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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?
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
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.
Spy not
long for this world, perhaps
Early Struggles of Soldier Charged in Leak Case
NYTIMES
By GINGER THOMPSON
August 8, 2010
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — He spent part of his childhood with his father in
the arid plains of central Oklahoma, where classmates made fun of him
for being a geek. He spent another part with his mother in a small,
remote corner of southwest Wales, where classmates made fun of him for
being gay.
Then he joined the Army, where, friends said, his social life was
defined by the need to conceal his sexuality under “don’t ask, don’t
tell” and he wasted brainpower fetching coffee for officers.
But it was around two years ago, when Pfc. Bradley Manning came here to
visit a man he had fallen in love with, that he finally seemed to have
found a place where he fit in, part of a social circle that included
politically motivated computer hackers and his boyfriend, a
self-described drag queen. So when his military career seemed headed
nowhere good, Private Manning, 22, turned increasingly to those friends
for moral support.
And now some of those friends say they wonder whether his desperation
for acceptance — or delusions of grandeur — may have led him to
disclose the largest trove of government secrets since the Pentagon
Papers.
“I would always try to make clear to Brad that he had a promising
future ahead of him,” said Daniel J. Clark, one of those Cambridge
friends. “But when you’re young and you’re in his situation, it’s hard
to tell yourself things are going to get better, especially in Brad’s
case, because in his past, things didn’t always get better.”
Blond and barely grown up, Private Manning worked as an intelligence
analyst and was based east of Baghdad. He is suspected of disclosing
more than 150,000 diplomatic cables, more than 90,000 intelligence
reports on the war in Afghanistan and one video of a military
helicopter attack — all of it classified. Most of the information was
given to WikiLeaks.org, which posted the war reports after sharing them
with three publications, including The New York Times.
WikiLeaks has defended the disclosure, saying transparency is essential
to democracy. The Pentagon has denounced the leaks, saying they put
American soldiers and their Afghan allies in grave danger.
And while that dispute rages on, with the Pentagon having recently
demanded that WikiLeaks remove all secret documents from the Internet
and hand over any undisclosed materials in its files, Private Manning
is being held in solitary confinement at Quantico, Va., under suicide
watch.
Private Manning’s military-appointed lawyer, Maj. Thomas F. Hurley,
declined an interview request.
Much remains unknown about his journey there from Crescent, Okla., the
small town where he was born. But interviews with people who know him,
along with e-mail exchanges between him and Adrian Lamo, the computer
hacker who turned him in, offer some insights into Private Manning’s
early years, why he joined the Army and how he came to be so troubled,
especially in recent months.
“I’ve been isolated so long,” Private Manning wrote in May to Mr. Lamo,
who turned the chat logs over to the authorities and the news media.
“But events kept forcing me to figure out ways to survive.”
Survival was something Private Manning began learning as a young child
in Crescent. His father, Brian Manning, was also a soldier and spent a
lot of time away from home, former neighbors recalled. His mother,
Susan Manning, struggled to cope with the culture shock of having moved
to the United States from her native Wales, the neighbors said.
One neighbor, Jacqueline Radford, recalled that when students at
Private Manning’s elementary school went on field trips, she sent
additional food or money to make sure he had something to eat.
“I’ve always tried to be supportive of him because of his home life,”
Ms. Radford said. “I know it was bad, to where he was left to his own,
had to fend for himself.”
At school, Bradley Manning was clearly different from most of his
peers. He preferred hacking computer games rather than playing them,
former neighbors said. And they said he seemed opinionated beyond his
years about politics, religion, and even about keeping religion out of
politics.
In his Bible Belt hometown that he once mockingly wrote in an e-mail
had “more pews than people,” Private Manning refused to recite the
parts of the Pledge of Allegiance that referred to God or do homework
assignments that involved the Scriptures. And if a teacher challenged
his views, former classmates said, he was quick to push back.
“He would get upset, slam books on the desk if people wouldn’t listen
to him or understand his point of view,” said Chera Moore, who attended
elementary and junior high school with him. “He would get really mad,
and the teacher would say, ‘O.K., Bradley, get out.’ ”
It was something he would hear a lot throughout his life.
After Private Manning’s parents divorced, he moved with his mother to
Haverfordwest, Wales, her hometown, and began a new chapter of
isolation. Haverfordwest is several times bigger than Crescent. It is
also centuries older, with traditions that run much deeper. A bustling
market town, it offered a pace of life that was significantly faster.
Former students at his school there, Tasker Milward, remembered Private
Manning being teased for all sort of reasons. His American accent. His
love of Dr Pepper. The amount of time he spent huddled before a
computer.
And then, students began to suspect he was gay.
Sometimes, former classmates said, he reacted to the teasing by idly
boasting about stealing other students’ girlfriends. At other times, he
openly flirted with boys. Often, with only the slightest provocation,
he would launch into fits of rage.
“It was probably the worst experience anybody could go through,” said
Rowan John, a former classmate who was openly gay in high school.
“Being different like me, or Bradley, in the middle of nowhere is like
going back in time to the Dark Ages.”
But life ahead did not immediately brighten for Private Manning. After
his troubled high school years, his mother sent him back to Oklahoma to
live with his father and his older sister.
He was hired and quickly fired from a small software company, where his
employer, Kord Campbell, recalled him as clean-cut and highly
intelligent with an almost innate sense for programming, as well as the
personality of a bull in a china shop. Then his father found out he was
gay and kicked him out of the house, friends said. Mr. Clark, the
Cambridge friend, said Private Manning told him he lived out of his car
briefly while he worked in a series of minimum-wage retail jobs.
He enlisted in the Army in 2007, to try to give his life some direction
and to help to pay for college, friends said.
He was granted a security clearance and trained as an intelligence
analyst at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., before being assigned to the Second
Brigade 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y.
Before being deployed to Iraq, Private Manning met Tyler Watkins, who
described himself on his blog as a classical musician, singer and drag
queen. A friend said the two had little in common, but Private Manning
fell head over heels. Mr. Watkins, who did not respond to interview
requests for this article, was a student at Brandeis University. On
trips to visit him here in Cambridge, Private Manning got to know many
in Mr. Watkins’ wide network of friends, including some who were part
of this university town’s tight-knit hacker community.
Friends said Private Manning found the atmosphere here to be everything
the Army was not: openly accepting of his geeky side, his liberal
political opinions, his relationship with Mr. Watkins and his ambition
to do something that would get attention.
Although hacking has come to mean a lot of different things, at its
core, those who do it say, is the philosophy that information should be
free and accessible to all. And Private Manning had access to some of
the most secret information on the planet.
Meanwhile, his military career was anything but stellar. He had been
reprimanded twice, including once for assaulting an officer. He wrote
in e-mails that he felt “regularly ignored” by his superiors “except
when I had something essential, then it was back to ‘Bring me coffee,
then sweep the floor.’ ”
And it seems the more isolated he felt in the military — he wore custom
dog tags that said “Humanist,” and friends said he kept a toy fairy
wand on his desk in Iraq — the more he clung to his hacker friends.
According to Wired magazine, Private Manning told Mr. Watkins last
January that he had gotten his hands on a secret video showing a
military helicopter attack that killed two Reuters photographers and
one Iraqi civilian.
In a computer chat with Mr. Lamo, Private Manning said he gave the
video to WikiLeaks in February. Then, after WikiLeaks released it in
April, Private Manning hounded Mr. Watkins about whether there had been
any public reaction. “That was one of his major concerns once he’d done
this,” Mr. Watkins told Wired. “Was it really going to make a
difference?”
In his computer chats with Mr. Lamo, Private Manning described how he
downloaded the video and lip-synched to Lady Gaga as he copied hundreds
of thousand of diplomatic cables.
“Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are
going to have a heart attack,” he boasted. But even as he professed a
perhaps inflated sense of purpose, he called himself “emotionally
fractured” and a “wreck” and said he was “self-medicating like crazy.”
And as he faces the possibility of a lifetime in prison, some of
Private Manning’s remarks now seem somewhat prophetic.
“I wouldn’t mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being
executed so much,” he wrote, “if it wasn’t for the possibility of
having pictures of me plastered all over the world press.”
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.
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.”
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, 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.”
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.
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
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.
A wajanbolic antenna (left),
described in story below. Rube Goldberg lives! Above
right is another example of "WIFRY" - narrowing
signal for better quality and range (also can use a 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"
or "WOKTENNA" (12"= 300mm diam) shows 12-15dB gain (enough
for a LOS
range extension to 3-5km),costs ~US$5 & comes with a user friendly
bamboo handle that suits WLAN fieldwork- if you can handle the curious
stares! Neater boutique versions may better appeal indors.
Starbucks: Free Wi-Fi at 6,700 US sites
YAHOO
By ASHLEY M. HEHER, AP Retail Writer
14 June 2010
CHICAGO – Starbucks Corp. will begin offering unlimited free Wi-Fi at
all of its company-operated U.S. locations next month, part of an
ongoing effort to bring more customers in the door.
The free wireless Internet will be available July 1 at about 6,700
locations.
The coffee house, which recorded its first quarterly increase in
customers in 13 quarters earlier this year, had previously offered two
free hours of Web access each day to registered customers.
After that, consumers at the Seattle chain were charged a small fee.
Access will continue to be offered through AT&T. But it won't
require a Starbucks loyalty card, according to the announcement Monday
by CEO Howard Schultz, who spoke at a conference in New York.
The move comes six months after Starbucks' competitor McDonald's Corp.
began offering free Wi-Fi at 11,500 U.S. locations.
The two companies have sparred in recent years at McDonald's revamped
its coffee and rolled out a successful McCafe line offering everything
from drip coffee and lattes to cappuccinos to icy coffee drinks.
Along the way, Starbucks struggled as it was hit by the recession and
overwhelmed by its own rapid expansion.
As business soured, it brought back Schultz, who helped build the
company, to lead the day-to-day operations. And it shut hundreds of
locations and laid off thousands of workers to scale back its spending.
Also Monday, Starbucks said customers will get free access to certain
online content through its Wi-Fi this fall. Called the Starbucks
Digital Network, the program will give Starbucks Web surfers free
access to paid sites like the Wall Street Journal, along with exclusive
content and free downloads from other organizations such as Apple
Inc.'s iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA TODAY, Yahoo and Zagat.
Starbucks shares climbed 34 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $27.49 in midday
trading Monday.
Frying the wires, freeing the
waves
Grassroots
organisations in Indonesia are building communication media from the
most basic of utensils
By Edwin Jurriëns - jurriens-wajanbolic.jpg
Received via e-mail from Yale, 2-15-09
While Indonesia’s big cities are saturated with many types of media,
media fare at the village level is often quite limited. In response,
several grassroots organisations have begun building a more
participatory communications infrastructure, relying on advances in
technology to provide community television facilities and cheap
wireless Internet. Like existing community radio, theatre and print
media already scattered across the archipelago, these new media have
emerged as an alternative to government and business-controlled
Internet and television programming.
Out of the frying pan
In 2000, residents of Timbulharjo village in Bantul, Central Java
formed the organisation Angkringan, named after the Javanese term for
‘food vendor’, to build a media infrastructure that would meet the
information and communication needs of their community. Starting with
an eight-page print bulletin of local news and entertainment, within
half a year, Angkringan expanded into community radio broadcasts.
During the parliamentary elections of 2004, the organisation used
mobile screening facilities to air information about the elections. And
in 2007, Angkringan began work on establishing a local Internet
network, called AngkringanNet, for Timbulharjo.
AngkringanNet relies on the convergence of community radio broadcasting
with wireless Internet technology. Using a community radio antenna,
AngkringanNet transmits an Internet signal over the 2.4 MHz frequency,
free of charge. The signal can then be accessed by anyone in
Timbulharjo with a computer and a ‘wajanbolic’ antenna.
Using wajanbolic receivers, browsing
the Internet and sending e-mail is as easy as frying an egg
The wajanbolic antenna is the key to the system: it is composed of an
actual wajan, or frying pan, wrapped in aluminium foil and connected to
a short tube. Once placed on a rooftop, tree or other elevated point,
the linked WiFi USB stick can be connected to one or more personal
computers. Users do not have to pay individual Internet connection
fees, but can share the costs with other users, keeping the costs per
household to only several thousand rupiah per month.
Angkringan’s wajanbolic antenna is based on alternative Internet
technology pioneered by the Indonesian technology guru Onno W Purbo and
students from Muhammadiyah University in Malang. Angkringan
deliberately chose the wajan, a basic piece of cookware that can be
found in almost every Indonesian kitchen, to put people with no prior
exposure to modern communication technology at ease, and to make it
clear that browsing the Internet or sending an e-mail was as easy as
frying an egg. The choice can also be seen as a symbol of local
resistance against business monopolies dominating the computer and
Internet industries.
AngkringanNet provides Timbulharjo residents with Internet links to the
outside world as well as an Intranet exclusively for the community.
Villagers are encouraged to understand and creatively engage with the
technology, and move beyond simply being end users. The AngkringanNet
web site makes available various Open Source software programs for
villagers to use. They can also contribute to the Village Database,
which contains information on local governance, economy, health and
other issues.
To date, 12 wajanbolic antennas have been installed in Timbulharjo. In
various workshops, Angkringan has shared its ideas and experiences
beyond their village with representatives of other Indonesian community
media organisations. The Indonesian government, through the Department
of Communications (Depkominfo), has also donated computer equipment and
provided assistance in Internet training sessions. Angkringan plans to
open its wireless service to locally produced community television
broadcasts in the near future.
Members of Angkringan also helped establish the Association of
Indonesian Community Television (Asosiasi Televisi Komunitas Indonesia,
or ATVKI), an umbrella organisation of community television stations.
Similar to Angkringan’s wajanbolic philosophy, ATVKI defines its
community television as ‘from, by and for the people’. ATVKI members
exchange technical information and give each other guidance on
organisation and broadcast content.
Not coincidentally, ATVKI was founded in Grabag village in Central
Java, home of Grabag TV, one of the few active community television
stations in Indonesia. Grabag TV was founded in 2005 by Hartanto, a
lecturer from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts and native of Grabag.
At the time, Grabag residents could only receive the commercial
television channel RCTI, relayed from Jakarta by antenna because of the
village’s mountainous surroundings. Hartanto built a small studio,
provided basic equipment, and organised training sessions on
script-writing, filming and editing. Using the existing antenna,
villagers began broadcasting programs written and produced by their
fellow citizens.
Community TV should broadcast content
‘from, by and for the people’
Currently, Grabag TV has two-hour broadcasts every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday afternoon. Any villager with an idea for a program or a
general interest in broadcasting is welcome to make a contribution.
Farmers and traders go on air to talk about their professional
problems, plans and strategies. Programs have featured students from
primary and secondary schools discussing the positive and negative
effects of television on education, part of Grabag TV’s efforts to
raise the media literacy of Grabag’s citizens. The art and culture
programs often contain popular Javanese dance and music performances.
Grabag TV also organised live coverage of elections for the village
head, thus providing a new mechanism for monitoring local political
processes.
Costs and controversies
Grabag TV has been able to restrict its average operational costs to
only Rp. 800,000 ($A109) per month. It covers these costs with
voluntary donations from the viewers. In general, money is an important
issue, but not a major obstacle to community initiatives like Grabag TV
and AngkringanNet. Often such initiatives find more difficulties in
generating innovative and educational media content, and ensuring
community participation once the initial enthusiasm has worn off.
Community media also face regulatory and legal hurdles. In the 2003
negotiations over the allocation of broadcast frequencies by the
government, community television was passed over while public,
commercial and pay television channels were given official broadcast
rights, possibly under pressure from the broadcasting industry. The
process of receiving a community broadcasting license is also
time-consuming and expensive. AKTVI continues to fight for official
broadcast frequencies and the streamlining of broadcast licenses.
The work done by organisations like Angkringan and AKTVI illustrates
the awareness of Indonesian media activists that the struggle for free
and independent information and communication can start, but certainly
will not stop, with a WiFi USB stick and a frying pan.
Edwin Jurriëns
(e.jurriens@adfa.edu.au) is a lecturer in Indonesian Language and
Culture at The University of New South Wales, Canberra.
Global Dreams for a Wireless Web
NYTIMES
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: May 25, 2008
Menorca, Spain
SITTING on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this
Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the
group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.
“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,”
Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites
owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and
have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital
future.
These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and
Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for
speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No
stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and
telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to
bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.
Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded
FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power
of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share
a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for
access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.
The swaps, in theory, would allow “Foneros” to have ubiquitous, global
wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite
$55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and
BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype
and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still
missing a crucial ingredient: scale.
At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the
world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because
it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well
only if there are Foneros everywhere.
And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces
particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached
a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of
a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two
giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic
openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon
wireless data networks.
The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,”
are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions
of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural
openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.
But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage
the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and
business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of
conformity on software development.
For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground —
deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet
movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate
approach to expansion.
Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the
company also has a growing number of devotees.
“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex — it can
be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private
hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said
Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former
FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON
can and will change this.”
But others have their doubts.
“I know that the people at Google like this idea,” said John Saw, the
chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig
McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build
a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and
others. “But we’re skeptical.”
Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he
can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids
the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of
cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.
“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a
signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have
some customers use their services for free and save billions in
infrastructure deployment.”
MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile
partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last
fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.
During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men
discussed why a partnership might make sense.
Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers,
and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an
ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an
interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone
users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.
But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met,
their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond
to requests to comment on the meeting.)
At the outset, Mr. Varsavsky recalled, Mr. Jobs asked sharply, “Who
needs your community?” and “Why should British Telecom bother to do a
deal with you, and why shouldn’t people just leave their routers open
for sharing?”
Mr. Varsavsky says he responded, “Why should you bother to do a deal
with AT&T? Shouldn’t iPhones just be connected freely with any
cellphone network?”
Mr. Varsavsky says he left the meeting with the uncomfortable feeling
that Apple might end up as a competitor rather than as a partner. But
it wasn’t only because of Mr. Jobs’s legendary stubbornness that the
Apple meeting apparently went awry. Mr. Varsavsky’s own substantial ego
also came into play — something he freely acknowledges when he talks
about how he first got into business.
“My father died and my mother was saying, ‘Martin, get a job, get a
job,’ ” he recalls. “And I would go to job interviews and they would
say, ‘How do you see yourself in five years?’ And I would say, ‘Well,
at least as your boss!’ ”
That attitude surfaced in other forums as well. In high school in
Argentina during the 1970s, he says, he persuaded classmates to open
their own office supply store to compete with a store across the street
from their school. He also declared his interest in left-leaning
politics, which he said attracted the attention of the Argentine
military junta that was purging high schools of dissidents. In the
“dirty war” of 1976-83, the government killed thousands it suspected of
being leftists.
An officer told the school to expel him, Mr. Varsavsky says, and he
left for Brazil. Around the same time, he believes, his cousin was
kidnapped and killed by the military. The Varsavsky family fled to the
United States, and Mr. Varsavsky earned his undergraduate degree in
economics and philosophy at New York University in 1981. He later
attended Columbia University, where he received graduate degrees in
international affairs and business administration.
MR. VARSAVSKY says start-ups got into his blood during graduate school,
when he made his first million in a real estate foray: renovating and
reselling lofts in New York.
After moving to Spain in the 1990s, he had three big telecommunications
and Internet successes. He says that a $200,000 investment he made to
start a long-distance company, Viatel, in 1990 was worth about $240
million when he cashed in his stake in 1999; that the 5 million euros
he used to start Jazztel in 1997 has given him a stake now worth about
150 million euros; and that the 38 million euros he used to start a
Spanish Internet service provider, Ya.com, in 1999 had grown to about
149 million euros when he sold the company the next year.
Then, after this first round of success, Mr. Varsavsky was hit with a
loss that he describes as a striking, gut-wrenching failure. His German
start-up EinsteinNet, founded in 2000 as an effort to sell software
over a private fiber optic network, collapsed in 2003, leaving him with
a personal loss of $50 million.
“I used the most money of my own in a company where I lost it all, and
I consider it my business black eye,” he recalls, saying that he also
drew a valuable lesson from the misadventure: “I don’t invest on my
own. If other people don’t want to back me, it’s a sanity check.”
TO that end, Mr. Varsavsky has become a tireless networker, traveling
the world to participate in a continuous parade of technology
conferences and cultivating a global retinue of friends and contacts.
He has also been active on the philanthropic front, earning kudos from
a onetime resident of the White House.
“Martin represents the future of entrepreneurial culture and is helping
to transform the way people give,” former President Bill Clinton says.
“He has found different ways to use his acute business sense and
creativity to improve our world and the lives of others.”
This month, Mr. Varsavsky brought together more than 70 Internet
business people and technologists from Europe, Asia, Latin America and
the United States for a conclave on his Menorca farm. Some guests
represented the more than 20 digital enterprises in which he has a
stake; others were “friends of Martin,” a loose-knit group that
comprises his informal business network around the world.
The four-day conclave featured several unscripted “tech talks” in which
entrepreneurs described problems they faced building their businesses.
Participants included Lukasz Wejchert, the chief executive of Onet,
Poland’s dominant Internet portal.
Deals with companies like Onet will be crucial if Mr. Varsavsky is to
make good on his goal of having a million FON customers on each of
three continents by 2010. The two companies recently came close to a
deal, Mr. Wejchert says, but Onet decided that it was still to early
for it to become an Internet service provider in Poland because the
regulatory environment worked against new entrants.
That major players like Onet are beginning to find FON a potentially
profitable partner is promising, and Mr. Varsavsky’s formidable
networking abilities with politicians and entrepreneurs are also a
plus. Ultimately, however, FON’s success will hinge on its strategic
soundness and operational prowess — not on Mr. Varsavsky’s skills at
working the cocktail circuit.
He likes to refer to FON as a “revolution,” but so far his crusade has
had difficulty gathering momentum because formal corporate alliances
have been slow to jell.
In Mr. Varsavsky’s approach, FON’s business is subsidized by
non-Foneros — passing Web surfers who buy time for access to the
network — which he can then share with FON’s customers. The approach is
different from that of Boingo, a Wi-Fi aggregator based in Los Angeles
that charges users a monthly fee for using hotspots while they are
traveling.
Yet both FON and Boingo have faced significant resistance from Internet
service providers that carefully restrict access to their customers,
leaving the idea of a seamless wireless Internet based on Wi-Fi
technology an unfulfilled dream so far.
Mr. Varsavsky said he initially hoped that selling $30 Wi-Fi routers
embedded with FON software would be all he needed to expand the ranks
of Foneros around the globe. But this approach failed to gain traction
fast enough, and he shifted gears. Now he is trying to steadily stack
up distribution deals with I.S.P.’s.
While some I.S.P.’s have ignored his company, Mr. Varsavsky says FON
has gained ground among I.S.P.’s that are looking for a way to attract
new customers in competitive markets as well as to compete with
high-speed wireless cellular networks.
FON now has a growing range of alliances, including ones with the BT
Group, Neuf Cegetel in France, Livedoor (a Japanese I.S.P.), and Time
Warner in the United States, as well as a recent agreement with the
city of Geneva, which is distributing hundreds of FON routers to
residents. Now strongest in Britain, France and Japan, FON has recently
made progress with new agreements with two major Japanese retailers and
a Taiwanese I.S.P. And Mr. Varsavsky said he is close to major
agreements in India and Russia.
FON’s losses have shrunk from more than a million euros a month to less
than 500,000, Mr. Varsavsky says. He also hasn’t given up his belief
that a coming generation of wireless Internet technology will
eventually give FON an even bigger boost.
The first generation of Wi-Fi technology was limited in range, making
it impractical for Foneros to share their routers widely. But a new
wireless technology, known as 802.16, which should be more widely
available to consumers over the next two years, will offer far greater
ranges.
This next generation of wireless communication, called WiMax by Intel
and others, may allow him to complete his dream — in effect making it
possible to weave together a wireless digital network in an urban area
with nothing more than an army of Foneros willing to let their routers
be used as micro cell towers.
“Why should anyone have to build their own towers?” he asks.
FON’s future, he argues, will revolve around universal access to the
wireless Internet. In the meantime, he faces a big obstacle in one of
the world’s most lucrative communications markets: the United States,
where newer cellular networks with flat-rate pricing may prove a
challenge because they will provide universal high-speed coverage.
In Europe, the Internet landscape looks more promising. The European
Commission’s decision last summer to place a price cap on voice calls —
to make cellphones more affordable for residents traveling within the
European Union — didn’t include mobile data. Recent high-speed wireless
networks introduced in Europe also use per-megabyte pricing,
discouraging the streaming of large files like video.
That leaves a potentially big opportunity for a widely accessible
sharing solution for travelers. Yet even in Europe, there are potential
roadblocks, not the least of which has been a historically inhospitable
atmosphere for entrepreneurial gambits.
“Europe has a larger market than the U.S.A., but it is culturally
fragmented and risk-averse,” Mr. Varsavsky says. “But the differences
are narrowing, and now there are European venture capitalists and a
local entrepreneurial culture.”
Yet he remains undaunted when he discusses his unfinished revolution
and FON’s prospects.
“FON,” he said, “is like a telephone company built by the people,” he
said.
Vaunted
WiMax's messy side: the spectrum grab
By
John Letzing, MarketWatch
Last Update: 10:31 AM ET Sep 29, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- In its drive to roll out a new,
cutting-edge wireless technology, Sprint Nextel Corp. has taken on
Burke County Middle School and a cast of equally unlikely opponents in
a nasty spat over the use of airwaves.
Sprint announced in July that they will team up to cover 100 million
people with WiMax networks by 2008. Sprint is placing a risky bet
on
the largely unproven technology to revive a wireless business that has
lost ground to those of rivals Verizon and AT&T, analysts say.
Upstart Clearwire, meanwhile, hopes WiMax can one day help the company
become a major telecom player.
But laying the groundwork for WiMax has involved a messy endeavor to
gather up access to necessary airwaves. Much of the spectrum is owned
by non-profits and schools, such as those in Burke County, Ga. Many
have held it for years, without assigning much value to it. Wrangling
over rights to this spectrum has pitted Sprint against a number of the
schools and non-profits, while underlining a rift with Clearwire, an
important partner in dispatching WiMax in its early stages.
Decades ago, the Federal Communications Commission allocated to schools
and non-profits much of the 2.5 gigahertz spectrum ideal for WiMax.
Classified as "EBS," it can't be owned directly by businesses. The
North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation, for
example, can use it to broadcast programming such as "Prayer Talk" and
"Gift and Mystery."
Others, like the Burke County schools near Augusta, Ga., didn't even
realize they had it until Sprint came calling. General counsel for
Burke County Public Schools, James Hyder, said Sprint made an
unexpected offer early last year to lease one of the schools' two
spectrum licenses.
"We woke up one day and saw we had these," Hyder said. After a call to
a former superintendent to clear up what it was exactly Sprint was
after, the schools agreed, Hyder said.
Seeing dollar signs
The relationship took an odd turn late last year,
however, when
the Burke County schools applied to the FCC to renew a second, expired
spectrum license. Around 40 other organizations, ranging from Heartland
Community College to Connecticut Public Broadcasting, had also applied
for the renewal of expired EBS licenses which, thanks largely to WiMax,
have dramatically increased in value.
The FCC granted those requests in January, inviting a flood of hundreds
of subsequent late renewal requests. Sprint has called the development
a mushrooming threat to its network plans. It filed a petition for the
commission to reconsider the late renewals in February.
"These former licensees seek to hijack ... valuable spectrum," Sprint
said in its petition, adding that the FCC "should not be mislead into
granting new authorizations."
Clearwire, meanwhile, has sided with the schools and non-profits. The
FCC hasn't yet issued a decision on the matter.
The EBS spectrum in question was long seen as having little value
beyond broadcasting TV signals in one direction. That's changed as
companies like Sprint and Clearwire have announced plans to use it for
beaming data and voice communication among computers and phones on
WiMax networks, and as the FCC has issued rules making it easier to
lease for commercial purposes.
"These educational groups who didn't really care ... whether they had
these [licenses] or not are now seeing dollar signs," said Tim Sanders,
an analyst with research firm Maravedis Inc.
Indeed, some groups have seen handsome windfalls, thanks to the
spectrum's increased value. But the grab for airwaves has also resulted
in a series of lawsuits and a surplus of acrimony.
Pandora's box
WiMax can blast radio signals far more broadly than WiFi, thus
requiring less network equipment to cover large areas, and some believe
it also has certain technical advantages over cellular phone
technology.
But the FCC's decision to grant renewals of expired EBS licenses could
mar Sprint's WiMax rollout by cutting holes in carefully-planned
network coverage areas, the company says. Sprint would either have to
negotiate new deals for the reinstated licenses, or see them fall to
competitors. A number of educational groups with EBS
licenses have
also joined Sprint in complaining about the renewals, which they say
threaten to impinge on existing coverage areas.
"You think you have a three-bedroom house, and then all of a sudden
someone comes and says, 'hey, half the house is mine'," said Sprint
spokesman Scott Sloat. "This has opened a whole Pandora's box."
So far, at least 188 expired EBS license renewal applications have now
been filed with the FCC, Sloat said.
In a filing with the FCC posted Friday, Sprint, Clearwire and a number
of license holders put forth a proposed settlement, under which
late-renewed licenses would have slightly altered coverage areas.
The impetus for the schools' and non-profits' late renewals, Maravedis'
Sanders said, is often "someone approaching them and saying, 'we'll
lease your spectrum if you can get your license back'."
"I can't speak to their motivation other than to say spectrum is a
valuable asset, and people aware of that may see that as an opportunity
for a land grab," Sloat said.
Hyder, the Burke County schools' general counsel, said the decision to
renew their second spectrum license and seek a suitor was an easy one.
"It's the difference between getting nothing today, and something
tomorrow," Hyder said, adding that whatever the schools are offered to
lease the spectrum "doesn't have to be too significant" for a deal to
make sense.
Faster Wi-Fi in works to transfer
data
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 2, 2:43 PM ET
ATLANTA - With a wave of his hand over a homemade receiver, Georgia
Tech professor Joy Laskar shows how easily — and quickly — large data
files could someday be transferred from a portable media player to a
TV.
Poof! "You just moved a movie onto your device," Laskar says.
While Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have emerged as efficient ways to zap small
amounts of data between gadgets, neither is well suited for quickly
transferring high-definition video, large audio libraries and other
massive files.
Laskar and other scientists at the Georgia Electronic Design Center
have turned to extremely high radio frequencies to transfer huge data
files over short distances.
The high frequencies — which use the 60 gigahertz band — have been a
mostly untapped resource. Researchers say it could one day become the
conventional wireless way to zap data over short distances.
Laskar hopes it could soon become a rival to other wireless
technologies. Getting government permission to use the spectrum would
not be a problem, since that radio band, much like the one used for
Wi-Fi, is unlicensed. Because the range will likely be less than 33
feet, interference is less likely and transmissions could be more
secure.
A similar short-range technology, known as ultra-wideband, is just now
reaching the market after several years of wrangling between different
companies and engineering bodies. It exploits another unlicensed band,
reaching up to 10.3 GHz. Last month, Toshiba Corp. introduced laptops
with built-in UWB chips that can communicate wirelessly with a docking
station. Other possible uses include transmission of high-definition
video.
But the maximum current speed of UWB is about 480 megabits per second,
equivalent to a high-speed computer cable but possibly not be enough
for all applications. Use of the 60 GHz band promises much higher
speeds.
"There will be a constant pressure for speed and it will never cease,"
said M. Kursat Kimyacioglu, director of strategy and wireless business
development at the semiconductor subsidiary of Philips Electronics NV.
"We need much faster wireless data networking technologies to make much
faster downloads and back-ups and higher resolution HD video streaming
possible."
He said Philips is looking at using the technology to eliminate cable
bundles, but much more research will be needed. The signals don't
penetrate walls very well and are too easily disturbed by passing
people and pets, Kimyacioglu said.
The research is far from over, Laskar said, but he hopes those
challenges can be overcome in the next year or so. If so, the hardware
for transferring files could be available by 2009, and new TV sets
could be built with the chips the next year.
The center has already achieved wireless data-transfer rates of 15
gigabits per second from a span of 1 meter. That would mean a download
time of less than five seconds for a DVD-quality copy of "The Matrix"
or other Hollywood movies.
Specialized radios have been sending and receiving high-frequency
signals for years, but they're big and can cost tens of thousands of
dollars. The Georgia center's challenge has been to convert these
devices into tiny chips that can be slipped directly into phones and
computers. To be competitive with other technologies, Laskar's set his
sights on a $5 chip, and so far his researchers have hammered together
a few prototypes to show off the technology.
"We don't want to replace these guys," says Laskar, pointing at an HD
receiver and TV set. "We want to complement them."
A cheap chip would launch a new round of competition for the
technology, said Anh-Vu Pham, an associate professor of electrical and
computer engineering at the University of California at Davis.
"The technology is there, it just requires a little more work," he
said. "If the radio can be deployed, you'll have a lot of applications
— from HDTV to flash drives — without using any type of cable. Once you
solve that problem, you open up so many applications."
The technology could get a big boost if the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers, a top international association of electrical
engineers, decides to create a standard for the spectrum. The group is
weighing the decision now and could decide by next year.
"You're talking about moving gigabits in seconds, your whole iPod
library, your whole video library," said Laskar. "This has the
potential of becoming the de facto way of moving this information on
and off the devices.
"With this type of technology, you can compete — and pretty much crush
— the wired competition."
Cities
struggle with wireless
Internet
By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
May 21, 2007
A $3 million plan to blanket Lompoc, Calif., with a wireless Internet
system promised a quantum leap for economic development: The remote
community hit hard by cutbacks at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base
would join the 21st century with cheap and plentiful high-speed access.
Instead, nearly a year after its launch, Lompoc Net is limping along.
The central California city of 42,000, surrounded by rolling hills,
wineries and flower fields more than 17 miles from the nearest major
highway, has only a few hundred subscribers.
That's far fewer than the 4,000 needed to start repaying loans from the
city's utility coffers, potentially leaving smaller reserves to guard
against electric rate increases.
And Lompoc isn't alone. Across the United States, many cities are
finding their Wi-Fi projects costing more and drawing less interest
than expected, leading to worries that a number will fail, resulting in
millions of dollars in wasted tax dollars or grants when there had been
roads to build and crime to fight.
More than $230 million was spent in the United States last year, and
the industry Web site MuniWireless projects $460 million will be spent
in 2007. Without revenues they had counted on to offset that
spending, elected officials might have to break promises or find money
in already-tight budgets to subsidize the systems for the low-income
families and city workers who depend on the access. Cities might end up
running the systems if companies abandon networks they had built.
The worries come as big cities like Philadelphia and Portland, Ore.,
complete pilots and expand their much-hyped networks.
"They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally
overpromised and completely undelivered," said Anthony Townsend,
research director at the Institute for the Future, a think tank.
Municipal Wi-Fi projects use the same technology behind wireless access
in coffee shops, airports and home networks. Hundreds or thousands of
antennas are installed atop street lamps and other fixtures. Laptops
and other devices have Wi-Fi cards that relay data to the Internet
through those antennas, using open, unregulated broadcast frequencies.
In theory, one could check e-mail and surf the Web from anywhere.
About 175 U.S. cities or regions have citywide or partial systems, and
a similar number plan them, according to Esme Vos, founder of
MuniWireless. Rhode Island has proposed a statewide network,
while one in California would span dozens of Silicon Valley
municipalities. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta also
want one.
Because systems are just coming online, it's premature to say how many
or which ones will fail under current operating plans, but the early
signs are troubling.
"I will be surprised if the majority of these are successful and they
do not prove to be drains on taxpayers' money," said Michael Balhoff,
former telecom equity analyst with Legg Mason Inc. "The government is
getting into hotly contested services."
Most communities, including Lompoc, paid for their projects. Elsewhere,
private companies agreed to absorb costs for the chance to sell
services or ads. The vendors remain confident despite technical
and other problems. Chuck Haas, MetroFi Inc.'s chief executive, said
Wi-Fi networks are far cheaper to build than cable and DSL, which is
broadband over phone lines.
Demand could grow once more cell phones can make Wi-Fi calls and as
city workers improve productivity by reading electric meters remotely,
for instance. Balhoff, however, believes the successful projects
are most likely to be in remote places that traditional service
providers skip — and fewer and fewer of those areas exist. Cities, he
said, should focus on incentives to draw providers.
In Lompoc's case, officials say construction was delayed about a year
once they realized wireless antennas had to be packed more closely
together. Then the city learned that its stucco homes have a wire mesh
that blocks signals, making Internet service poor or nonexistent
indoors without extra equipment.
But more importantly, just as Lompoc committed to the network, cable
and telephone companies arrived with better equipment and service,
undercutting the city's offerings.
"It seemed like we announced we were going to do this and that and the
next day we got trucks from the providers doing this and that, when
we've been asking for years and nothing ever happened," Lompoc Mayor
Dick DeWees said. D.A. Taylor, who runs a software business from
her home, said Lompoc's Wi-Fi service lacks key features she gets
through DSL.
"It's a really great idea, but they didn't spend a lot of time thinking
who their target market was," Taylor said.
DeWees acknowledged that Lompoc might have to pull the plug if it
cannot boost subscriptions, but he said the city still has an
aggressive marketing push in store. Lompoc recently slashed prices by
$9, to $16 a month, for the main household plan. Just a few years
ago, these municipal wireless projects seemed foolproof.
Politicians got to tout Internet access for city workers and poorer
households — many programs include giveaways for lower-income families.
Some cities bear no upfront costs when a company pays for construction
in exchange for rights to use fixtures like lamp poles.
Vendors like EarthLink Inc. saw a chance to offset declines in dial-up
subscriptions. MetroFi, offering free service, got to join the
burgeoning market for online advertising. Google Inc. also is jumping
in for the ads, partnering with EarthLink in San Francisco, although
the city's Board of Supervisors is resisting their joint
proposal. As projects get deployed, both sides are seeing chinks
in their plans.
Many cities and vendors underestimated the number of wireless antennas
needed. MobilePro Corp.'s Kite Networks wound up tripling the access
points in Tempe, Ariz., adding roughly $1 million, or more than
doubling the costs.
"The industry is really in its infancy, and what works on paper doesn't
work that same way once you get into the real world," said Jerry
Sullivan, Kite's chief executive.
Networks like St. Cloud, Fla., and Portland, meanwhile, shared Lompoc's
difficulties penetrating building walls, requiring indoor users to buy
signal boosters for as much as $150. And when it works, service can be
slower than cable and DSL.
"There's an antenna literally at the curb of my house, but when I've
tried to log on, it cuts in and out," said Landon Dirgo, who runs a
computer repair shop in Lompoc.
One recent sunny afternoon in Portland, few could be found surfing the
Internet from the city's downtown parks. Mari Borden, a student at
Portland State, said she couldn't connect to MetroFi's free network
from several locations, even though her computer could detect a signal
(MetroFi officials say users might need stronger wireless cards to send
back a signal). The vendors insist they have been upfront with
customers about limitations. But MetroFi's Adrian van Haaften said
managing expectations can be challenging.
EarthLink said it has 2,000 customers in four markets — New Orleans;
Milpitas and Anaheim, Calif.; and Philadelphia — paying $22 or less a
month. MetroFi said it had 8,000 free users in Portland in April,
averaging 10 hours online; the city says about 1,000 use the network on
any given day. Although both companies say their numbers are good
given that their networks aren't fully built yet, they also are
realigning expectations.
MetroFi will insist that future contracts commit cities to spend a
specific amount for public safety and other municipal applications.
EarthLink, which recently suspended new bids while it focuses on
existing projects, said it would likely seek minimums, too. Glenn
Fleishman, editor of the Wi-Fi Networking News site, said vendors could
no longer afford to treat projects as testbeds and loss leaders for
winning publicity and new business.
Municipalities, meanwhile, are becoming more cautious. Applying lessons
from other municipalities, Boston plans to raise money upfront from
local groups and businesses and avoid tax dollars or a corporate
partner. Competition and expectations will only increase as DSL
and cable modems get faster. Users today are struggling with
e-mail and the Web over some wireless systems, yet video and online
games will require even more capacity.
"Most people if they are going to do serious work aren't looking to be
sitting in a park," said Eric Rabe, a spokesman for DSL provider
Verizon Communications Inc. "They want to be at a desk where they have
their papers or business records."
Lompoc's backers, though, still claim success, "even if the whole
network were to be written off tomorrow," said Mark McKibben, Lompoc's
former wireless consultant.
"Prices dropped and quality of service went up," he said. "That's the
way a lot of cities look at it. They don't look at business profits and
losses. They see it as a driver for quality of life."
US
concerned by Australian Internet
filter plan
YAHOO
By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press Writer
29 March 2010
CANBERRA, Australia – The United States has raised concerns with
Australia about the impact of a proposed Internet filter that would
place restrictions on Web content, an official said Monday.
The concerns of Australia's most important security ally further
undermine plans that would make Australia one of the strictest Internet
regulators among the world's democracies.
"Our main message of course is that we remain committed to advancing
the free flow of information which we view as vital to economic
prosperity and preserving open societies globally," a U.S. State
Department spokesman Michael Tran told The Associated Press by
telephone from Washington.
Tran declined to say when or at what level the U.S. State Department
raised its concerns with Australia and declined to detail those
concerns.
"We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I
can say that in the context of that ongoing relationship, we have
raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials," he added.
Internet giants Google and Yahoo have condemned the proposal as a
heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information.
The plan needs the support of Parliament to become law later this year.
Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the filter would
block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence
and detailed instructions in crime or drug use. The list of banned
sites could be constantly updated based on public complaints. If
adopted into law, the screening system would make Australia one of the
strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.
Conroy declined to comment on the U.S. concerns.
"The Australian and U.S. governments liaise regularly on a broad range
of issues. It would be inappropriate to discuss the details of these
consultations," said his spokeswoman, Suzie Brady.
Some critics of Australia's filter have said it puts the nation in the
same censorship league as China.
Technology Challenges Iran's
Censors
By New York Times News Service
Published on 6/23/2009
Shortly after Neda Agha-Soltan bled her life out on the Tehran
pavement, the man whose 40-second video of her death has ricocheted
around the world made a somber calculation in what has become the
cat-and-mouse game of evading Iran's censors. He knew that the
government had been blocking Web sites like YouTube and Facebook.
Trying to send the video there could have exposed him and his family.
Instead, he e-mailed the 2-megabyte video to a nearby friend, who
quickly forwarded it to the Voice of America, the newspaper The
Guardian in London and five online friends in Europe, with a message
that read, “Please let the world know.” It was one of those friends, an
Iranian expatriate living in the Netherlands, who posted it on
Facebook, weeping as he did so, he recalled.
Copies of the video, as well as a shorter one shot by another witness,
spread almost instantly to YouTube and were televised within hours by
CNN. Despite a prolonged effort by Iran's government to keep a media
lid on the violent events unfolding on the streets there, Agha-Soltan
was transformed on the Web from a nameless victim into an icon of the
Iranian protest movement.
At one time, authoritarian regimes could draw a shroud around the
events in their countries by simply snipping the long-distance phone
lines and restricting a few foreigners. But this is the new arena of
censorship in the 21st century, a world where cell phone cameras,
Twitter accounts and all the trappings of the World Wide Web have
changed the ancient calculus of how much power governments actually
have to sequester their nations from the eyes of the world and make it
difficult for their own people to gather, dissent and rebel.
Iran's sometimes faltering attempts to come to grips with this new
reality are providing a laboratory for what can and cannot be done in
this new media age - and providing lessons to other governments,
watching with calculated interest from afar, about what they may be
able to get away with should their own citizens take to the streets.
One early lesson is that it is easier for Iranian authorities to limit
images and information within their own country than it is to stop them
from spreading rapidly to the outside world. While Iran has severely
restricted Internet access, a loose worldwide network of sympathizers
has risen up to help keep activists and spontaneous filmmakers
connected.
The pervasiveness of the Web makes censorship “a much more complicated
job,” said John Palfrey, a co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for
Internet and Society.
The Berkman Center estimates that about three dozen governments - as
widely disparate as China, Cuba and Uzbekistan - extensively control
their citizens' access to the Internet. Of those, Iran is one of the
most aggressive. Palfrey said the trend during this decade has been
toward more, not less, censorship. “It's almost impossible for the
censor to win in an Internet world, but they're putting up a good
fight,” he said.
Since the advent of the digital age, governments and rebels have dueled
over attempts to censor communications. Text messaging was used to
rally supporters in a popular political uprising in Ukraine in 2004 and
to threaten activists in Belarus in 2006. When Myanmar sought to
silence demonstrators in 2007, it switched off the country's Internet
network for six weeks. Earlier this month, China blocked sites like
YouTube to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
crackdown.
In Iran, the censorship has been more sophisticated, amounting to an
extraordinary cyber-duel. It feels at times as if communications within
the country are being strained through a sieve, as the government slows
down Web access and uses the latest spying technology to pinpoint
opponents. But at least in limited ways, users are still able to tweet
and transmit video to one another and to a world of online spectators.
Because of the determination of those users, hundreds of amateur videos
from Tehran and other cities have been uploaded to YouTube in recent
days, providing television networks with hours of raw - but unverified
- video from the protests.
The Internet has “certainly broken 30 years of state control over what
is seen and is unseen, what is visible versus invisible,” said Navtej
Dhillon, an analyst with the Brookings Institution.
But taking pictures is an increasingly dangerous act in Iran. The
police in Tehran confronted citizens who were trying to film near a
memorial to Agha-Soltan on Monday.
Threatening people who have cameras is only the latest in a series of
steps by the authorities. On June 12, the day a disputed presidential
election set off the protests, the government summarily shut down all
text messaging in the country - the prime tool that government
opponents had been using to keep in touch - making newfangled tools
like Twitter and old-fashioned techniques like word-of-mouth more
important for organizing.
In the days that followed, Iran has tightened the spigot without
closing it entirely. Even before the election, the country was known to
operate one of the world's most sophisticated Web filtering systems,
with widespread blockades on specific Web sites. According to media
reports in April, some of the monitoring technology was provided by
Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Nokia, the Finnish cell
phone maker, and Siemens, the German technology giant.
The day after the election, Iran's state-controlled telecommunications
provider completely dropped off the Internet for more than an hour,
according to Renesys, an Internet monitoring company. Access was partly
restored the Monday after the election. YouTube said traffic to the
site from within Iran was down about 90 percent last week, indicating
that most - but not all - connections had been stopped or slowed.
Facebook said traffic from Iran was down by more than half since the
election.
Whether for political, social or financial reasons, Iran has been
hesitant to shut off its sterilized Internet access entirely. Some have
reasoned that a complete halt would hurt businesses.
Still, the off-and-on Web connections and government threats imposed a
kind of self-censorship on some of the population, one that is also
evident in other countries with authoritarian regimes, Palfrey said.
Some Iranians have harnessed ways to bypass the system, relying in part
on supporters around the world who are offering their computers as
so-called proxy servers, which are digital safe-houses that can be used
to make the Iranians' Internet connection anonymous so they can view
blocked Web sites. Tor, a volunteer-run tool for masking Internet
traffic that bounces Internet connections off three separate computers,
said the traffic emanating from Iran over the course of the week
increased tenfold.
Despite the crackdown, the videos and tweets indicate to many that
broadly distributed Internet tools - and the spirit of young,
tech-savvy people - cannot be completely repressed by an authoritarian
government.
”You can't take the entire Internet and try to lock it in a little box
in your country, as China continuously attempts to do,” said Richard
Stiennon, founder of IT-Harvest, a Web security research firm. “There
are just too many ways now to find paths around blockages. They would
have to ban the Internet entirely, or build their own network.”
That may not be so far-fetched. Experts say China is in its own league
for filtering. Ethan Zuckerman, a colleague of Palfrey's at the Berkman
Center, said China has “baked in the censorship” for its citizens by
building its own Web sites and tools. Recently it said it would require
so-called Green Dam filtering software to be installed on all computers
sold in the country, prompting a complaint from the U.S. government and
likely kicking off yet another round of cat-and-mouse.
Brian Stelter reported from New York,
and Brad Stone from San Francisco. Reported was contributed by Michael
Slackman from Cairo, Steven Lee Myers from Baghdad, Noam Cohen from New
York, and a New York Times employee from Tehran.
3
Net Providers Will Block Sites With
Child Sex
NYTIMES
By DANNY HAKIM
Published: June 10, 2008
ALBANY — Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block
access to Internet bulletin boards and Web sites nationwide that
disseminate child pornography.
The move is part of a groundbreaking agreement with the New York
attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, that will be formally announced on
Tuesday as a significant step by leading companies to curtail access to
child pornography. Many in the industry have previously resisted
similar efforts, saying they could not be responsible for content
online, given the decentralized and largely unmonitored nature of the
Internet.
The agreements will affect customers not just in New York but
throughout the country. Verizon and Time Warner Cable are two of the
nation’s five largest service providers, with roughly 16 million
customers between them.
Negotiations are continuing with other service providers, Mr. Cuomo
said.
The companies have agreed to shut down access to newsgroups that
traffic in pornographic images of children on one of the oldest
outposts of the Internet, known as Usenet. Usenet began nearly 30 years
ago and was one of the earliest ways to swap information online, but as
the World Wide Web blossomed, Usenet was largely supplanted by it,
becoming a favored back alley for those who traffic in illicit material.
The providers will also cut off access to Web sites that traffic in
child pornography.
While officials from the attorney general’s office said they hoped to
make it extremely difficult to find or disseminate the material online,
they acknowledged that they could not eliminate access entirely. Among
the potential obstacles: some third-party companies sell paid
subscriptions, allowing customers to access newsgroups privately,
preventing even their Internet service providers from tracking their
activity.
The agreements resulted from an eight-month investigation and sting
operation in which undercover agents from Mr. Cuomo’s office, posing as
subscribers, complained to Internet providers that they were allowing
child pornography to proliferate online, despite customer service
agreements that discouraged such activity. Verizon, for example, warns
its users that they risk losing their service if they transmit or
disseminate sexually exploitative images of children.
After the companies ignored the investigators’ complaints, the attorney
general’s office surfaced, threatening charges of fraud and deceptive
business practices. The companies agreed to cooperate and began weeks
of negotiations.
By pursuing Internet service providers, Mr. Cuomo is trying to move
beyond the traditional law enforcement strategy of targeting those who
produce child pornography and their customers. That approach has had
limited effectiveness, according to Mr. Cuomo’s office, in part because
much of the demand in the United States has been fed by child
pornography from abroad, especially Eastern Europe.
“You can’t help but look at this material and not be disturbed,” said
Mr. Cuomo, who promised to take up the issue during his 2006 campaign.
“These are 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, assault victims, there are animals
in the pictures,” he added. “To say ‘graphic’ and ‘egregious’ doesn’t
capture it.”
“The I.S.P.s’ point had been, ‘We’re not responsible, these are
individuals communicating with individuals, we’re not responsible,’ ”
he said, referring to Internet service providers. “Our point was that
at some point, you do bear responsibility.”
Representatives for the three companies either did not return calls or
declined to comment before the official announcement of the agreements
on Tuesday.
Internet service providers represent a relatively new front in the
battle against child pornography, one spearheaded in large part by the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Federal law
requires service providers to report child pornography to the National
Center, but it often takes customer complaints to trigger a report, and
few visitors to illicit newsgroups could be expected to complain
because many are pedophiles themselves.
Last year, a bill sponsored by Congressman Nick Lampson, a Texas
Democrat, promised to take “the battle of child pornography to Internet
service providers” by ratcheting up penalties for failing to report
complaints of child pornography. The bill passed in the House, but has
languished in the Senate.
“If we can encourage — and certainly a fine would be an encouragement —
the I.S.P. to be in a position to give the information to law
enforcement, we are encouraging them to be on the side of law
enforcement rather than erring to make money for themselves,” Mr.
Lampson said.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children collaborated on
Mr. Lampson’s bill and with Mr. Cuomo’s office in its investigation and
strategy.
“This is a major step forward in the fight against child pornography,”
Ernie Allen, the president and chief executive officer of the center,
said in a statement. “Attorney General Cuomo has developed a new and
effective system that cuts online child porn off at the source, and
stops it from spreading across the Internet.”
As part of the agreements, the three companies will also collectively
pay $1.125 million to underwrite efforts by Mr. Cuomo’s office and the
center for missing children to purge child pornography from the
Internet.
One considerable tool that has been assembled as part of the
investigation is a library of more than 11,000 pornographic images.
Because the same images are often distributed around the Web or from
newsgroup to newsgroup, once investigators catalog an image, they can
use a digital identifier called a “hash value” to scan for it anywhere
else — using it as a homing beacon of sorts to find other pornographic
sites.
“It’s going to make a significant difference,” Mr. Cuomo said. “It’s
like the issue of drugs. You can attack the users or the suppliers.
This is turning off the faucet. Does it solve the problem? No. But is
it a major step forward? Yes. And it’s ongoing.”
The most graphic material was typically found on newsgroups, the online
bulletin boards that exist apart from the World Wide Web but can be
reached through some Internet search engines. The newsgroups transmit
copies of messages around the world, so an image posted to the server
of a service provider in the Netherlands, for example, ends up on other
servers in the United States and elsewhere.
The agreement is designed to bar access to Web sites that feature child
pornography by requiring service providers to check against a registry
of explicit sites maintained by the Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. Investigators said a few providers, including America Online,
had taken significant steps on their own to address some of the
problems their competitors were being forced to tackle.
Mr. Cuomo said his latest investigation was built on agreements he and
other state attorneys general had reached with the social networking
sites Facebook and MySpace to protect children from sexual predators.
“No one is saying you’re supposed to be the policemen on the Internet,
but there has to be a paradigm where you cooperate with law
enforcement, or if you have notice of a potentially criminal act, we
deem you responsible to an extent,” he said. “This literally threatens
our children, and there can be no higher priority than keeping our
children safe.”
Study
finds 25
countries block Web sites
By
ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
Fri May 18, 12:46 AM ET
NEW YORK - At least 25 countries around the world block Web sites for
political, social or other reasons as governments seek to assert
authority over a network meant to be borderless, according to a study
out Friday.
The actual number may be higher, but the OpenNet Initiative had the
time and capabilities to study only 40 countries and the Palestinian
territories. Even so, researchers said they found more censorship than
they had initially expected, a sign that the Internet has matured to
the point that governments are taking notice.
"This is very much the revenge of geography," said Rafal Rohozinski, a
research fellow at the University of Cambridge in England.
China, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam had the most extensive
filters for political sites. Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia,
the United Arab Emirates and Yemen had the strictest social-filtering
practices, blocking pornography, gambling and gay and lesbian sites.
In some countries, censorship was narrow. South Korea, for instance,
tends to block only information about its neighboring rival, North
Korea.
Yet researchers found no filtering at all in Russia, Israel or the
Palestinian territories despite political conflicts there.
Governments generally had no mechanism for citizens to complain about
any erroneous blocking, with Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab
Emirates being among the exceptions.
The OpenNet Initiative, a collaboration between researchers at
Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the
University of Toronto, has previously published reports detailing
censorship in specific countries. The latest study was its attempt to
compare filtering worldwide.
The study did not attempt to chronicle the effectiveness of the
efforts. Some technical approaches are better than others in blocking
sites, but all can be bypassed with enough technical know-how to use
"proxy" techniques or special software.
The organization said the regions chosen for review should not be
considered comprehensive. It didn't include any countries in North
America or Western Europe on grounds that filtering practices there
have been better known than elsewhere. It also excluded North Korea and
Cuba for fear of risks to collaborators it would need in those
countries.
The group supplied software to volunteers in each of the countries
tested. Web sites checked include those for gambling, pornography and
human-rights abuses.
Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at
Oxford, said filtering appeared to occur most widely in countries where
Internet penetration is higher, possibly explaining the lack of any
censorship efforts in Russia and Egypt.
Technology saves day for NH parents of
Virginia Tech students
New Hampshire Union
Leader Staff
By JOHN WHITSON
10am Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Technology can be a godsend in a crisis. When Donna Sproul of
Londonderry heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech, where her son
Jonathan goes to school, she couldn't reach him by telephone.
"My brother-in-law, who lives in Blacksburg (Va.), called me in a panic
because he couldn't get hold of him," said Sproul. After her own
initial attempts failed, she went online and there he was.
"Thank God for instant messaging," said Sproul. Michael Neverman
of Londonderry said cell phone circuits were busy when he tried to call
his daughter, Erica, a Virginia Tech freshman, yesterday morning.
Neverman then sent a text-message, sat back, and nervously waited for a
response. An unidentified person is carried out of Norris Hall at
Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., yesterday. (AP)
►President Bush orders flags to half staff after Virginia Tech
massacre; click here for MSNBC's coverage
"About 10 minutes later she text-messaged me back saying she was OK,"
said Neverman, breathing another sigh of relief as he told the
story. Jonathan Sproul, a freshman, said the campus went into
lockdown - meaning students couldn't leave the buildings they were in -
minutes after he returned to his dormitory after a 9 a.m. class.
"Right now they're actually opening up the dining halls and we're
allowed to go to eat," said Jonathan shortly after 2 p.m.
Classes, he said, were cancelled yesterday and all day today.
Sproul said other students on campus from New Hampshire that he knows
were safe. He said he spoke with Paul Ahern of Londonderry, and another
Granite-Stater, Ashley Morgenstern of Derry, posted online messages
saying she was OK.
The lockdown order came from campus police via e-mails, said Sproul.
Once he and his roommate heard the news they turned on a TV. "We
haven't taken our eyes off it," he said. When they took time to
look outside, Sproul said police officers were everywhere. "They were
surrounding the dorm next to us, with guns drawn," he said.
The dormitory where the first shootings happened at about 7:15 a.m.,
explained Sproul, is two buildings and about 200 yards away from
his. The shootings have been the only topic of conversation
throughout the lockdown, said Sproul, but people started to relax a
little bit by afternoon. "Right now it's pretty calm," he said, "but no
one knows what to think."
Erica Neverman was in a physics class when the campus went into
lockdown. Her father said he was especially nervous because she is an
engineering major. The second round of shootings took place in an
engineering class in Norris Hall. "That was the scary part," said
Neverman.
"It's obviously frustrating when you're a long way away," he said. "You
feel so helpless."
Yesterday was actually the second day of shootings this school year at
Virginia Tech. Sproul, who is studying civil engineering, said
three people were shot on campus during the first day of school last
fall.
"I think they're random incidents," he said. "I don't see a pattern. I
don't have any thoughts of transferring."
His mother said she also finds no fault with the school itself.
"We've been going to Blacksburg forever," said Donna Sproul. "It has
been my child's dream to go to this school. It is the most beautiful
school you could ever imagine and the safest town you could ever
imagine. For this to happen is unbelievable."
Michael Neverman said uncertainty in the minutes and hours when the
shootings were first reported turned into a mixed blessing for his
household.
"I think we've discovered how blessed we are," he said, "because there
have been a gazillion e-mails and messages and calls asking about
(Erica) and sending prayers for our family."
At Home or Away, It’s Still a DVR
NYTIMES
By Eric A. Taub
June 30, 2009, 2:43 pm
DVRs, or digital video recorders, first popularized by the TiVo brand,
have become an essential part of the TV viewing experience in many U.S.
homes.
But the hardware to allow consumers to record and pause video on a hard
disk can be costly. Cablevision, the cable TV operator, came up with a
different approach: Keep the show recordings on a central server and
feed them to the viewer when they requested them. Customers could be
charged less, and capacity would no longer be an issue.
This remote recording technology came under attack from the big four TV
networks, among others, with the companies suing Cablevision claiming
copyright infringement.
The case was decided against the networks and they appealed to the
Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the U.S. Solicitor General
recommended to the Court that they not hear the case; apparently it
agreed. On Monday, the Supreme Court decided to let the lower court
ruling stand, allowing Cablevision to go ahead and offer its off-site
DVR.
The Consumer Electronics Association sung the praises of the decision,
with its CEO, Gary Shapiro, stating that “From a common-sense
standpoint, the Court’s decision was a slam-dunk. The Court has already
ruled that consumers have the right to time-shift television shows.”
Apparently, a DVR is a DVR, whether you have it in your house or it’s
located at some central location miles away.
High
Court Won't Block Remote Storage
DVR
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:21 a.m. ET
June
29, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hollywood studios and television networks have lost
a Supreme Court bid to block the use of a new digital video recorder
system that could make it cheaper and easier for viewers to record
shows and watch them when they want, without commercials.
The justices, in an order Monday, say they will not disturb a federal
appeals court ruling that Cablevision Systems Corp.'s remote-storage
DVR does not violate copyright laws.
For consumers, the action means that Cablevision and perhaps other
cable system operators soon will be able to offer DVR service without
need for a box in their homes. The remote storage unit exists on
computer servers maintained by a cable provider.
Conn. says utility pole boxes need
municipal OKs
DAY
By STEPHEN SINGER, AP Business Writer
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Connecticut regulators issued a draft decision
Friday that AT&T must get permission from municipalities before
putting its large video equipment boxes on utility poles and other
properties.
The state Department of Public Utility Control issued a preliminary
ruling on a petition from Bridgeport, Danbury and Stamford. The cities
asked regulators to investigate the safety and location of the
telecommunications equipment.
The so-called VRAD cabinets, which house equipment for AT&T's video
U-Verse services and broadband, are about five feet high by four feet
wide. Fewer than 8,000 of AT&T's 800,000 utility poles in
Connecticut will be used to mount the equipment, regulators said.
AT&T "should have acted in a more responsible manner" by providing
notice to public officials and seeking informed consent from
municipalities and neighboring property owners, the state agency said.
A final decision is expected Sept. 29.
Adam Cormier, a spokesman for AT&T in New Haven, would not comment
specifically on regulators' criticism of the telecommunications company.
"It's a draft decision so we look forward to working with the
department and all the parties to bring the docket to a final
decision," he said.
Burt Rosenberg, assistant corporation counsel for Stamford, said the
city challenged AT&T because officials demanded to be informed
about where the equipment is placed. The boxes, which he said are about
the size of small refrigerators, are one foot off the ground and
present a hazard to pedestrians, bicyclists and others, Rosenberg said.
The cities said the boxes should be at least seven feet above the
ground, he said. Lawyers for the municipalities cited the federal
Americans with Disabilities Act as a basis for the complaint, arguing
that blind pedestrians or people who use wheelchairs are particularly
at risk.
Following the decision by the Department of Public Utility Control,
AT&T will inform cities of the location of the VRAD equipment and
municipal officials will meet with the telecommunications company to
voice objections, Rosenberg said.
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal praised regulators, but said
he will ask that AT&T be ordered to seek retroactive permission
from municipalities and property owners for video equipment boxes
already installed. The draft decision requires the company to seek
permission to install boxes if property owners or municipalities had
objected, he said.
Blumenthal's
TV Change
DAY editorial
Published on 10/26/2007
It is great that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has seen
the light and moderated his anti-competition position when it comes to
new television service technologies, but he does not go far enough.
A new state law that took effect Oct. 1 appeared to settle the matter.
It provided a format for new emerging technologies — such as AT&T's
U-verse and Verizon's FiOS — to compete with cable-TV franchises. The
consumer-friendly legislation would let competition determine prices
and drive service.
But when AT&T applied for a certificate to offer U-verse service
under the new law, Mr. Blumenthal and the Office of Consumer Counsel
opposed it. Citing a federal court decision, they argued these new
technologies should be regulated under the old monopolistic cable-TV
regulations, including forcing them to commit to providing service to
entire franchise areas.
Unfortunately, the state Department of Public Utility Control bought
their argument and, ignoring the new law, told AT&T it had to apply
for a cable-TV franchise. AT&T argued the old regulatory model made
no sense in this new age of communication. If necessary, AT&T said
it would take the $336 million it planned to invest in a Connecticut
U-verse system to other states that welcomed competition. Such a move
would also mean the loss of thousands of jobs.
Consumers have reacted with outrage. They want TV service options.
Apparently Mr. Blumenthal realized he was on the wrong side of this
issue. In a letter to AT&T Tuesday, he said he would be happy to
support a stay of the DPUC decision while the courts decide whether to
apply the old law or new law to U-verse.
While the change of heart may help Mr. Blumenthal politically (he may
run for governor in 2010), a stay wouldn't do much for AT&T or
consumers. The company is not likely to sign up new customers and build
out its system when an adverse court ruling could force it to unplug
them.
The better course of action would be for the DPUC to reverse its
decision and let the new law take effect immediately. Meanwhile, a
hearing is set for today at which AT&T will ask state Superior
Court Judge Robert F. McWeeny to force the DPUC to abide by the new
competition-friendly law. The legislature's intent to encourage
competition is clear. The Day urges Judge McWeeny to act swiftly and
order that the law be implemented.
Phone
TV Conflict Blurry; Officials
Try To Defend Choice By Denying it
By MARK PETERS | Courant Staff Writer
October 21, 2007
TV viewers might find it difficult to choose a side in the fight over
cable competition in Connecticut. Should they choose the side of
government officials who say they are representing consumers by
encouraging TV-service competition as long as everyone in the state can
benefit?
That position effectively eliminated a choice between AT&T's new
U-verse service and cable TV for as many as 150,000 consumers last week
in areas where U-verse was going to become available. Regulators told
AT&T it had to stop expanding U-verse and apply for a
franchise. Or should consumers take AT&T's side? Starting 10
months ago, the telephone giant began giving some consumers a
competitive option to the decades-old monopoly of local cable TV
franchises. U-verse delivers television programming over telephone
lines.
But AT&T is beholden first and foremost to shareholders, which is
part of the reason the company doesn't want to be required to offer TV
service to every home in its franchise area.
The legal, technical and business arguments about the new service can
be perplexing for consumers. The confusion was evident last Thursday as
union workers for AT&T rallied in downtown Hartford to support
their employer's position in the battle. A few commuters waiting nearby
for their evening bus were trying to figure out what the protesters
were shouting about.
"I thought the phone company only had Internet, and obviously, phone
service," said Sharon Griffin-Joseph, watching for both the rally and
her bus.
But inside the telecommunications industry, the fight is fierce over
how new types of TV service should be regulated.
The issue in Connecticut revolves primarily around what's known as a
universal service requirement. That regulation would require AT&T
to provide TV service to all customers in its franchise area, which
could be the whole state.
For years, the state has been divided into cable franchise areas, and
each cable company is required to offer service throughout its
franchise area. AT&T has said that if it is forced to adhere
to the universal service requirement, it will drop its more than 7,000
U-verse customers in the state and proceed with the service
elsewhere. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, government
regulators and cable companies say universal service must be a
requirement, or all consumers won't get the lower rates and other
benefits expected to come with more competition.
At stake is an additional option for consumers who have endured years
of rising rates for cable TV and the only other available choice,
satellite TV. The Federal Communications Commission, in a study
of prices for TV service, found that cable rates rose nationally by 93
percent between 1995 and 2005. In areas where effective competition
exists, prices charged by cable companies were 17 percent lower, the
same study found.
For now, unless they have the benefit of clairvoyance, Connecticut
consumers will simply have to decide which side offers the most
persuasive argument about what might happen in the future. In the
most recent skirmish last week, AT&T lost a crucial battle before
the state Department of Public Utility Control. The DPUC ruled Monday
that AT&T had to stop signing up new U-verse customers until it
followed the same franchise rules as cable companies, including the
universal service requirement.
Thomas W. Hazlett, a professor of law and economics at George Mason
University and former chief economist of the FCC, said the DPUC's
decision won't help consumers. He said challengers to cable won't
come into markets if they're required to meet the universal service
requirement. And, he asked, why would the government want to stand in
the way of increased competition and lower prices for at least some
consumers?
"You can't get 100 percent," Hazlett said. "If you can't, get 10
percent or 20 percent."
AT&T points out that universal service requirements weren't imposed
on cable companies when they began offering telephone service to
compete with AT&T's predecessor companies, SBC Communications and
Southern New England Telecommunications Corp. Also, the state has
seen this situation before. In the mid-1990s, SNET introduced its
Personal Vision product to compete with cable companies, but shut it
down in part because of what AT&T now says was a universal service
requirement.
But Blumenthal and other consumer advocates have a different view.
Competition won't benefit everyone and won't last unless AT&T - or
others - have to serve all customers, said Blumenthal and William
Vallee, a lawyer with the state Office of Consumer Counsel, which
represents cable ratepayers. They said the fear is that
competition will develop only in those areas where AT&T finds it
profitable to offer service. That would leave rural areas and,
possibly, the poorest section of cities with no competitive choices,
Blumenthal said.
He said that without statewide competition, areas without competitive
choices would see prices increase more rapidly while customer service
declines. The attorney general also predicted that after a period
of years, AT&T could become a new monopoly because of the advantage
it would have of being able to pick and choose customers. It ultimately
would replace cable TV and re-create the problem that competition is
supposed to fix.
"The government will be giving its stamp of approval to essentially a
different form of monopolistic power," Blumenthal said.
The two sides are due in court this week as AT&T challenges the
DPUC's most recent decision.
Blumenthal: Make AT&T Get Cable
License; AG asks state DPUC to reconsider its decision in wake of
federal court ruling
DAY
By Ted Mann
Published on 8/7/2007
Hartford — Attorney General Richard Blumenthal petitioned
the state Department of Public Utility Control Monday to force AT&T
to seek a cable license for its Internet television service, in the
wake of a federal court ruling that the new technology must be subject
to the same regulations as conventional cable.
The ruling overturned a 2006 decision by the state agency, which had
said AT&T was not required to seek a cable franchise for its
Internet protocol television (or “IPTV”) service, since it was not the
same as conventional cable.
“This service must be licensed as cable, regulated as cable,”
Blumenthal said, standing alongside attorney William L. Vallee Jr. of
the Office of Consumer Counsel, which brought the federal suit.
Blumenthal said he would urge the department to order AT&T to apply
for a cable license that would compel the company to offer its services
statewide, and would ask the department to require the company to halt
its construction of infrastructure for the service and its effort to
enroll customers until the license is granted.
A spokeswoman for the department, Beryl C. Lyons, said the agency would
take no action until the deadline for AT&T to appeal the court
ruling expires next week.
“It would be premature for us to go doing something that could just be
overturned again,” Lyons said, but added that the DPUC board would
respond if the court decision overturning the earlier ruling is upheld
on appeal.
“Then we've got a federal court ruling overturning our decision, and
then we've got to take appropriate action,” she said.
A spokesman for AT&T, Seth Bloom, called Blumenthal's action
“premature,” and said the company's IPTV service, called U-verse, was
the sort of offering specifically encouraged by a state law passed just
months ago by the legislature that was intended to spur new entries in
the state's cable market.
U-verse is already active in 30 cities and towns in Connecticut, Bloom
said, and already providing consumers with new choices for television
service.
“We're in the market today,” he said. “We've put our money where our
mouth is.”
Blumenthal
seeks 'new era in cable
competition'
By PATRICK R. LINSEY, Hour Staff Writer
August 7, 2007
REGION — Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal will not be
satisfied until all state residents have a choice in their cable
television provider.
But AT&T, which is challenging traditional cable companies with its
new fiber-optic service, said Blumenthal's efforts could backfire —
stifling the very competition he hopes to create.
In the wake of a court decision last month, Blumenthal petitioned the
state Department of Public Utility Control Monday to force AT&T to
seek a traditional cable license for its television service.
"We are seeking to enforce a new era of cable competition," Blumenthal
said. "The first steps are an emergency order that would stop AT&T
from constructing new facilities and signing up new customers until it
has a franchise."
The license would require AT&T to make its fledgling U-verse
service available to all residents in the state. Blumenthal has accused
AT&T of seeking to "cherry pick," offering service in affluent
communities and not poorer cities.
The telephone company has invested millions of dollars into
infrastructure for its digital television system, which is now
available to residents in 35 Connecticut towns and cities. Included are
wealthy suburbs — like Westport and Guilford — but also cities with a
range of incomes — like Norwalk and Stamford — and Bridgeport — a city
with significant poverty.
AT&T has argued that its service is distinct from traditional cable
television and therefore does not require a cable license from the
DPUC. The DPUC agreed, ruling last summer that television services like
AT&T's do not need a cable franchise.
But the Office of Consumer Council, a public consumer group for utility
payers, and Cablevision, a traditional cable company, filed lawsuits.
Last month, a judge at the U.S. District Court in New Haven ruled that
U-verse is subject to the same regulation as traditional cable.
"The federal court's ruling provides a legal foundation for the fact
that an unequal playing field for video services is unacceptable and
illegal," Blumenthal said, "and that the legal structures already in
place in state and federal law demand balance among the service
providers."
But AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom said the judge has yet to assign a
remedy in the case and is currently taking input from all sides to
determine an appropriate resolution.
Bloom also cited a law signed by Gov. M. Jodi Rell last month that
encourages new entrants to the state's cable market. The law, which
takes effect October 1, was not a factor in the recent court decision.
AT&T has no plans to restrict its U-verse service to affluent
communities, Bloom said.
"We plan to bring U-verse to as many consumers as possible as quickly
as possible," he said. "We stand behind our strong record building out
DSL in Connecticut. With no one telling us we needed to, we got from 0-
to over 90-percent availability in the state in a short seven or eight
years."
AT&T has argued that customers in competitive cable markets pay
lower rates. But forcing statewide service dissuades new companies from
entering the market, Bloom said.
Cable service in the state is largely provided by regional monopolies.
Cablevision provides service to the great majority of cable customers
in central Fairfield County.
"For years nobody came in to offer (an alternative) service in the
cable industry," Bloom said. "They would have had to ... get a
franchise, which requires them to build out to the entire state, which
doesn't make sense when you're a new entrant dealing with a monopoly.
Nobody did and (traditional cable companies) took advantage and raised
rates whenever they wanted "
New
Law Could Nullify AT&T Ruling
By MARK PETERS | Courant Staff Writer
July 27, 2007
A federal judge ruled Thursday that AT&T must follow the same rules
as cable TV companies as the phone giant competes for customers with
its fledgling video service.
The decision by Judge Janet Bond Arterton strikes down a year-old
ruling by the state Department of Public Utility Control. The agency
had ruled that AT&T did not have to abide by cable franchise
regulations, including requirements that prevent it from offering its
service only in select markets.
But it's possible that the ruling from U.S. District Court in New Haven
will be blunted or even nullified by a recently passed state law that
establishes a new system to regulate cable TV and AT&T's video
service.
AT&T, the state's Office of Consumer Counsel and others involved in
the federal suit say they're reviewing the ruling to understand how it
might affect AT&T's U-verse service. The service, which delivers TV
programming over telephone lines, is available in parts of more than 20
Connecticut towns and cities.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Thursday that the federal
ruling was good news for consumers, but will probably be negated by the
new state law.
"Unfortunately, a new law guts the very safeguards that the court so
resoundingly affirmed," he said in a statement.
AT&T
said it's reviewing the decision, but pointed out that the
court case concerns law that has been changed.
The federal lawsuit against AT&T and the DPUC was filed last July
by the consumer counsel, which represents cable ratepayers, and the New
England Cable and Telecommunications Association, whose members include
Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications.
The trade association and consumer counsel argued that the DPUC was
giving AT&T an unfair advantage as it enters the TV market in
Connecticut. The phone company did not have to meet public access
requirements, provide service to all homes in a franchise area, or go
through the lengthy cable franchise renewal process that examines
customer service.
AT&T has argued that the cable companies are only interested in
keeping their monopoly and avoiding competition.
The cable association could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Bill Vallee, principal attorney for the state's consumer counsel, said
Thursday that Arterton's decision supports his argument that AT&T
should be treated the same as cable companies, even though the
technology is different. He said the ruling could have an effect on
AT&T's plans for other states because it is now more likely to be
treated like a cable provider wherever it goes.
But the impact of the suit here is likely to hinge on the new state
law, which legislators saw as a compromise between the cable industry
and AT&T to ensure competition in the industry.
It was widely criticized by Blumenthal and Vallee for eroding consumer
protections while continuing to give AT&T certain advantages.
AT&T
Is Cable Operator,
Says Connecticut Court
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable,
7/26/2007 3:33:00 PM
A Connecticut U.S. District Court has ruled that AT&T's Lightspeed
IPTV video service is a cable service subject to local franchising laws.
The summary judgment was a victory for the New England Cable &
Telecommunications Association, and the cable industry at large.
It was a defeat for the Connecticut Department of Public Utility
Control (DPUC), which had ruled that AT&T's service was an
information service, like other data services.
Central to the DPUC's conclusion was the way AT&T delivers its
service, which is not to deliver a channel until the subscriber's
set-top box requests it, rather than constantly delivering all the
channels. That, said DPUC, was a level of interaction that made the
service a two-way data exchange, or as DPUC put it "“[AT&T’s]
network is unique in comparison to cable operators such as it entails a
switched, two-way client server IP-based architecture designed to send
each subscriber only the programming the subscriber chooses to view and
entails a high level of subscriber interaction
The FCC defines cable service as one-way, though it includes VOD
in that definition, so the DPUC concluded AT&T's service did not
meet that definition.
The court saw it differently. Although factual findings by expert
goverment agencies are due judicial deference under the Chevron
doctrine, the court concluded that DPUC's determination that AT&T's
was a two-way system was a legal conclusion-on the appropriate
definition of "cable service"--rather than a factual finding, and a
wrong legal conclusion at that.
AT&T is a cable operator, its service is a cable service, and its
network is a cable network, said the court.
The cable industry has argued that AT&T's service should be subject
to the same franchise restrictions as their members, but the DPUC had
ruled differently.
Microsoft to change Vista after
Google complaint
REUTERS
By Peter Kaplan
Wed Jun 20, 1:07 AM ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) has agreed to
modify its Windows Vista operating system in response to a complaint
that its computer search function put Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news)
and other potential rivals at a disadvantage, the Justice Department
and Microsoft said on Tuesday.
Under an agreement with the department and 17 state attorneys general
and the District of Columbia, Microsoft will build into Vista an option
to let users select a default desktop search program on personal
computers running Windows.
The function, known as "Instant Search," allows Windows users to enter
a search query and get a list of results from their hard drive that
contain the search term.
The agreement was made public as part of a joint report that the
Justice Department and Microsoft filed late on Tuesday with the court
overseeing Microsoft's compliance with a 2002 antitrust consent decree.
As part of the deal, a Microsoft official said the company also had
pledged to place links inside the Internet Explorer window and the
"Start" navigation menu to make it easier for people to access that
default desktop search service.
The changes will be introduced in a service pack, or updated version of
Windows Vista software. Microsoft said it anticipates a test version of
the Vista Service Pack 1 to be ready by the year-end.
Under the agreement, Microsoft also promised to provide additional
technical information to third-party developers, such as Google, in
order to optimize the performance of their desktop search service on
Vista.
"These remedies are a step in the right direction, but they should be
improved further to give consumers greater access to alternate desktop
search providers," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, said
in a statement.
The changes stem from a complaint Google filed with the Justice
Department in December, in which it argued that a feature built into
Vista that allows users to search a computer's hard drive did not leave
room for competition from other desktop search applications.
Google said the feature violated the consent decree that monitors
Microsoft's conduct as part of its settlement with the government.
"We are pleased that as a result of Google's request that the consent
decree be enforced, the Department of Justice and state Attorneys
General have required Microsoft to make changes to Vista," Drummond
said.
The agreement is expected to be presented to the judge monitoring the
consent decree, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, at a June
26 court hearing.
The Microsoft consent decree, which settled the government's landmark
antitrust case against the company, is scheduled to expire in November.
However, some provisions have been extended to November 2009.
Microsoft has called Google's complaint "baseless" and said it was in
compliance with the antitrust settlement.
N E T N E U T
R A L I T Y : LWVCT the expert here!
Get
background on this vital national issue here: LWVCT FALL CONFERENCE
DEC. 1, 2007, all morning at the CAPITOL - watch it again, over
and over, here!!!
Latest reports...scroll down, or
Google and Verizon Near Deal on Pay
Tiers for Web
NYTIMES
By EDWARD WYATT
August 4, 2010 (we noticed this on the 5th)
WASHINGTON — Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet
service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon
to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the
content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.
The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google,
for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service
providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its
way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges
for Internet users.
Such an agreement could overthrow a once-sacred tenet of Internet
policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored
over another. In its place, consumers could soon see a new, tiered
system, which, like cable television, imposes higher costs for premium
levels of service.
Any agreement between Verizon and Google could also upend the efforts
of the Federal Communications Commission to assert its authority over
broadband service, which was severely restricted by a federal appeals
court decision in April.
People close to the negotiations who were not authorized to speak
publicly about them said an agreement could be reached as soon as next
week. If completed, Google, whose Android operating system powers many
Verizon wireless phones, would agree not to challenge Verizon’s ability
to manage its broadband Internet network as it pleased.
Since the court decision, involving Comcast, in April, the F.C.C. has
been trying to find a way to regulate broadband delivery, and that
effort has been the subject of a series of private meetings at the
agency’s headquarters in recent weeks. At the meetings, officials from
the nation’s biggest Internet service and content providers, including
Google and Verizon, have tried to reach a consensus on how broadband
Internet service should be regulated in light of the decision. Those
meetings continued this week, apart from the talks between Google and
Verizon.
The court decision said the F.C.C. lacked the authority to require that
an Internet service provider refrain from blocking or slowing down some
content or applications, or giving favor to others. The F.C.C. has
since sought another way in which to enforce the concept of net
neutrality. But its proposals have been greeted with much objection in
Congress and among
