome — the more
hope that this continent will be able to enhance its natural wonders
and its people at the same time.
Bringing
the Internet to Remote
African Villages
NYTIMES
By CHRIS NICHOLSON
February 2, 2009
ENTASOPIA, Kenya — The road from Nairobi winds 100 miles to this town
deep in Masai country. The asphalt gives way to sand and dust, until
finally it is just a dirt track climbing over broken hills and plunging
back to desert flats. The going is slow.
The outpost, with about 4,000 inhabitants, is at the end of that road
and beyond the reach of power lines. It has no bank, no post office,
few cars and little infrastructure. Newspapers arrive in a bundle every
three or four weeks. At night, most people light kerosene lamps and
candles in their houses or fires in their huts and go to bed early,
except for the farmers guarding crops against elephants and buffalo.
Entasopia is the last place on earth that a traveler would expect to
find an Internet connection. Yet it was here, in November, that three
young engineers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, with
financial backing from Google, installed a small satellite dish powered
by a solar panel, to hook up a handful of computers in the community
center to the rest of the world.
In recent years the mobile phone has emerged as the main modern
communications link for rural areas of Africa. From 2002 to 2007, the
number of Kenyans using cellphones grew almost tenfold to reach about a
third of the population, many of whom did not have land lines,
according to the International Telecommunication Union.
But many of the phones were simple models made more for talking than
Web browsing, and wireless data networks are slow, with sporadic
coverage.
Satellite connections are faster and more stable, which is why they are
attracting interest from the likes of Google, as a way to provide
Internet connections to the estimated 95 percent of Africans who,
according to the telecommunications union, have no access.
Although providing Internet access is outside the normal business realm
of Google, with this project it is looking at how obstacles might be
overcome in Kenya and other parts of Africa.
The dish at Entasopia was intended to operate for months with little
maintenance under harsh conditions. This station, along with two others
in villages almost as remote, is part of a larger push by Google into
small, marginal communities, providing them with new tools to access
information, work with distant colleagues, and communicate with friends
and family.
Google paid for the final design of the stations and is covering the
monthly fees for satellite bandwidth. The company has also invested in
O3b, a start-up that hopes to deploy a constellation of satellites over
Africa by the end of next year.
“Building infrastructure is not necessarily Google’s objective, but if
you look at all the areas that Google has gone into, in many cases it
has been to fill a gap,” said Joseph Mucheru, who heads Google’s East
Africa office. “The market should see the opportunity.”
Just how much opportunity there is remains unclear. Google is uncertain
whether such satellite stations can pay for themselves in rural areas,
given the cost of equipment and bandwidth. Communities may well benefit
from the connection, but they do not all have the means to afford it.
Bandwidth fees for stations like the one in Entasopia could cost as
much as $700 a month, though slower ones cost less, said Wayan Vota, a
senior director at Inveneo, a nonprofit that works to disseminate
Internet technology throughout Africa and the developing world. As
these connections are introduced more widely, which is O3b’s goal, the
price could fall, Mr. Vota said.
When Internet connections arrive in small towns like Entasopia, they
put new tools into the hands of people hungry to use them, and for some
there, that has had wide repercussions.
James Mathu has worked for the Kenyan agriculture ministry in Entasopia
for five years, advising farmers on the environment, crop husbandry and
soil conservation. The stable Internet link allows him to send
information to district headquarters in Kajiado, instead of spending
days traveling there and back to deliver monthly reports, which are too
lengthy for him to send via cellphone.
“It is a five-day affair,” he said, estimating that the Internet saved
him 12,000 shillings a year, or $152, in a country where the gross
domestic product per person is $1,700.
Julius Kasifu, 40, is using the Internet to try to help others. His
family runs a farm, but because his legs were crippled by polio as a
child, he was limited in the farm work he could do.
In Masai society, he said, disabilities like his were seen as bad
omens. Traditionally, disabled newborns were abandoned and their
mothers were put through a ritual cleansing to banish the evil spirits
that were said to have caused the disability, while the place where the
birth took place was burned. Even now, such children are often kept
hidden away in the family manyatta, a wattle-and-daub hut.
Mr. Kasifu is leading a campaign to raise awareness and to build a
shelter, called Tuko, for such children. With the Internet connection,
he has been able to upload a short video about their plight.
“The mothers come to me and say: ‘Have you got a place to take our
children?’ ” he said. “It hurts, but what can I do? Out of that hurt
came this project.”
But there are significant limits to how many Kenyans the Internet can
reach. Even if it is available free, not everyone can take full
advantage of it, one obstacle being computer literacy.
Teddy Chenya, who for the past eight months has helped staff the
community center for the Arid Lands Information Network, the Kenyan
nongovernmental organization running the satellite ground stations,
said that younger people were more likely to visit him than older ones,
because they had time to spend and were willing to sit down, three to a
computer, and learn by trial and error.
“Most people looking for information, they need help,” he said. “They
still don’t know where to look or what a Web address is. I played for
them streaming video, and they said: ‘Is it a radio? Is it a TV?’ ”
Another obstacle is literacy itself: many of the adults in Entasopia,
especially women, cannot read.
Nthenya Mule, East Africa manager for Acumen Funds, a nonprofit
organization, directs investments in regional businesses that have a
social-development aspect. Ms. Mule said there were many challenges
facing poor, rural communities, and progress was often held back by
larger problems like lack of infrastructure, health care or loan
availability, rather than the scarcity of Internet access.
“Is VSAT what’s most important?” she asked, referring to very small
aperture terminal, the satellite technology being used in the project.
Still, Ms. Mule said, “there are so many issues, sometimes you just
begin acting where you can.”
MIT Spinoff's
Little Green Laptop A Hit In Remote Peruvian Village
DAY
By Frank Bajak, AP Technology Writer
Published on 12/25/2007
Arahuay, Peru — Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can
benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the
morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school
children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months
ago.
These offspring of peasant families whose monthly earnings rarely
exceed the cost of one of the $188 laptops — people who can ill afford
pencil and paper much less books — can't get enough of their “XO”
laptops.
At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination
library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night,
they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older
siblings from waylaying the coveted machines.
“It's really the kind of conditions that we designed for,” Walter
Bender, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff,
said of this agrarian backwater up a precarious dirt road.
Founded in 2005 by former MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte,
the One Laptop program has retreated from early boasts that
developing-world governments would snap up millions of the pint-sized
laptops at $100 each. In a backhanded tribute, One Laptop now
faces homegrown competitors everywhere from Brazil to India — and a
full-court press from Intel Corp.'s more power-hungry Classmate.
But no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard
drive-free, runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless
networks with “mesh” technology that lets each computer in a village
relay data to the others. Mass production began last month and
Negroponte, brother of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte,
says he expects at least 1.5 million machines to be sold by next
November. Even that would be far less than Negroponte originally
envisioned. The higher-than-initially-advertised price and a lack of
the Windows operating system, still being tested for the XO, have
dissuaded many potential government buyers.
Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines
— in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World
Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed.
Uruguay was the No. 2 buyers of the laptops, inking a contract for
100,000.
Negroponte said 150,000 more laptops will get shipped to countries
including Rwanda, Mongolia, Haiti, and Afghanistan in early 2008
through “Give One, Get One,” a U.S.-based promotion ending Dec. 31 in
which you buy a pair of laptops for $399 and donate one or both.
The children of Arahuay prove One Laptop's transformative conceit: that
you can revolutionize education and democratize the Internet by giving
a simple, durable, power-stingy but feature-packed laptop to the
worlds' poorest kids.
“Some tell me that they don't want to be like their parents, working in
the fields,” first-grade teacher Erica Velasco says of her pupils. She
had just sent them to the Internet to seek out photos of invertebrates
— animals without backbones.
Antony, 12, wants to become an accountant.
Alex, 7, aspires to be a lawyer.
Kevin, 11, wants to play trumpet.
Saida, 10, is already a promising videographer, judging from her artful
recording of the town's recent Fiesta de la Virgen.
“What they work with most is the (built-in) camera. They love to
record,” says Maria Antonieta Mendoza, an Education Ministry
psychologist studying the Arahuay pilot to devise strategies for the
big rollout when the new school year begins in March.
Before the laptops, the only cameras the kids at Santiago Apostol
school saw in this population-800 hamlet arrived with tourists who
visit for festivals or to see local Inca ruins. Arahuay's lone
industry is agriculture. Surrounding fields yield avocados, mangoes,
potatoes, corn, alfalfa and cherimoya. Many adults share only
weekends with their children, spending the workweek in fields many
hours' walk from town and relying on charities to help keep their
families nourished.
When they finish school, young people tend to abandon the
village. Peru's head of educational technology, Oscar Becerra, is
betting the One Laptop program can reverse this rural exodus to the
squalor of Lima's shantytowns four hours away. It's the best
answer yet to “a global crisis of education” in which curricula have no
relevance, he said. “If we make education pertinent, something the
student enjoys, then it won't matter if the classroom's walls are straw
or the students are sitting on fruit boxes.”
Indeed, Arahuay's elementary school population rose by 10 when families
learned the laptop pilot was coming, said Guillermo Lazo, the school's
director. The XOs that Peru is buying will be distributed to
pupils in 9,000 elementary schools from the Pacific to the Amazon basin
where a single teacher serves all grades, Becerra said. Although
Peru boasts thousands of rural satellite downlinks that provide
Internet access, only about 4,000 of the schools getting XOs will be
connected, said Becerra.
Negroponte says One Laptop is committed to helping Peru overcome that
hurdle. Without Internet access, he believes, the program is incomplete.
Teachers will get 21/2 days of training on the laptops, Becerra said.
Each machine will initially be loaded with about 100 copyright-free
books. Where applicable, texts in native languages will be included, he
added. The machines will also have a chat function that will let kids
make faraway friends over the Internet.
Critics of the rollout have two key concerns. The first is the
ability of teachers — poorly trained and equipped to begin with — to
cope with profoundly disruptive technology. Eduardo Villanueva, a
communications professor at Lima's Catholic University, fears “a
general disruption of the educational system that will manifest itself
in the students overwhelming the teachers.”
To counter that fear, Becerra said the government is offering $150
grants to qualifying teachers toward the purchase of conventional
laptops, for which it is also arranging low-interest loans.
The second big concern is maintenance. For every 100 units it
will distribute to students, Peru is buying one extra for parts. But
there is no tech support program. Students and teachers will have to do
it.
“What you want is for the kids to do the repairs,” said Negroponte, who
believes such tinkering is itself a valuable lesson. “I think the kids
can repair 95 percent of the laptops.”
Tech support is nevertheless a serious issue in many countries,
Negroponte acknowledged in a phone interview. One Laptop is
currently bidding on a contract with Brazil's government that
Negroponte says demanded unrealistically onerous support
requirements. The XO machines are water resistant, rugged and
designed to last five years. They have no fan so they won't suck up
dust, are built to withstand drops from a meter and a half and can
absorb power spikes typical of places with irregular electricity.
Mendoza, the psychologist, is overjoyed that the program stipulates
that kids get ownership of the laptops. Take Kevin, the aspiring
trumpet player. Sitting in his dirt-floor kitchen as his mother
cooks lunch, he draws a soccer field on his XO, then erases it. Kevin
plays a song by “Caliente,” his favorite combo, that he recorded off
Arahuay's single TV channel. He shows a reporter photos he took of him
with his 3-year-old brother. A bare light bulb hangs by a wire
from the ceiling. A hen bobs around the floor. There are no books in
this two-room house. Kevin's parents didn't get past the sixth grade.
Indeed, the laptop project also has adults in its sights.
Parents in Arahuay are asking Mendoza, the visiting psychologist, what
the Internet can do for them.
Among them is Charito Arrendondo, 39, who sheds brief tears of joy when
a reporter asks what the laptop belonging to ruddy-cheeked Miluska —
the youngest of her six children — has meant to her. Miluska's father,
it turns out, abandoned the family when she was 1.
“We never imagined having a computer,” said Arrendondo, a cook.
Is she afraid to use the laptop, as is typical of many Arahuay parents,
about half of whom are illiterate?
“No, I like it. Sometimes when I'm alone and the kids are not around I
turn it on and poke around.”
Arrendondo likes to play checkers on the laptop.
“It's also got chess, which I sort of know,” she said, pausing briefly.
“I'm going to learn.”
I-BBC; Last Updated: Wednesday,
12 December 2007, 15:04 GMT
A child's view
of the $100 laptop
|
| What will a child in the UK make of a laptop
designed to help children in the developing world? Rory Cellan-Jones
brought an XO home to find out.
The laptop was designed to be
robust and easy to use
|
In late November I returned from Nigeria with a
sample of the XO laptop.
The computer, made by the One Laptop per Child
charity, is a robust little machine designed to entertain and educate
children while allowing them to learn by themselves.
I knew there was only one person who could
review it for me.
The Nine Year-old's View
Enter Rufus Cellan-Jones. He is nine, has far
more experience of games consoles than computers, and has strong views
on most matters.
"Looks fun," was his only comment when I handed
over the small, green and white laptop, explaining that he was the only
child in Britain to have one.
But very quickly he was up and running.
All I did was give him the security code for
our home wireless network so he could take the XO online. The rest he
figured out for himself, as he explains:
Lots of fun
"I just seemed to work it out. It was rather
easy. I didn't even need help." Surprise, surprise, his first discovery
was a game. "I found Block Party. It's like Tetris. I'm now up to Level
7."
I thought my young games fanatic might stick
there but he moved on. "Then I discovered paint. You can use pencils,
change the texture, use different sizes of brush."
Even better, there was an animation programme
called Etoys.
"That's my favourite.You make things. You can
see tutorials and demos. Then you can make a new project. I've made a
crazy UFO which you can move."
But Rufus says it isn't just about play.
"I use the calculator - that can be rather
useful for sums. You can even browse onto the internet. You can watch
and learn stuff. You can write things and it can also remind you which
is extremely useful."
What, I asked, does a nine year old need to
remind himself about? "Christmas stuff," he said, with an air of
mystery.
Social networking
But the real surprise came one evening, when
Rufus asked me to explain what his friends were telling him on the
laptop.
I thought those imaginary childhood friends
from years back must have returned.
But I went and had a look - and it was true -
he appeared to be chatting online.
So how had he managed that?
"You go on "neighbourhood", then you go to the
chat thing.
You go on Nigeria and you chat to them."
But why, if he was online with the children at
the Nigerian school I had visited, were they sending messages in
Spanish?
I decided he must be linking up with one of the
South American schools taking part in the OLPC project but we still
aren't sure quite how that is happening.
Still, Rufus is widening his social circle. " I
have three friends. It's nice to talk to them. They don't speak much
English but I can understand them." The conversation is not exactly
sparkling, but Rufus has learned to say "Hola".
Not a toy
So Rufus is using his laptop to write, paint,
make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other
countries.
Because it looks rather like a simple plastic
toy, I had thought it might suffer the same fate as the
radio-controlled dinosaur or the roller-skates he got last Christmas -
enjoyed for a day or two, then ignored.
Instead, it seems to provide enduring
fascination.
I had returned
from Nigeria not entirely convinced that the XO laptop was quite as
wonderful an educational tool as its creators claimed.
I felt that a lot of effort would be needed by
hard-pressed teachers before it became more than just a distracting toy
for the children to mess around with in class.
But Rufus has changed my mind.
With no help from his Dad, he has learned far
more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago, and the XO
appears to be a more creative tool than the games consoles which occupy
rather too much of his time.
The One Laptop Per Child project is struggling
to convince developing countries providing computers for children is as
important as giving them basic facilities like water or electricity.
Unusually, Rufus does not have an opinion about
that controversy, but he does have a verdict on the laptop. "It's
great," he says.
|
Laptop
Project Says Each Sale To U.S. Buyer Will Donate One To
Developing-Country User
DAY
By Brian Bergstein, AP Technology Writer
Published on 9/24/2007
Cambridge, Mass. — The project that hopes to supply developing-world
schoolchildren with $188 laptops will sell the rugged little computers
to U.S. residents and Canadians for $400 each, with the profit going
toward a machine for a poor country.
The One Laptop Per Child project expects that its “Give One, Get One”
promotion will result in a pool of thousands of donated laptops that
will stimulate demand in countries hesitant to join the program. It
will be offered for only two weeks in November.
Originally conceived as the “$100 laptop,” the funky green-and-white
low-power “XO” computers now cost $188. The laptops' manufacturer,
Quanta Computer Inc., is beginning mass production next month, but with
far fewer than the 3 million orders One Laptop Per Child director
Nicholas Negroponte had said he was waiting for.
Negroponte said the availability of donated laptops would not be the
sole condition for many countries weighing whether to place
multimillion-dollar orders. But “it just triggers it,” he said. “It
makes it all happen faster.”
By opening sales to people in the U.S. and Canada at
http://www.xogiving.com, “Give
One, Get One” will delight computing
aficionados, because the XO is unlike any other laptop.
It has a homegrown user interface designed for children, boasts
built-in wireless networking, uses very little power and can be
recharged by hand with a pulley or a crank. Its display has separate
indoor and outdoor settings so it can be read in full sunlight,
something even expensive laptops lack.
The machines use the Linux open-source system and don't run Windows;
Negroponte expects that to be possible soon, but Microsoft Corp.
insists it can't guarantee that, given the machine's idiosyncratic
specs.
The catch is that “Give One, Get One” will run only from Nov. 12 to
Nov. 26. Negroponte said the limited availability is partly necessary
so the nonprofit doesn't run afoul of tax laws, but mainly designed to
create scarcity-induced excitement.
“We need that burst,” he said.
Just the first 25,000 buyers will be promised delivery of their XOs by
the Christmas season. Everyone else will be on a pace reminiscent of
the old Sears Roebuck catalog, with the computer probably arriving in
January.
Then again, most buyers figure to be motivated more by the “Give One”
aspect than the “Get One” part. Negroponte said that dynamic is
beginning to pervade the program, with several poor countries finding
that richer governments are willing to act as sponsors.
For example, Italy is buying all 50,000 XOs that Ethiopia will get in
the program's first wave. Now Negroponte is trying to encourage similar
arrangements with governments in Europe and Asia, with Pakistan and
Afghanistan among the possible recipients. Megabillionaire Carlos Slim
is expected to purchase 25,000 XOs and lend them to Mexican children.
Thailand, Uruguay, Nigeria, Brazil, Libya and Rwanda are among the
countries that could be in the first wave of laptop customers, though
specifics have not been announced.
Given all the innovations in the XO and the discussions it has inspired
about computers in education, One Laptop Per Child — a spinoff from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology — can claim significant
achievements. However, Negroponte hoped to be further along by now.
In September 2005, he was saying that 5 million to 15 million machines
might be in production in 2006, with perhaps 100 million out by now. In
April 2006 he foresaw 5 million to 10 million XOs dotting the landscape
in 2007.
Now 250,000 to 300,000 are due to be made by the end of this year.
Negroponte expects that to ramp up to 1 million a month next year,
though he still lacks signed orders for that many.
One reason things may have gone slower than predicted is One Laptop Per
Child's impending emergence awoke commercial vendors to the promise of
a low-cost international educational market. Now governments
considering buying XOs for their youngsters have multiple options in
the $200 range — including more-conventional computers that can run
Windows. Negroponte acknowledges the absence of Windows led Russia to
say no.
One of the laptop program's unabashed admirers is Miguel Brechner, who
runs a government-funded technology group in Uruguay. Brechner has been
overseeing a test of 200 XOs in a Uruguayan village and believes the
laptops have stimulated collaboration and raised expectations for
children. He expects to buy many more XOs as Uruguay soon begins to
outfit all 400,000 of its primary schoolchildren with laptops.
“I'm absolutely a believer that this will change the country,” Brechner
said.
But not all of those computers will be XOs. To hedge its bets, Uruguay
probably will buy other inexpensive laptops as well, including Intel
Corp.'s Classmate PCs. Brechner argues that Windows is a better option
for older kids who are closer to entering the computing work force.
“We will see (what happens) in the field and change whatever is
necessary,” Brechner said. “We will make some mistakes. We don't know
who to copy on this.”
Wireless is beefed up in downtown
By FRANK MacEACHERN, fmaceachern@thestamfordtimes.com
September 6, 2007
STAMFORD —Three small parks in the city's downtown are more than just
places to relax on a warm day, they're also areas where people can
connect to the Internet via free Wi-Fi service.
City officials hope it's just the start of a "wireless corridor"
running from the downtown to the transportation center, said Michael
Pensiero, Stamford's director of technology management services.
"Our entire plan is to have a wireless service from Ferguson Library to
the transportation center, to create a wireless corridor," said
Pensiero.
The service enables people who have a laptop to work in an area where
they can't plug in to a wall socket in order to access the Internet.
Instead they're able to sit in an area, such as a park, and connect to
the Internet wirelessly.
The project is funded by a $15,000 federal grant which was used to
purchase the radio equipment and for service fees, said Pensiero.
Approval for the grant came last fall and the city received the money
approximately two months later.
Last year the city offered the service at Columbus Park. This summer
the city added Latham Park on Bedford Street and Veterans Park on
Atlantic Street near Stamford Town Center.
The city is working with the state to have the service extended to the
transportation center so commuters would be able to use it while
waiting for a train, said Pensiero.
To access the Internet users have to type the 13-digit access code on
Connecticut library cards. Out-of-state residents have to obtain a
library card from Ferguson Library if they wish to connect to the
Internet.
There haven't been many users yet, said Pensiero, but he hoped more
will take advantage of it once they get to know about the service.
Once users know about free Wi-Fi service they're eager to use it, said
Alice Knapp, director of public services at the Ferguson Library.
The library began offering the service three years ago at its main
branch and then expanded it this year to the Harry Bennett and the Weed
& Hollander Memorial branches in Turn of River and Springdale areas
respectively. She estimated about 12-13,000 users have signed on to use
the Wi-Fi service.
For people who bring their laptop to the library to work on a project
or assignment the Wi-Fi service is another convenience for them. They
can work and also access reference material at the same time as others
are doing so, said Knapp.
Internet speed at the Wi-Fi sites is very good, said Pensiero, although
he cautioned it's affected by how many users are online.
Municipal
Wi-Fi faces financial hurdles
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
Fri Aug 31, 2:54 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO - A year ago, it seemed like just about every major U.S.
city was drawing up ambitious plans to build wireless Internet networks
so more people, both rich and poor, could have online access wherever
they wanted. Now, economics is blurring the Utopian vision as city
leaders and the companies proposing to build the Wi-Fi networks haggle
over whether the projects make financial sense.
The problem came into sharper focus this week as once-ballyhooed
projects in San Francisco and Chicago unraveled while another
high-profile deal in Houston neared a breaking point.
"Cities and companies are rethinking the models that they are
adopting," said Esme Vos, founder of MuniWireless.com, a Web site that
tracks trends in the industry. "It's all about economics and
risk-sharing now."
MuniWireless estimates Wi-Fi networks have either already been built or
are under consideration in 455 cities and counties across the United
States, up from 122 two years ago.
The second thoughts about municipal Wi-Fi revolve around questions
about whether the networks will generate enough revenue to justify the
multimillion-dollar investments to build and maintain them.
EarthLink Inc., an Internet service provider that had been one of the
chief evangelists in the crusade to blanket cities with Wi-Fi, has
decided it can no longer afford to foot the bill by itself as the
Atlanta-based company tries to bounce back from $46 million in losses
during the first half of this year.
"We will not devote any new capital to the old municipal Wi-Fi model
that has us taking all the risks," Rolla Huff, EarthLink's chief
executive, told analysts during a Wednesday conference call. "In my
judgment, that model is simply unworkable."
Later Wednesday, Huff informed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that
EarthLink was rescinding a proposal to cover the estimated $14 million
to $17 million cost of building the city's Wi-Fi network.
Had the San Francisco system been built, EarthLink planned to charge
about $20 per month for Wi-Fi access that would have been three to four
times faster than a free service subsidized by ads sold by Google Inc.
San Francisco still hopes to find other vendors willing to build a
Wi-Fi network in its city, an effort that Google said it will continue
to support.
"Google is committed to promoting alternative platforms for people to
access the Web no matter where they are, and we encourage others to
think creatively about how to address access issues in their own
communities," Google spokesman Andrew Pederson said.
Last year, Google completed a free Wi-Fi network in its home town of
Mountain View that the company says attracts about 15,000 users per
month.
EarthLink had doubts about whether it could sign up enough San
Francisco subscribers to recover its costs there, based on its
experience so far in other cities, including Philadelphia and New
Orleans, where it has already completed or is still building Wi-Fi
networks.
Houston was counting on EarthLink to invest about $50 million to build
a Wi-Fi network there, but those high hopes are now fading. The city
this week notified EarthLink that it will fine the company $5 million
for missing its contractual deadlines. The payment will give EarthLink
more time to consider whether it wants to abandon the Houston project
or find other partners willing to help defray the costs.
Chicago canceled its $18.5 million Wi-Fi project after concluding it
would require the city to spend too much money to help finance it.
Financial worries also have jeopardized a $20 million Wi-Fi network in
Milwaukee. The project remains in its testing phase, but the vendor,
Midwest Fiber Networks, has publicly expressed concerns about whether
the network will attract enough customers to recoup the investment.
Vos and other industry observers believe the dreams about wireless
Internet access in big cities can still be realized if the some of the
financial burden is shifted from the private sector.
"What is happening right now is a black eye (for Wi-Fi), but I don't
think it's a death blow," said Godfrey Chua, who follows wireless
networking issues for the research firm IDC. "We just need to work on
new business models."
Some cities already have agreed to help finance Wi-Fi by sharing some
of the upfront costs and guaranteeing subscriptions. Minneapolis, for
instance, has agreed to become the "anchor tenant" on its Wi-Fi network
— a commitment that will cost the city $1.25 million annually.
Houston had also agreed to pay EarthLink $500,000 annually to give the
city's workers Wi-Fi access during the first five years of its
contract, but that still might not be enough to keep EarthLink on board.
DPUC Issues
Certificate For U-Verse; Decision Clears The Way For AT&T's New
Phone-Line Television Offering
By Anthony Cronin, Day Business Editor
Published on
11/2/2007
AT&T and union officials on Thursday welcomed state regulators'
approval of the communications company's new U-verse offering, which
provides television services over its phone network.
The state Department of Public Utility Control issued a “certificate of
video franchise,” making AT&T the first competitor to offer
television services under a new state law designed to increase
competition with the cable industry.
New London is one of the introductory markets for the new U-verse
television service. AT&T, whose statewide headquarters is in New
Haven, launched the service last December in a handful of towns and
cities. Since then, it has expanded to 42 municipalities and serves
more than 150,000 customers. Company officials said AT&T would
continue to expand the service to more towns and cities across
Connecticut.
In addition, downtown New London is home to a service center for the
new U-verse service that employs about 100.
Ramona Carlow, president of AT&T's Connecticut operations, said her
company is pleased with the DPUC decision, saying that Connecticut
consumers “have long desired more choice in the video marketplace.”
The U-verse service comes into a residence via the telephone network.
Once inside the home, equipment essentially “splits” the television
signal off from the voice or data signals, providing cable-like service
to individual television sets in a home.
Earlier this week, AT&T won an important court victory when a
Hartford Superior Court judge backed the communications company in its
battle to convince state regulators to let it sell the service without
being considered a regulated cable provider.
The DPUC had ruled this past month that AT&T needed a
cable-television license for its new service. AT&T objected, along
with its union workers and many of its customers. AT&T officials
said they have invested more than $300 million in the new service and
disputed that it is a cable-like service.
William F. Henderson III, president of the Communications Workers of
America Local 1298, said the DPUC decision on Thursday offers welcome
relief to his union, which had forecast the loss of at least 1,300 jobs
across the state if the new television offering were halted.
The CWA workers include various technicians and service personnel who
are working to install the new service and broaden the U-verse network
to more municipalities across the state. “I'm happy that they (DPUC)
moved so quickly because jobs were at stake and the economy in the
state of Connecticut would suffer” if jobs were lost from the initial
DPUC ruling in October, Henderson said.
U-verse basic service starts at $44 a month, but the price increases
depending on the level of service, such as adding television offerings
or Internet-related packages.
AT & T Wins In Court;
TV Service To Continue
By MARK PETERS | Courant Staff Writer
November 1, 2007
A Hartford Superior Court judge ruled Wednesday that AT&T can
resume signing up customers for its TV service, possibly ending the
battle over how to regulate the company's alternative to cable
television.
Judge Robert McWeeny overturned a ruling by the state Department of
Public Utility Control that required AT&T to follow the same rules
as cable companies. McWeeny ruled that AT&T should instead be
regulated under a new state law designed to promote TV services that
compete with cable companies, something the state hopes will lead to
lower rates and improved service.
"The legislature has made a policy determination to encourage
competition in the area of cable services by reducing the regulatory
burden on providers… The DPUC and [state Office of Consumer Counsel]
are created by the legislature to facilitate and implement their policy
determinations, not to frustrate them," the judge wrote.
As a result of the recent DPUC decision, AT&T threatened to lay off
hundreds of workers, call off hundreds of millions of dollars in
construction and shut down the TV service for its 7,000 existing
customers.
AT&T now plans to continue expanding its TV service known as
U-verse, which is available in parts of 42 towns and cities in
Connecticut. The company uses an Internet-like technology to deliver
ESPN, HBO and other TV programming over telephone lines.
As part of the new state law, AT&T will have to receive a new kind
of license from the DPUC as a competitive video provider. The company
said it won't start signing up new customers until it gets the license.
"Connecticut consumers will have a chance for video choice at last. We
are proud and pleased today to have gotten clarity from [the court],"
Seth Bloom, an AT&T spokesman, said in a statement.
It wasn't clear Thursday whether the state might appeal the ruling.
Neither officials at the DPUC nor the Office of Consumer Counsel, which
represents TV service customers, could be reached for comment.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had argued that U-verse should be
treated the same as cable TV companies and abide by the same rules. But
he softened his position in recent days, and said Thursday he doesn't
believe McWeeny's ruling should be appealed. He may seek legislative
changes to ensure competition for TV service is fair.
"We may differ on legal issues, but we share the goal of providing
cable consumers with this new service so they, hopefully, have the
benefits of lower prices and better service. Continued legal combat
ill-serves that common objective," Blumenthal said in a statement.
The battle over AT&T's U-verse service had focused on whether the
phone giant should be compelled to get a franchise license for the
whole state and provide service to anyone who wanted it, statewide.
Cable companies like Comcast and Cox Communications currently have that
requirement for their franchise areas, which encompass several
municipalities and not the whole state.
The consumer counsel and Blumenthal had argued that if AT&T wasn't
required to serve everyone, then only certain areas of the state would
benefit from competition. The company could then pick and choose the
most lucrative areas, leaving others particularly the poor or those in
rural areas with no competitive choice.
AT&T argued that to offer the service to everyone would be
burdensome as it entered a market where cable companies have had a
decades-old monopoly. If the state wanted competition, the company
maintained, it would have to drop the so-called universal service
requirement.
The General Assembly did just that in a law passed earlier this year
that prevents AT&T from discriminating against low-income areas,
but doesn't require the company to offer U-verse to all customers. The
law also set up a lighter regulatory system that still included
customer service requirements and public access TV funding.
However, that law came into question after a federal court ruled that
AT&T was a cable company in a lawsuit brought by the consumer
counsel and cable industry. The federal ruling resulted in the DPUC
ruling on Oct. 15 that AT&T didn't qualify under the new state law
and had to stop signing up customers until it received a cable
franchise license.
AT&T balked and appealed the ruling to state court, leading to
Wednesday's ruling.
AT&T
building U-verse
CT POST
By PAM DAWKINS
Article Last Updated: 08/23/2007 10:35:33 PM EDT
While a federal district court and state regulators contemplate rulings
about the nature of AT&T's U-verse television service, the company
continues building up the infrastructure and customer base.
AT&T plans to spend about $336 million on infrastructure
improvements in the state as part of its three-year plan to roll out
U-verse nationally.
It started the service in Connecticut in parts of nine towns in
December; today it is available in parts of 35 cities and towns,
including Bridgeport, Danbury, Derby, Fairfield, Milford, New Haven,
Stratford, Trumbull, Westport and West Haven. The company won't
disclose specific numbers, but says it has thousands of subscribers
here already. Its marketing efforts include a doublewide trailer with
two living rooms, where customers can check out the service. That
trailer is at the Best Buy parking lot in Danbury for another month.
"The main driver behind U-verse is the empowerment of the Web U-verse
is about bringing that Web empowerment to your TV," Chris Traggio,
AT&T's vice president for consumer operations, said Thursday during
a media tour of the video hub office.
For security and competitive reasons, AT&T has asked the hub's
location be identified only as being in New Haven County, around the
center of the state. The hub has no identifying signage.
This is where AT&T acquires Connecticut and New York City channels
— sent digitally through fiber optics — and merges them with national
content, said Rob Frey,
the facility manager.
Inside, gray and black bookcase-like shapes line rows, holding black
boxes sporting a variety of wires and lights; bundles of yellow
fiber-optic cable are everywhere. Everything has a redundancy, Frey
said, so service isn't interrupted. This includes the power supply;
huge batteries fill in for a secondary backup generation if the primary
generator, which is on site, fails.
The local signal moves down an aisle of machinery, which processes it
into an Internet Protocol stream. Technicians can also change the color
or volume in a program. The process is mirrored on the other side of
the room for national programming.
Both sets move via fiber optics to neighborhood nodes but once there,
the content moves to individual sites via the copper wire that also
carries phone service, said Chad Townes, AT&T's vice president and
general manager for Connecticut. That need to move through sites with
fiber optics is why it's not available in the whole state at once, he
said. "Every day, we're adding more fiber."
Part of the installation — the company has 100 technicians now with
more going through six-week training courses continuously — includes
rewiring the house if the wires are too old.
U-verse is billed as competition to cable television, but Attorney
General Richard Blumenthal maintains the service is cable television,
and so AT&T should be regulated like a cable company, which
includes requesting a franchise from the state Department of Public
Utility Control.
One worry, Blumenthal has said, is that AT&T will "cherry pick" its
demographic, bringing U-verse to wealthier communities and leaving
poorer areas behind. Also, unless held to franchise rules, the company
won't offer public access television; AT&T, however, has promised
to do this.
In June 2006, the DPUC ruled AT&T's Internet Protocol Television is
not subject to cable franchising requirements; Blumenthal sued in U.S.
District Court for a ruling that it is. In July 2007, the court
overturned the DPUC's decision. Now, AT&T has moved for a
reconsideration while Blumenthal has filed an emergency request with
the DPUC to force AT&T to apply for a franchise.
Blumenthal puts AT&T's chances of a reconsideration at "virtually
zero," calling it a "futile attempt" at delaying the inevitable.
"Whatever the rules for cable franchises they should apply to IPTV," he
said Thursday. "It's the law," and what the federal courts have decided.
"We're waiting until court action is finalized," because it would be
imprudent to take action until then, DPUC spokeswoman Beryl Lyons said
Thursday. The DPUC's cable regulating authority is minimal and includes
ensuring cable companies meet public, education and government access
requirements.
"Cable competition has been permitted since 1984," Lyons said, but "the
investment is enormous. The risk was very great," so no one wanted to
start up service. AT&T, however, already has a fiber-optic
infrastructure.
In its most recent session, the state Legislature passed, and Gov. M.
Jodi Rell signed, a bill to prompt competition wherever possible. In
part, Lyons said, as of Oct. 1, the bill narrows the DPUC's
jurisdiction once competition — when there's at least one non-cable
company customer in an existing franchise — is established. The DPUC,
however, remains the franchising authority and continues to oversee
access channels and customer service.
Townes declined to comment Thursday about the court case, but said,
"There's a huge difference between the two technologies." Cable, he
said, is a one-way broadcast of content; U-verse is two-way
communication.
The cable box, he said, brings in a signal with all the offerings. The
U-verse set-top box tells the hub what programming to send. This frees
up bandwidth for more channels and other offerings.
The company has four packages, which include high definition television
channels. Prices for bundled U-verse and Internet service — customers
can buy the television service alone but the highspeed Internet service
is embedded in the signal — range from $59 to $129 a month, depending
on Internet speed.
The basic package has more than 100 channels and comes with one
receiver. Other packages come with three receivers, including one with
a digital video recorder, which can record up to four channels at once.
"We don't ever expect to replace the computer," Townes said, but
U-verse will soon be capable of showing photos from the Web, stock
quotes and movie times and even send messages to appear on the screen
from an off-site computer. Today, users can program their DVR from an
off-site computer or cell phone.Wallingford resident Leslie Spiars, an
AT&T employee, has a projection television hooked up to U-verse, as
well as a 1988-era model in the basement. "We're kind of into
technology," said Spiars; the company used her home setup as a
demonstration for reporters Thursday. While AT&T is looking at
U-verse as a way to bring new services to existing customers, it is
also planning to take people away from the cable companies. According
to Townes and other executives, their service is about 20 to 30 percent
cheaper than comparable cable television prices.
But the cable companies, which are going after telephone customers
through their new offerings, won't be giving up on
television.Cablevision, for example, has about 1.4 million residential
phone service customers; it also offers customers a chance to bundle
telecommunications services.
"Cablevision is successful in a competitive market because customers
love and value our television, Internet and phone products. Our digital
cable service features real interactivity, local news and information
through News 12 Connecticut, and 40 high-definition programming
services at no additional charge," the company said in a prepared
statement. Blumenthal, meanwhile, said even if the court and DPUC rule
against AT&T, he doesn't expect the company will pull its U-verse
out of Connecticut, because there's "too much money and opportunity
[here]."
AT&T
Asks Court To
Reconsider 'U-verse' Decision; Company's new interactive video service
must abide by cable-TV rules, judge said
DAY
By Patricia Daddona
Published on 8/14/2007
AT&T has asked the U.S. District Court in New Haven to reject a
recent federal opinion that finds the same rules for cable programming
apply to a new video product offered by the phone company.
At the same time, one of the plaintiffs in the case, the state's Office
of Consumer Counsel, has asked Judge Janet Bond Arterton to halt
AT&T's acceptance of its new “U-verse” interactive video technology
until it obtains a cable franchise license and to direct the state
Department of Public Utility Control to require the company to take
that step immediately.
Last month, the judge ruled in a summary judgment in federal court that
U-verse must be subjected to the same regulations as conventional
cable. The opinion, if it becomes a final ruling, would require
AT&T to get a cable franchise just like other cable providers.
Arterton's judgment has the effect of potentially shooting down a 2006
decision by the DPUC, which had said AT&T was not required to seek
a cable franchise for its Internet protocol television service, since
it was not the same as conventional cable, but rather relied on two-way
interaction between the company and the subscriber.
Arterton said, however, that federal law pre-empts the state's
interpretation. Although AT&T uses two-way delivery of services,
AT&T still delivers prepackaged programming to all subscribers, so
subscriber interaction “is the same as that involved in traditional”
cable programming, she wrote.
In its request to be heard again, in writing and orally, AT&T
argues that the judge erred factually and as a matter of law, in part
by failing to take into account that the new video service is capable
of providing — and “in time” will enable — features and functions that
subscribers can use to customize the type of video content they receive.
The distinction makes AT&T's service “fundamentally” different than
traditional cable service, the telecommunications giant argues.
AT&T describes U-verse as interaction over a corporate Internet
network that enables a person's TV to communicate and work with other
Internet-driven devices. For instance, a cell phone might be used to
set the recording time for a digital video recorder, or a subscriber
might display ball-game statistics without waiting for a program
producer to do it.
The court also mistakenly decided, AT&T contends, that U-verse is
not a two-way transmission and that “interactivity must be visible to
the subscriber” to count as interactivity, an interpretation the
company claims is nowhere to be found in legislative language or
history governing cable franchises in Connecticut, or in the Federal
Communication Commission's interpretations.
The cable company also provided the court with a “status report” on
recent changes in Connecticut law regarding cable franchises. A new law
intended to encourage competition among video service providers
requires new providers like AT&T to get a certificate of video
franchise authority, the company states, asserting that the law was
written with specific regard for AT&T.
“Once (the judge) evaluates the information we submitted, we're eagerly
anticipating her decision on that,” said Adam Cormier, a spokesman for
AT&T.
But William Vallee Jr., lead attorney for the state's Office of
Consumer Counsel, said the judge's opinion “is pure law” and correctly
interprets what existing federal law means.
“There's nothing new here,” Vallee said of the motion for
reconsideration. He also points out in a status report for the
plaintiff that the state certificate does not become effective until
Oct. 1. “Only a clear, unambiguous order from this Court can ensure ...
compliance,” he wrote.
Last week, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asked the DPUC to force
AT&T to apply for a franchise license, but DPUC spokeswoman Beryl
Lyons said no action could be taken until any appeal period on a final
ruling expired. Lyons was not available for comment late Monday.
“AT&T's request for reconsideration is without basis in law or
fact,” Blumenthal said, “a blatant delaying tactic to forestall state
licensing and regulation of its Internet television service.”
Smile! Aerial images being used to
enforce laws
YAHOO
By FRANK ELTMAN, Associated Press Writer
14 August 2010
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. – On New York's Long Island, it's used to prevent
drownings. In Greece, it's a tool to help solve a financial crisis.
Municipalities update property assessment rolls and other government
data with it. Some in law enforcement use it to supplement
reconnaissance of crime suspects. High-tech eyes in the sky —
from satellite imagery to sophisticated aerial photography that maps
entire communities — are being employed in creative new ways by
government officials, a trend that civil libertarians and others fear
are eroding privacy rights.
"As technology advances, we have to revisit questions about what is and
what is not private information," said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel
at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology.
Online services like Google and Bing give users very detailed images of
practically any location on the planet. Though some images are months
old, they make it possible for someone sitting in a living room in
Brooklyn to look in on folks in Dublin or Prague, or even down the
street in Flatbush. Sean Walter, an attorney and first-term town
supervisor in Riverhead, N.Y., insists he is a staunch defender of
privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against
unreasonable search and seizure.
But Walter supported using Google Earth images to help identify about
250 Riverhead homes where residents failed to get building permits
certifying their swimming pools complied with safety regulations. All
but about 10 eventually came to town hall. Walter said the focus
was safety, not filling town coffers with permit money, which averaged
about $150 depending on the size of the pool. A 4-foot fence is
required, gates have to be self-closing and padlocked. All pools must
have an alarm that sounds when sensors are activated indicating someone
is in the pool.
"We have a town employee who is a personal friend of mine whose son was
found face-down in a swimming pool," Walter said. "He's OK, but I don't
want to be the supervisor that attends the funeral of a child that
drowns in a swimming pool."
Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center in Washington, D.C., fears that while Walter's focus was safety,
other municipalities may use the images to check for other
transgressions.
"It's only a matter of time," Coney said. "There are lots of ordinances
where this can be used. In California, where they deal with brush
fires, could a satellite image show if a homeowner has brush growing
too close to his home? What if someone has junk cars on their lot in
violation of ordinances?"
Riverhead resident Tony Villar said the town's action "could be
considered Big Brother looking down at you."
"But at the same time, if the government can listen to your telephone
conversations in the name of terrorism," he said.
Standing outside the Riverhead Public Library, Walter Casey of Flanders
agreed. "I think it's a great intrusion on people's privacy; they
should use it on the politicians' backyards."
The New York Civil Liberties Union's Donna Lieberman said there are
ways to enforce requirements "without this sort of engaging in Big
Brother on high. Technically, it may be lawful, but in the gut it does
not feel like a free society kind of operation."
In Greece, officials are struggling with a debt crisis and have sought
to catch tax-evaders by using satellite photos to spot undeclared
swimming pools — indicators of taxable wealth. Google spokeswoman
Kate Hurowitz said in a statement that Google Earth acquires its
information from a broad range of commercial and public sources.
"The same information is available to anyone who buys it from these
widely available public sources," she said. "Google's freely available
technology has been used for a variety of purposes, ranging from travel
planning to scientific research to emergency response, rescue and
relief in natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti
earthquake."
At least nine lawsuits seeking class-action status have been filed in
the United States, contending that Google collected fragments of
e-mails, Web-surfing data and other information from unencrypted
wireless networks as it photographed neighborhoods for its "Street
View" feature. Google is also facing investigations or inquiries in 38
states as well as in several countries, including Germany, Spain and
Australia. The Mountain View, Calif., company said in May it had
inadvertently collected the data from public Wi-Fi networks in more
than 30 countries, but maintains it never used the data and hasn't
broken any laws.
Google Earth posts updates about every two weeks on selected images
from its providers, with images ranging from a few weeks to a few years
old. For big cities like Chicago, tracking illegal pools, porches
and decks through Google Earth requires frequent imaging updates, so
the Chicago buildings department uses it as a reference tool on a
case-by-case scenario, said spokesman Bill McCaffrey.
"We're not opposed to adopting new technology, but until it advances
where we can get photos of more recent updates, we don't have any plans
to implement it," he said.
Smaller towns such as Champaign and Naperville, Ill. opted to use
satellite images as reference only.
"Mostly it's so we can see that we're going to the right building when
we go to do inspections," said Ann Michalsen, lead inspector for code
enforcement in Naperville.
It's also important for police officers to know they have the right
destination when executing search warrants, said Joe Pollini, a
professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "Most departments
would use it as a preliminary step, but they would also use active
surveillance with their own aircraft," he said.
The nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog is seeking to determine the
extent of the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration's use of Google
Earth in its investigations, spokesman John M. Simpson said last week.
Federal contracting records reviewed by Consumer Watchdog show that the
FBI has spent more than $600,000 on Google Earth since 2007. The Drug
Enforcement Administration, meanwhile, has spent more than
$67,000. Simpson has called on Congress to investigate how U.S.
law enforcement and intelligence communities are using Google
technologies. The group says it has concerns that data could be used
for racial profiling.
The New York Police Department's Real Time Crime Center uses satellite
imaging and computerized mapping systems to identify geographic
patterns of crimes and to pinpoint possible addresses where suspects
might flee — information relayed to investigators on the street. The
NYPD also has two major security initiatives where a network of public
and private cameras will eventually link and be searchable.
The NYCLU has filed lawsuits in opposition.
"We live in an environment where we are told that if it's on camera, if
you have a video record, that will make us safer," Lieberman said.
"That may be appealing, but it is an unproven assertion. There's no
evidence of that. Yet we see millions, if not billions, of post-9/11
money has gone to law enforcement for installing cameras in every
conceivable nook and cranny."
Big Brother is
watching us all
|
|
By Humphrey
Hawksley, BBC News, Washington
15 September 2007
|
The US and UK
governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep
individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the
US is determined to stay ahead of the game.
Humphrey Hawksley's data is
captured by a camera in one second
|
"Five nine, five ten," said the research
student, pushing down a laptop button to seal the measurement. "That's
your height."
"Spot on," I said.
"OK, we're freezing you now," interjected
another student, studying his computer screen. "So we have height and
tracking and your gait DNA".
"Gait DNA?" I interrupted, raising my head, so
inadvertently my full face was caught on a video camera.
"Have we got that?" asked their teacher
Professor Rama Challapa. "We rely on just 30 frames - about one second
- to get a picture we can work with," he explained.
Tracking individuals
I was at Maryland University just outside
Washington DC, where Professor Challapa and his team are inventing the
next generation of citizen surveillance.
They had pushed back furniture in the
conference room for me to walk back and forth and set up cameras to
feed my individual data back to their laptops.
Gait DNA, for example, is creating an
individual code for the way I walk. Their goal is to invent a system
whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your
weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify
instantly who you are.
How you walk could be used to
identify you in a crowd
|
"As you walk through a crowd, we'll be
able to track you," said Professor Challapa. "These are all things that
don't need the cooperation of the individual."
Since 9/11, some of the best scientific minds
in the defence industry have switched their concentration from tracking
nuclear missiles to tracking individuals such as suicide bombers.
Surveillance society
My next stop was a Pentagon agency whose
headquarters is a drab suburban building in Virginia. The Defence
Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) had one specific mission - to
ensure that when it comes to technology America is always ahead of the
game.
Its track record is impressive. Back in the
70s, while we were working with typewriters and carbon paper, Darpa was
developing the internet. In the 90s, while we pored over maps, Darpa
invented satellite navigation that many of us now have in our cars.
"We ask the top people what keeps them awake at
night," said its enthusiastic and forthright director Dr Tony Tether,
"what problems they see long after they have left their posts."
"And what are they?" I asked.
He paused, hand on chin. "I'd prefer not to
say. It's classified."
"All right then, can you say what you're
actually working on now."
"Oh, language," he answered enthusiastically,
clasping his fingers together. "Unless we're going to train every
American citizen and soldier in 16 different languages we have to
develop a technology that allows them to understand - whatever country
they are in - what's going on around them.
"I hope in the future we'll be able to have
conversations, if say you're speaking in French and I'm speaking in
English, and it will be natural."
"And the computer will do the translation?"
|
Opinion polls, both in
the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less,
surveillance
|
"Yep. All by computer," he said.
"And this idea about a total surveillance
society," I asked. "Is that science fiction?"
"No, that's not science fiction. We're
developing an unmanned airplane - a UAV - which may be able to stay up
five years with cameras on it, constantly being cued to look here and
there. This is done today to a limited amount in Baghdad. But it's the
way to go."
In Britain we are monitored 24/7 by
four million CCTV cameras
|
Smarter technology
Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to
mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of
us want more, not less, surveillance. Some American cities like New
York and Chicago are thinking of taking a lead from Britain where our
movements are monitored round the clock by four million CCTV cameras.
So far there is no gadget that can actually see
inside our houses, but even that's about to change.
Ian Kitajima flew to Washington from his
laboratories in Hawaii to show me sense-through-the-wall technology.
"Each individual has a characteristic profile,"
explained Ian, holding a green rectangular box that looked like a TV
remote control.
Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it
tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due
to test it with the Hawaiian National Guard in Iraq next year, and it
turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals,
that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates.
"First, you can tell whether someone is dead or
alive on the battlefield," said Ian.
"But it will also show whether someone inside a
house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate
will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much
smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what
they're actually thinking."
He glanced at me quizzically, noticing my
apprehension.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "It sounds very Star
Trekkish, but that's what's ahead."
|
Chips: High tech aids or
tracking tools?
By TODD LEWAN, AP National Writer
Sun Jul 22, 6:23 AM ET
CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little
notice itself — until a year ago, when two of its employees had
glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their
forearms.
The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs — radio frequency
identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a
toothpick — was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held
sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security
beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said.
"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated
techniques," Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based
company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or
fingerprinting. "There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the
reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door."
Innocuous? Maybe.
But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with
electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the
proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their
ability to erode privacy in the digital age.
To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention — a high-tech helper
that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help
authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to
buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.
To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from
centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go
and do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming
someone else.
Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or
Army Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then
parolees, then sex offenders, then illegal aliens — until one day, a
majority of Americans, falling into one category or another, would find
themselves electronically tagged.
The concept of making all things traceable isn't alien to Americans.
Thirty years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of
cattle, to permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating
habits. In the 1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock,
fish, dogs, cats, even racehorses.
Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on
"contactless" payment cards (Chase's "Blink," or MasterCard's
"PayPass"). They're embedded in Michelin tires, library books,
passports, work uniforms, luggage, and, unbeknownst to many consumers,
on a host of individual items, from Hewlett Packard printers to Sanyo
TVs, at Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
But CityWatcher.com employees weren't appliances or pets: They were
people made scannable.
"It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting
surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this
technology in the workplace," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of
"Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your
Every Move with RFID."
Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, dismissed his critics, noting
that he and his employees had volunteered to be chip-injected. Any
suggestion that a sinister, Big-Brother-like campaign was afoot, he
said, was hogwash.
"You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by
force," he told a reporter, "and that's not the case at all."
Yet, within days of the company's announcement, civil libertarians and
Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip's
implantation in people.
RFID, they warned, would soon enable the government to "frisk" citizens
electronically — an invisible, undetectable search performed by readers
posted at "hotspots" along roadsides and in pedestrian areas. It might
even be used to squeal on employees while they worked; time spent at
the water cooler, in the bathroom, in a designated smoking area could
one day be broadcast, recorded and compiled in off-limits, company
databases.
"Ultimately," says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who
specializes in consumer education and RFID technology, "the fear is
that the government or your employer might someday say, 'Take a chip or
starve.'"
Some Christian critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a
biblical prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are
forced to take the "Mark of the Beast" on their bodies, to buy or sell
anything.
Gary Wohlscheid, president of These Last Days Ministries, a Roman
Catholic group in Lowell, Mich., put together a Web site that linked
the implantable microchips to the apocalyptic prophecy in the book of
Revelation.
"The Bible tells us that God's wrath will come to those who take the
Mark of the Beast," he says. Those who refuse to accept the Satanic
chip "will be saved," Wohlscheid offers in a comforting tone.
___
In post-9/11 America, electronic surveillance comes in myriad forms: in
a gas station's video camera; in a cell phone tucked inside a teen's
back pocket; in a radio tag attached to a supermarket shopping cart; in
a Porsche automobile equipped with a LoJack anti-theft device.
"We're really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in
America, where every movement, every action — some would even claim,
our very thoughts — will be tracked, monitored, recorded and
correlated," says Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and
Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington,
D.C.
RFID, in Steinhardt's opinion, "could play a pivotal role in creating
that surveillance society."
In design, the tag is simple: A medical-grade glass capsule holds a
silicon computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that
transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic
reader.
Implantations are quick, relatively simple procedures. After a local
anesthetic is administered, a large-gauge hypodermic needle injects the
chip under the skin on the back of the arm, midway between the elbow
and the shoulder.
"It feels just like getting a vaccine — a bit of pressure, no specific
pain," says John Halamka, an emergency physician at Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
He got chipped two years ago, "so that if I was ever in an accident,
and arrived unconscious or incoherent at an emergency ward, doctors
could identify me and access my medical history quickly." (A chipped
person's medical profile can be continuously updated, since the
information is stored on a database accessed via the Internet.)
Halamka thinks of his microchip as another technology with practical
value, like his BlackBerry. But it's also clear, he says, that there
are consequences to having an implanted identifier.
"My friends have commented to me that I'm 'marked' for life, that I've
lost my anonymity. And to be honest, I think they're right."
Indeed, as microchip proponents and detractors readily agree,
Americans' mistrust of microchips and technologies like RFID runs deep.
Many wonder:
Do the current chips have global positioning transceivers that would
allow the government to pinpoint a person's exact location, 24-7? (No;
the technology doesn't yet exist.)
But could a tech-savvy stalker rig scanners to video cameras and film
somebody each time they entered or left the house? (Quite easily,
though not cheaply. Currently, readers cost $300 and up.)
How about thieves? Could they make their own readers, aim them at
unsuspecting individuals, and surreptitiously pluck people's IDs out of
their arms? (Yes. There's even a name for it — "spoofing.")
What's the average lifespan of a microchip? (About 10-15 years.) What
if you get tired of it before then — can it be easily, painlessly
removed? (Short answer: No.)
Presently, Steinhardt and other privacy advocates view the tagging of
identity documents — passports, drivers licenses and the like — as a
more pressing threat to Americans' privacy than the chipping of people.
Equipping hospitals, doctors' offices, police stations and government
agencies with readers will be costly, training staff will take time,
and, he says, "people are going to be too squeamish about having an
RFID chip inserted into their arms, or wherever."
But that wasn't the case in March 2004, when the Baja Beach Club in
Barcelona, Spain — a nightclub catering to the body-aware, under-25
crowd — began holding "Implant Nights."
In a white lab coat, with hypodermic in latex-gloved hand, a company
chipper wandered through the throng of the clubbers and clubbettes,
anesthetizing the arms of consenting party goers, then injecting them
with microchips.
The payoff?
Injectees would thereafter be able to breeze past bouncers and entrance
lines, magically open doors to VIP lounges, and pay for drinks without
cash or credit cards. The ID number on the VIP chip was linked to the
user's financial accounts and stored in the club's computers.
After being chipped himself, club owner Conrad K. Chase declared that
chip implants were hardly a big deal to his patrons, since "almost
everybody has piercings, tattoos or silicone."
VIP chipping soon spread to the Baja Beach Club in Rotterdam, Holland,
the Bar Soba in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Amika nightclub in Miami
Beach, Fla.
That same year, Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo, made an
announcement that thrilled chip proponents and chilled privacy
advocates: He and 18 members of his staff had been microchipped as a
way to limit access to a sensitive records room, whose door unlocked
when a "portal reader" scanned the chips.
But did this make Mexican security airtight?
Hardly, says Jonathan Westhues, an independent security researcher in
Cambridge, Mass. He concocted an "emulator," a hand-held device that
cloned the implantable microchip electronically. With a team of
computer-security experts, he demonstrated — on television — how easy
it was to snag data off a chip.
Explains Adam Stubblefield, a Johns Hopkins researcher who joined the
team: "You pass within a foot of a chipped person, copy the chip's
code, then with a push of the button, replay the same ID number to any
reader. You essentially assume the person's identity."
The company that makes implantable microchips for humans, VeriChip
Corp., of Delray Beach, Fla., concedes the point — even as it markets
its radio tag and its portal scanner as imperatives for high-security
buildings, such as nuclear power plants.
"To grab information from radio frequency products with a scanning
device is not hard to do," Scott Silverman, the company's chief
executive, says. However, "the chip itself only contains a unique,
16-digit identification number. The relevant information is stored on a
database."
Even so, he insists, it's harder to clone a VeriChip than it would be
to steal someone's key card and use it to enter secure areas.
VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been selling radio tags for
animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 microchips worldwide, of
which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans. More than one-tenth of
those have been in the U.S., generating "nominal revenues," the company
acknowledged in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in
February.
Although in five years VeriChip Corp. has yet to turn a profit, it has
been investing heavily — up to $2 million a quarter — to create new
markets.
The company's present push: tagging of "high-risk" patients — diabetics
and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer's disease.
In an emergency, hospital staff could wave a reader over a patient's
arm, get an ID number, and then, via the Internet, enter a company
database and pull up the person's identity and medical history.
To doctors, a "starter kit" — complete with 10 hypodermic syringes, 10
VeriChips and a reader — costs $1,400. To patients, a microchip implant
means a $200, out-of-pocket expense to their physician. Presently, chip
implants aren't covered by insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid.
For almost two years, the company has been offering hospitals free
scanners, but acceptance has been limited. According to the company's
most recent SEC quarterly filing, 515 hospitals have pledged to take
part in the VeriMed network, yet only 100 have actually been equipped
and trained to use the system.
Some wonder why they should abandon noninvasive tags such as
MedicAlert, a low-tech bracelet that warns paramedics if patients have
serious allergies or a chronic medical condition.
"Having these things under your skin instead of in your back pocket —
it's just not clear to me why it's worth the inconvenience," says
Westhues.
Silverman responds that an implanted chip is "guaranteed to be with
you. It's not a medical arm bracelet that you can take off if you don't
like the way it looks..."
In fact, microchips can be removed from the body — but it's not like
removing a splinter.
The capsules can migrate around the body or bury themselves deep in the
arm. When that happens, a sensor X-ray and monitors are needed to
locate the chip, and a plastic surgeon must cut away scar tissue that
forms around the chip.
The relative permanence is a big reason why Marc Rotenberg, of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, is suspicious about the motives
of the company, which charges an annual fee to keep clients' records.
The company charges $20 a year for customers to keep a "one-pager" on
its database — a record of blood type, allergies, medications, driver's
license data and living-will directives. For $80 a year, it will keep
an individual's full medical history.
___
In recent times, there have been rumors on Wall Street, and elsewhere,
of the potential uses for RFID in humans: the chipping of U.S.
soldiers, of inmates, or of migrant workers, to name a few.
To date, none of this has happened.
But a large-scale chipping plan that was proposed illustrates the
stakes, pro and con.
In mid-May, a protest outside the Alzheimer's Community Care Center in
West Palm Beach, Fla., drew attention to a two-year study in which 200
Alzheimer's patients, along with their caregivers, were to receive chip
implants. Parents, children and elderly people decried the plan, with
signs and placards.
"Chipping People Is Wrong" and "People Are Not Pets," the signs read.
And: "Stop VeriChip."
Ironically, the media attention sent VeriChip's stock soaring 27
percent in one day.
"VeriChip offers technology that is absolutely bursting with
potential," wrote blogger Gary E. Sattler, of the AOL site
Bloggingstocks, even as he recognized privacy concerns.
Albrecht, the RFID critic who organized the demonstration, raises
similar concerns on her AntiChips.com Web site.
"Is it appropriate to use the most vulnerable members of society for
invasive medical research? Should the company be allowed to implant
microchips into people whose mental impairments mean they cannot give
fully informed consent?"
Mary Barnes, the care center's chief executive, counters that both the
patients and their legal guardians must consent to the implants before
receiving them. And the chips, she says, could be invaluable in
identifying lost patients — for instance, if a hurricane strikes
Florida.
That, of course, assumes that the Internet would be accessible in a
killer storm. VeriChip Corp. acknowledged in an SEC filing that its
"database may not function properly" in such circumstances.
As the polemic heats up, legislators are increasingly being drawn into
the fray. Two states, Wisconsin and North Dakota, recently passed laws
prohibiting the forced implantation of microchips in humans. Others —
Ohio, Oklahoma, Colorado and Florida — are studying similar
legislation.
In May, Oklahoma legislators were debating a bill that would have
authorized microchip implants in people imprisoned for violent crimes.
Many felt it would be a good way to monitor felons once released from
prison.
But other lawmakers raised concerns. Rep. John Wright worried,
"Apparently, we're going to permanently put the mark on these people."
Rep. Ed Cannaday found the forced microchipping of inmates "invasive
... We are going down that slippery slope."
In the end, lawmakers sent the bill back to committee for more work.
Cameraphone-Internet catches another excess?
Lawyer
Wants Video Suppressed in Texas
Fight Case
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:11 p.m. ET
July 6, 2009
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) -- A lawyer for a man accused of organizing
fights among developmentally disabled Texans for entertainment argued
Monday that cell phone videos of the events should be suppressed.
The grainy cell phone videos showing the students forced to fight each
other was expected to be the evidence centerpiece this week as four
former employees at the Corpus Christi State School go on trial.
State District Judge Sandra Watts was hearing arguments Monday on a
motion filed for defendant Timothy Dixon, who allegedly recorded the
fights on a phone that was turned over to police. His attorney, Ira
Miller, contends the phone was stolen and police should have obtained a
search warrant before examining the videos.
Jury selection, expected to begin Monday morning, was delayed. Jurors
were expected to be picked for the trial of Dixon, 30, D'Angelo Riley,
23, and Jesse Salazar, 25, all charged with multiple counts of causing
bodily injury to a disabled person. In a separate courtroom, Stephanie
Garza, 21, was to face a lesser charge of not intervening to stop the
fights. Two other former employees are scheduled to go on trial later
this year.
''These people did horrific things,'' said Jeff Garrison-Tate, of the
advocacy group Community Now!, which has called for closing the state
schools in favor of community-based services. ''But they were given
silent permission for these heinous acts.''
District Attorney Carlos Valdez did not return calls for comment.
Defense attorneys for the accused declined to comment.
Almost 20 videos dating back to 2007 were found on a cell phone turned
in to police, showing staff at the Corpus Christi State School forcing
residents into late-night bouts, even kicking them to egg them on.
Eleven staff members were identified and six were charged.
Dixon is believed to have shot the videos, though other staff members
can been seen pointing cell phone cameras toward the brawls. None of
those charged still works at the facility.
The state has taken pains to close the issue. In May, the Legislature
approved a $112 million settlement with the Justice Department for
widespread mistreatment found at Texas' 13 residential facilities for
the developmentally disabled. Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation last
month aimed at improving oversight of the facilities that house nearly
5,000 people.
The settlement is ''a big step that will certainly bring improvements
and changes to the system,'' said Laura Albrecht, a spokeswoman for the
Department of Aging and Disability Services. She said the agency is
making unannounced visits to the Corpus Christi facility and cameras
are being installed.
The school's director remains in place, to the consternation of some
who say that the incidents showed a disturbing lack of supervision.
Beth Mitchell, the managing lawyer for Advocacy Inc., a nonprofit with
federal authority to monitor abuse and neglect at the facilities, asked
what the administration's role in the alleged crimes was.
''They (those charged) were probably the ones instigating the fight
clubs, but my concern is: How can you have it going on as long as it
did without the administration knowing about it?'' she asked.
Camera phone maker mulls
gadget's impact
By MAY WONG, AP Technology Writer
Sun May 20, 1:47 AM ET
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. - The chilling sounds of gunfire on the
Virginia Tech campus; the hateful taunts from Saddam Hussein's
execution; the racist tirade of comedian Michael Richards.
Those videos, all shot with cell phone cameras and seen by millions,
are just a few recent examples of the power now at the fingertips of
the masses. Even the man widely credited with inventing the camera
phone in 1997 is awed by the cultural revolution he helped launch.
"It's had a massive impact because it's just so convenient," said
Philippe Kahn, a tech industry maverick whose other pioneering efforts
include the founding of software maker Borland, an early Microsoft
Corp. antagonist.
"There's always a way to capture memories and share it," he said. "You
go to a restaurant, and there's a birthday and suddenly everyone is
getting their camera phones out. It's amazing."
If Kahn feels a bit like a proud father when he sees people holding up
their cell phones to snap pictures, there's good reason: He jury-rigged
the first camera phone while his wife was in labor with their daughter.
"We were going to have a baby and I wanted to share the pictures with
family and friends," Kahn said, "and there was no easy way to do it."
So as he sat in a maternity ward, he wrote a crude program on his
laptop and sent an assistant to a RadioShack store to get a soldering
iron, capacitors and other supplies to wire his digital camera to his
cell phone. When Sophie was born, he sent her photo over a cellular
connection to acquaintances around the globe. A decade later, 41
percent of American households own a camera phone "and you can hardly
find a phone without a camera anymore," said Michael Cai, an industry
analyst at Parks Associates.
Market researcher Gartner Inc. predicts that about 589 million
cell phones will be sold with cameras in 2007, increasing to more than
1 billion worldwide by 2010. Mix in the Internet's vast reach and
the growth of the YouTube generation, and the ubiquitous gadget's
influence only deepens and gets more complicated. So much so that the
watchful eyes on all of us may no longer just be those of Big Brother.
"For the past decade, we've been under surveillance under these big
black and white cameras on buildings and at 7-Eleven stores. But the
candid camera is wielded by individuals now," said Fred Turner, an
assistant professor of communications at Stanford University who
specializes in digital media and culture.
The contraption Kahn assembled in a Santa Cruz labor-and-delivery room
in 1997 has evolved into a pocket-friendly phenomenon that has
empowered both citizen journalists and personal paparazzi.
It has prompted lawsuits — a student sued campus police at UCLA for
alleged excessive force after officers were caught on cell-phone video
using a stun gun during his arrest; and been a catalyst for change — a
government inquiry into police practices ensued in Malaysia after a
cell-phone video revealed a woman detainee being forced to do squats
while naked.
On another scale, parents use cell-phone slideshows — not wallet photos
— to show off pictures of their children, while adolescents document
their rites of passage with cell phone cameras and instantly share the
images. One of the recipients of Kahn's seminal photo e-mail was
veteran technology consultant Andy Seybold, who recalled being "blown
away" by the picture.
"The fact that it got sent wirelessly on the networks those days — that
was an amazing feat," Seybold said.
Kahn's makeshift photo-communications system formed the basis for a new
company, LightSurf Technologies, which he later sold to VeriSign Inc.
LightSurf built "PictureMail" software and worked with cell phone
makers to integrate the wireless photo technology. Sharp
Corp. was the first to sell a commercial cell phone with a camera in
Japan in 2000. Camera phones didn't debut in the U.S. until 2002, Kahn
said.
Though Kahn's work revolved around transmitting only digital still
photographs — video-related developments were created by others in the
imaging and chip industries — his groundbreaking implementation of the
instant-sharing via a cell phone planted a seed.
"He facilitated people putting cameras in a phone, and he proved that
you can take a photo and send it to someone with a cell phone," Seybold
said.
Kahn, 55, is well aware of how the camera phone has since been put to
negative uses: sneaky shots up women's skirts, or the violent trend of
"happy slapping" in Europe where youths provoke a fight or assault,
capture the incident on camera and then spread the images on the Web or
between mobile phones. But he likes to focus on the technology's
benefits. It's been a handy tool that has led to vindication for
victims or validation for vigilantes.
As Kahn heard the smattering of stories in recent years about
assailants scared off by a camera phone or criminals who were nabbed
later because their faces or their license plates were captured on the
gadget, he said, "I started feeling it was better than carrying a gun."
And though he found the camera-phone video of the former Iraqi
dictator's execution disturbing, Kahn said the gadget helped "get the
truth out." The unofficial footage surreptitiously taken by a guard was
vastly different from the government-issued version and revealed a
chaotic scene with angry exchanges depicting the ongoing problems
between the nation's factions.
Kahn also thinks the evolution of the camera phone has only just begun.
He wouldn't discuss details of his newest startup, Fullpower
Technologies Inc., which is in stealth mode working on the "convergence
of life sciences and wireless," according to its Web site. But,
Kahn said, it will, among other things, "help make camera phones
better."
Our question is this: what will actions taken be after the
last "twitter" is silenced?
Internet
Most Popular Information Source: Poll
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:04 p.m. ET
June
17, 2009
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Internet is
by far the most popular source of information and the preferred choice
for news ahead of television, newspapers and radio, according to a new
poll in the United States.
But just a small fraction of U.S.
adults considered social websites such as Facebook and MySpace as a
good source of news and even fewer would opt for Twitter.
More than half of the people
questioned in the Zogby Interactive survey said they would select the
Internet if they had to choose only one source of news, followed by 21
percent for television and 10 percent for both newspapers and radio.
Only 10 percent described social
websites as an important for news, and despite the media buzz about
Twitter, only 4 percent would go to it for information.
The Internet was also selected as
the most reliable source of news by nearly 40 percent of adults,
compared to 17 percent who opted for television and 16 percent who
selected newspapers and 13 percent for listened to the radio.
"The poll reinforces the idea that
efforts by established newspapers, television and radio news outlets to
push their consumers to their respective websites is working," Zogby
said in a statement.
Almost half of 3,030 adults
questioned in the online survey said national newspaper websites were
important to them, followed by 43 percent who preferred television
websites.
Blogs were less of a necessity than
websites with only 28 percent of those polled saying blogs that shared
their political viewpoint were important.
"That the websites of traditional
news outlets are seen by a wide margin as more important than blog
sites - most of which are repositories of opinion devoid of actual
reportage - could be seen as an encouraging development for the media
at large," Zogby added.
When asked to peer into the future,
an overwhelming 82 percent said the Internet would be the main source
of information in five years time, compared to 13 for television and
0.5 percent chose newspapers.
About 84 percent of American have
access to the Internet, according to industry studies.
Page last updated at 09:36 GMT,
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
US plans to give high-speed
broadband to every American
|
By Maggie Shiels,
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
|
Pressure groups see broadband investment
as vital to the US economy
|
US regulators have unveiled the nation's first
plan to give every American super-fast broadband by 2020.
The
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which will now submit the plan
to Congress, said broadband was the "greatest infrastructure
challenge".
It estimates that one-third of Americans, about 100 million
people, are without broadband at home.
The FCC's goal is to provide speeds of 100 megabits per
second (Mbps), compared to an average 4Mbps now.
"Broadband
for every American is not too ambitious a plan and it is absolutely
necessary," former FCC chairman Reed Hundt told BBC News.
"The
consequences of not succeeding are heartbreaking. Every nation needs a
common medium to gather around and to have the internet as a common
medium where a third are left out is unacceptable."
'Silver bullet'
In
an executive summary released ahead of the presentation to Congress on
16 March, the FCC said: "Broadband is a foundation for economic growth,
job creation, global competitiveness and a better way of life.
|
WHAT GOVERNMENT WILL DO
Connect 100 million homes to super-fast
broadband with speeds up to 100 megabits per second
Allocate spectrum to allow network
updates for wireless broadband
Increase adoption rates to 90% and make
sure every child is digitally literate before they leave school
Encourage greater competition among
providers to make prices cheaper and deals easier to understand
Use digital switch-over fund to bring
cheap broadband to rural areas
Provide one gigabit broadband to
schools, hospitals and military installations
|
"It is changing how we educate children, deliver healthcare,
manage
energy, ensure public safety, engage government, and access, organise
and disseminate knowledge".
For industry analyst Erik Sherman of business and news site
BNet.com, all the talk "sounds like an overstatement".
"The
plan cannot be a silver bullet for all these issues and problems which
exist for a number of different reasons and not just because of a lack
of broadband.
"The plan is very big in scope and if you look at
the rationale, the FCC is basically saying we need more money for more
internet. I am not saying we don't need a broadband plan but we have to
be realistic about what it can and cannot do," Mr Sherman told BBC
News.
'Fairy wings and wishes'
Months of hype and
speculation has preceded the presentation of the country's first
comprehensive broadband roadmap. The FCC has also held a series of
briefings previewing its goals.
"It's an action plan, and
action is necessary to meet the challenges of global competitiveness,
and harness the power of broadband to help address so many vital
national issues," said FCC chairman Julius Genachowski.
Wide differences in broadband access are
revealed by statistics
The executive summary revealed that access to high-speed
internet
services had grown dramatically from eight million Americans 20 years
ago to nearly 200 million today.
Estimates to implement the
plan have been put at $350bn (£233bn). How that bill will be
split
between private investment and tax dollars is not known.
"Who pays and how much is the big fight ahead," said
technology industry analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.
"The
devil is in the detail and right now it's all fairy wings and wishes.
The Republicans are going to fight anything that is excessively
expensive while the Democrats have to be wary of looking like they are
cutting cheques at a time when the government is for the most part
broke."
The FCC will auction off some 500 megahertz of spectrum
to pay for some of the expense. More than $7bn will come from President
Obama's 2009 stimulus package, which targeted broadband-related
initiatives.
'Digital exclusion'
For years the technology industry has pushed for the US
government to create a national broadband plan.
Ahead of today's meeting with Congress, a number of hi-tech
companies wrote to Mr Genachowski to praise the plan.
"Broadband
is critical to America's long-term economic and social well-being. As
society increasingly moves online, the costs of digital exclusion grow
as well," said the signatories of the letter, which included Cisco,
Sony, Salesforce, Microsoft, Facebook and Intel.
One possible battleground is expected to be over the sale of
spectrum that is mostly in the hands of television broadcasters.
Mobile
carriers like AT&T and Verizon have said they will need more
spectrum in future to provide superfast reliable internet connections
to every customer.
"The problem is most of the spectrum is
occupied by somebody else. They are going to want a lot of money for
this," said Adam Thierer, president of the free-market leaning Progress
& Freedom Foundation.
|
Warning sounded on
web's future
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
15 September 2008
|
Some feared firing up the LHC would
doom the Earth
|
The internet needs a way to help
people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World
Wide Web.
Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was
increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread
disinformation.
Sir Tim spoke prior to the unveiling of a Foundation he
has co-created that aims to make the web truly worldwide.
It will also look at ways to help people
decide if sites are trustworthy and reliable sources of information.
Future proof
Sir Tim talked to the BBC in the week in which Cern,
where he did his pioneering work on the web, turned on the Large Hadron
Collider for the first time.
The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the
switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the
Earth particularly concerned him, he said. In a similar vein was the
spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was
harmful.
Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new
systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they
had been proved reliable sources.
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very
rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep
personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he
said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine
spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."
Sir Tim and colleagues at the World Wide
Web consortium had looked at simple ways of branding websites - but
concluded that a whole variety of different mechanisms was needed.
Sir Tim wants to help get the web
to people who are cut off from it.
|
"I'm not a fan of giving a website a simple number like
an IQ rating because like people they can vary in all kinds of
different ways," he said. "So I'd be interested in different
organisations labelling websites in different ways".
Sir Tim spoke to the BBC to publicise the launch of his
World Wide Web Foundation which aims to improve the web's
accessibility.
Alongside this role it will aim to make it easier for
people to get online. Currently only 20% of the world's population have
access to the web
"Has it been designed by the West for the West?" asked
Sir Tim.
"Has it been designed for the executive and the
teenager in the modern city with a smart phone in their pocket? If you
are in a rural community do you need a different kind of web with
different kinds of facilities?"
Creative medium
The Web Foundation will also explore ways to make the
web more mobile-phone friendly. That would increase its use in Africa
and other poor parts of the world where there are few computers but
plenty of handsets.
The Foundation will also look at how the benefits of
the web can be taken to those who cannot read or write.
"We're talking about the evolution of the web," he
said. "Perhaps by using gestures or pointing. When something is such a
creative medium as the web, the limits to it are our imagination".
The Foundation will also look at concerns that the web
has become less democratic, and its use influenced too much by large
corporations and vested interests.
"I think that question is very important and may be
settled in the next few years," said Sir Tim.
"One of the things I always remain concerned about is
that that medium remains neutral," he said.
"It's not just where I go to decide where to buy my
shoes which is the commercial incentive - it's where I go to decide who
I'm going to trust to vote," he said.
"It's where I go maybe to decide what sort of religion
I'm going to belong to or not belong to; it's where I go to decide what
is actual scientific truth - what I'm actually going to go along with
and what is bunkum".
|
FCC set to test
wide-range broadcast internet
DAY
By Kim Hart
Published on 7/25/2008
Wasington - The nation's top technology companies have spent millions
of dollars and nearly two years building devices, poring over laptops
and working in federal labs trying to come up with a new way of
providing high-speed Internet to bandwidth-hungry cities as well as
hard-to-reach rural regions.
Last week, the companies moved from lab to field.
Engineers from the technology heavyweights, including Motorola and
Philips, lugged their laptops, antennas and other equipment to parks,
homes and high-rises around the Washington area, hoping to prove to the
Federal Communications Commission that the unlicensed airwaves between
television stations, known as white spaces, could provide a new form of
mobile Internet service.
Using white spaces “will provide a way to provide broadband across long
distances at much faster speeds than cellphone networks and WiFi,” said
Jake Ward, spokesman for the Wireless Innovation Alliance, which
includes Google, Microsoft, HP and Dell.
The group is trying to convince regulators that using the airwaves will
provide broadband to rural schools, beam high-definition online video
to low-income households and let consumers stream music while sitting
in highway traffic.
First out of the gate was a team from Motorola. On a recent steamy day
in the middle of Patapsco Valley State Park about 10 miles west of
Baltimore, Dave Gurney, an engineer for the company, set up shop in a
parking lot surrounded by dense forest.
A large black box the size of a suitcase hooked up to a laptop sat near
the base of a tree-covered hill. An antenna perched on a tripod rested
a few feet away. A group of engineers stared intently at the
contraption, as if it were about to spring to life.
”It's done!” Gurney said. He held his breath as the men leaned in
further and quickly jotted down a cryptic list of numbers. Then he ran
the test again.
The stakes are high for this mysterious black box. Tech giants and
Silicon Valley start-ups are betting that using white spaces could
extend the Internet's reach. They also hope it will spark a new wave of
portable devices.
But the idea faces big hurdles. Broadcasters use adjacent airwaves to
beam TV shows to viewers, and they say the technology could interfere
with over-the-air signals. Wireless microphone users, from pop stars to
mega-church ministers, say using white spaces could blot out their
sounds.
White-space backers say their devices will be able to detect and avoid
frequencies being used by broadcasters and wireless mics. Critics say
the devices are not reliable enough.
The FCC is trying to settle that debate. For more than a year, the
agency has been testing prototypes with mixed results. An early
prototype built by Microsoft failed to operate in the FCC's lab.
Microsoft later determined the device was broken.
The FCC is now testing other prototypes built by Philips and Motorola
as well as Silicon Valley start-up Adaptrum and Singapore-based
Institute for Infocomm Research. The Motorola device connects to a
database of TV stations operating within 200 kilometers and scans the
airwaves nearly every second for other signals that may pop up
unexpectedly, such as a wireless microphone.
If the device senses that it is within or close to a TV station's
coverage area, it is supposed to avoid that station's frequency. It
then ranks empty frequencies by their proximity to existing signals. If
a new signal suddenly appears, the white-space device should
automatically switch to another open channel.
”We're testing multiple times to make sure the results are consistent,”
Gurney said.
But the results can be hard to decipher. At the first location,
Motorola's device indicated that channel 51, for example, was open and
available. At the second location, the device picked up a weak signal
on the channel, suggesting that it was already in use.
Motorola's engineers say that means the signal changed slightly between
locations, and the device would be able to avoid that channel as soon
as it was detected. But Bruce Franca, vice president of policy and
technology for the Association for Maximum Service Television, a
broadcasting industry group, is skeptical.
”The results of every single test were different,” he said. “The device
failed to recognize that certain channels are actually being occupied
by TV signals. ... Clearly this is not ready for prime time.”
Shure, which makes microphones and other audio equipment used in
Broadway shows and sports games, argues the tests have not proven that
the prototypes can consistently detect TV signals, let alone wireless
microphones that hop on frequencies without notice.
The FCC plans to test the white-space devices at an entertainment venue
in the next few months. The National Football League has offered the
Baltimore Ravens' stadium or the Washington Redskins' park as possible
venues. And the Recording Academy, which puts on the Grammy Awards, has
offered up the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago next month for
testing.
”That's where the rubber will meet the road,” said Mark Brunner, senior
director of brand management at Shure.
LATEST (l) 2011; a
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described in story below. Example (r) of "WIFRY" - narrowing
signal for better quality and range
WOKTENNA
instructions below:
Make
2.4GHz parabolic mesh dishes from cheap but sturdy Chinese
cookware scoops & a USB WiFi adaptor! The largest so called "WIFRY"
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for a LOS
range extension to
