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What’s next for Internet.org after yesterday’s SpaceX explosion?

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explosion will be a major setback for Internet.org’s ambitions in sub-saharan Africa. The satellite destroyed this week, called Amos 6, was set to be used in an entirely different project. Amos 6 would have provided backhaul for Internet.org’s Express Wi-Fi system, which connects rural internet providers to the broader internet. Anyone connecting to an Express Wi-Fi provider will experience the same, full internet as anyone else, with no limitations or favored apps. As a result, it’s been able to operate even in countries that rejected Free Basics, including India. Free Basics typically focuses on areas where internet infrastructure is available, but access is too expensive for much of the population. By restricting access, Free Basics can provide more people with access to basic services, even as it runs the risk of creating a multi-tiered internet. Express Wi-Fi tackles a different problem. Instead of focusing on areas that are already connected, Express Wi-Fi looks to build out back-end infrastructure to areas too poor and remote for a conventional telecom to justify the investment. Once the backhaul connectivity is available, local entrepreneurs take on the work of bringing it to the average consumer — but it’s only possible because of the infrastructure provided by Internet.org.

Honest question: what does T-Mobile think data actually is?

[Commentary] Here are two lines from T-Mobile’s latest "Uncarrier" missive, in which the company proclaims that it has "listened to customers" and is changing its new T-Mobile One plans less than two weeks after announcing them. The first line: "Everyone gets unlimited talk, unlimited text and unlimited high-speed 4G LTE smartphone data on the fastest LTE network in America." The second line: "With T-Mobile ONE, even video is unlimited at standard definition so you can stream all you want." At this point it appears that T-Mobile is operating with definitions of "unlimited" and "data" that are are only tangentially related to reality. For example, most people understand the word "unlimited" to mean "without any limits or restrictions," but T-Mobile’s definition clearly means "without any limits except for a hard restriction on HD video that can only be lifted for $3 a day or $25 a month."*

Emails show Google’s close relationship with the White House

The nonprofit group Campaign for Accountability recently launched a project to compile documents about Google's lobbying practices, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The group says the repository of documents will be a resource for monitoring how Google interacts with the government. The first installment, which the group obtained through an independent researcher, features more than 1,500 pages of emails between the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Google employees. In the email exchanges, Google employees coordinate their messaging with the White House, occasionally steering around divisions within the administration. Nothing in the documents suggests improper behavior; they are a window into Google's high-level work on policy matters, and provide a case study on how deep the company's lobbying efforts go.

WikiLeaks threatens to start its own Twitter because of 'cyber feudalism'

WikiLeaks and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have had harsh words over Twitter’s recent decision to ban noted Breitbart editor and troll Milo Yiannopoulos. WikiLeaks’ Twitter account declared the ban an example of "cyber feudalism," saying that Twitter had "banned conservative gay libertarian [Yiannopoulos] for speaking the 'wrong' way" to Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones.

According to an earlier Twitter statement, Yiannopoulos was banned for "inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others" after Jones began posting examples of racist and misogynist abuse she had received on the platform. Dorsey soon replied to WikiLeaks, echoing this language. "We don't ban people for expressing their thoughts," he wrote. "Targeted abuse & inciting abuse against people however, that's not allowed." The ideal version of Twitter would in fact do what WikiLeaks suggests: build tools to let people pick who they want to communicate with, then facilitate that as openly as possible.

Facebook 2026: Mark Zuckerberg on his plan to bring the Internet to every human on earth

A Q&A with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

By nearly any measure, Facebook has had a remarkable year. More than 1.65 billion people use the service every month, making it the world’s largest social network by a considerable margin. Its advertising business has grown significantly faster than analyst expectations, powered by sophisticated targeting capabilities that rivals struggle to match. And in April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out an ambitious 10-year vision that places the company at the frontier of computer science, making aggressive moves in bringing artificial intelligence and virtual reality to the mainstream. And yet what Zuckerberg talks about most these days, in meetings with world leaders or at his live Town Hall Q&A sessions, is basic Internet connectivity. In August 2013, Facebook announced the creation of internet.org, the company’s sometimes controversial initiative to bring online services to underserved areas. Since then, Facebook’s connectivity efforts have expanded greatly. It released open-source blueprints for telecommunications infrastructure in an effort to drive down data costs. It’s testing Terragraph, which augments terrestrial cellular networks with new millimeter-wave technology that delivers data 10 times faster than existing Wi-Fi networks. And it continues to expand its Free Basics program despite setbacks. (In India, regulators banned the program, arguing that because Facebook has the final say over which services can be part of Free Basics, it violates net neutrality principles.)

Donald Trump: 'I am a fan of the future, and cyber is the future'

In an interview published by the New York Times, Donald Trump gave a winding response to a question about cyberattacks. Trump says he's all for "cyber," although it's unclear from the conversation what exactly that means. From the Times:
[DAVID E.] SANGER: You've seen several [NATO members in the Baltics] come under cyberattack, things that are short of war, clearly appear to be coming from Russia.
TRUMP: Well, we're under cyberattack.
SANGER: We're under regular cyberattack. Would you use cyberweapons before you used military force?
TRUMP: Cyber is absolutely a thing of the future and the present. Look, we're under cyberattack, forget about them. And we don't even know where it's coming from.
SANGER: Some days we do, and some days we don't.
TRUMP: Because we're obsolete. Right now, Russia and China in particular and other places.
SANGER: Would you support the United States' not only developing as we are but fielding cyberweapons as an alternative?
TRUMP: Yes. I am a fan of the future, and cyber is the future.

The real world is fast becoming a digital colony

[Commentary] One of the defining trends of tech in recent years has been the colonization of the real by the digital. By that, I mean the tendency for technology to overlay our experience of people, places, and things, with networks that exist primarily online. The classic example of this is the digital map. Maps have always existed separate to the physical space they represent, of course, but the ease of use and ubiquity of apps like Google Maps and Citymapper have created, in many peoples’ eyes, a disconnect between our experience of the world, and the geographies that exist solely on our smartphones. But this is just one example, and the colonization of the real is only just beginning.

Google wants to help you register to vote in the 2016 election

Google is rolling out a new search feature on July 18 that aims to help users register to vote ahead of the November presidential election in the US. The company said that queries for the term "register to vote" will now return detailed descriptions on how to register in each US state, including requirements and deadlines. "No matter which state you’re in or how you plan to cast your ballot, you can find the step-by-step information you need to register correctly and on time — right at the top of your Search page and in the Google app," wrote Jacob Schonberg.

Google has also introduced a search tool that delivers information on the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. When users search for either convention in the Google app, the app will display a summary of the event, information about the nominee, and a list of speakers, alongside related social media posts and a YouTube live stream video.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee makes a last-minute plea to save net neutrality in Europe

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the world wide web, is calling on regulators in Europe to protect network neutrality and "save the open internet." Berners-Lee, Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, and Harvard law professor Larry Lessig urged European regulators to implement guidelines that would close loopholes in net neutrality legislation that the European Parliament approved in October 2015. They also called on internet users to voice their opposition online, before the public consultation period on the guidelines ends on July 18th.

"Network neutrality for hundreds of millions of Europeans is within our grasp," their letter reads. "Securing this is essential to preserve the open Internet as a driver for economic growth and social progress. But the public needs to tell regulators now to strengthen safeguards, and not cave in to telecommunications carriers’ manipulative tactics." The rules approved by European lawmakers last year contained several loopholes that activists say could be exploited to undermine net neutrality. Among the most troubling, according to Berners-Lee, Lessig, and van Schewick, is a provision that would allow ISPs to create "fast lanes" for "specialized services," and a guideline that would allow for "zero-rating" — a practice whereby select apps and services are exempt from monthly data limits.

How activists used crime scanner apps and cellphones to record Alton Sterling’s fatal shooting

The killing of Alton Sterling at the hands of police in Baton Rouge (LA) has sparked national outrage after a video showing the incident was posted online. That video was the result of an organized effort by local activists, who use smartphones to monitor and record violence.

A nonprofit group in Baton Rouge, known as Stop The Killing, tracks crime through police scanner apps. When members of the group hear about an incident, they drive to the scene to document it, recording and producing videos to draw attention to violence in the community. There are seven or eight people in the organization that all regularly listen to the scanners — several different versions of police scanner apps of those that are publicly available — for reports of violent crime. "Sometimes we get to crime scenes before police," says head of the group, Arthur "Silky Slim" Reed. Stop The Killing tries to record a scene three or four times a week, Reed says, and has uploaded some of its footage — much of it showing graphic incidents of crime scenes — to YouTube.

These six lawsuits shaped the Internet

Six legal cases helped to shape the Internet into what it is today.

  1. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997): This case protected online freedom of speech.
  2. Zeran v. America Online (1998): This case allowed website owners to host third-party content without having to worry about being prosecuted if someone published something illegal on that website.
  3. Zippo Manufacturing Co. v. Zippo Dot Com (1997): The web is "worldwide," right? So which courts get to decide if a certain website has violated the law? This case paved the way toward establishing standards in that regard.
  4. ProCD v. Zeidenberg (1996): If you clicked to agree, it’s official: You agreed. This case confirms it.
  5. Religious Technology Center v. Netcom (1995): This case established that linking to another site didn’t equal stealing content from that site.
  6. Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com: Ever hear of Google Image Search? Of course you have. This case is why it and other similar services are allowed to exist.

Google coming for your children, says The Information

Google has been working on a suite of tools that would let kids more easily use its services with permission from their parents, including a child-safe version of YouTube.

Under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, sites that want let kids under 13 sign up need to get permission from their parents. But if companies actually build out products and services that let parents constructively manage how their kids use their sites, it's far more likely parents will actually sign up and give permission upfront.

Did Verizon accidentally admit it's slowing down Netflix traffic? Level 3 thinks so

What is causing the Internet congestion that is degrading service to Netflix consumers? Level 3 -- which helps carry that Netflix traffic to Verizon's network in Los Angeles -- says the problem could be solved in five minutes and for a very small cost, but that Verizon is refusing to make these upgrades, because it wants to extract a fee from Level 3 instead.

Verizon's story matches up pretty well with the one being pushed by Netflix and Level 3. It's saying that Netflix traffic has overwhelmed the points of connection between the ISP and the middlemen who deliver this data for the streaming video giant.

The key difference is that Verizon says Netflix could solve this problem easily by spreading its traffic over multiple transit providers. Level 3 is arguing that the best solution would be to simply upgrade Verizon's network, a process it claims to have offered to pay for.

New York proposes 'BitLicense' rules for companies that buy and sell virtual currency

The New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) has released a copy of proposed "codes, rules, and regulations" for companies that buy and sell bitcoin and other virtual currencies roughly a year after the agency announced an inquiry into regulating bitcoin.

The proposal, which outlines requirements for a special "BitLicense" (truly), will be entered into the record on July 23. The proposed rules apply to businesses that buy, sell, transfer, store, or maintain custody or control of customers' bitcoins, as well as companies that convert fiat currency to virtual currency on behalf of merchants.

FCC has received over 647,000 net neutrality comments as deadline approaches

Over half a million Americans have shared their feelings on network neutrality with the Federal Communications Commission as the agency ponders new rules that could drastically reshape the Internet.

Earlier, Chairman Tom Wheeler reported that the FCC has so far received around 647,000 comments as the July 15 deadline for initial feedback approaches. The commission will then accept responses to those comments into the month of September.

At best, a final decision on the controversial net neutrality proposal isn't expected until near the end of 2014.

Congress is about to vote on a terrible new cybersecurity bill

There's a new cybersecurity bill making its way through Congress, sponsored and written by Sen Diane Feinstein (D-CA), and critics are already calling it a new backdoor for surveillance by the National Security Agency.

The Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing Act of 2014 (CISA) was just approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee, putting it on track for a Senate vote soon. But like its controversial predecessors, the bill is coming under fire as a step backwards in the fight for surveillance reform.

The bill's primary effect would be a new requirement for sharing information on "cyber threat indicators," a vague term that could refer to anything from an ongoing hack to a vulnerability in commercial software. Once a company makes a report to the government with information about a threat indicator, CISA would require broad sharing across federal agencies, including with the NSA, which would be given a more central role in threat management under the new scheme.

Advocacy groups have seized on the reporting requirements as a troubling expansion of NSA access to private networks. The Center for Democracy in Technology says the provision "risks turning the cybersecurity program it creates into a back door wiretap." CDT also notes the bill lacks many crucial privacy protections that were included in previous cybersecurity acts. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the bill "fatally flawed," and raised concerns that it would create a new pipeline of data from independent companies to the NSA.

Why Facebook is beating the FBI at facial recognition

If you're worried about Big Brother and computerized facial recognition, you’ve had plenty of reason to be scared. Law enforcement has been toying with facial recognition for a while, but the FBI is getting set to deploy its own system, called Next Generation Identification (NGI for short), planned to be fully operational soon.

NGI will bring together millions of photos in a central federal database, reaching all 50 states by the end of the year. After years of relative anonymity, it's easy to think 2014 is the year that law enforcement will finally know you by face. B

t here's an inconvenient fact about the FBI's shiny new system: Thanks to extensive work by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we actually know quite a bit about NGI, and the numbers suggest it isn't very good at recognizing faces. Given a suspect's face, NGI returns a ranked list of 50 possibilities, and only promises an 85 percent chance of returning the suspect's name in the list. To put it another way, even when you give NGI 50 guesses, it still lets one in seven suspects off the hook.

Compare that to Facebook's DeepFace system, recently presented at the IEEE Computer Vision conference, and it looks even worse. Give Facebook two pictures, and it can tell you with 97 percent accuracy whether they're the same person, roughly the same accuracy as a human being in the same spot.

To be fair, Facebook has a whole network's worth of data on its side, so it ends up comparing each face to a smaller number of possibilities. It isn’t an exact comparison, but the overall impression is hard to deny: the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency is getting outgunned by a social network.

Who’s the new guy running the NSA?

Admiral Michael Rogers, the relatively new head of the National Security Agency, has been on the job for about three months, and he’s been exceedingly diplomatic and measured.

n addition to serving as the face of public relations for the Defense Department's "silent service," Admiral Rogers has taken on two formal roles that come bundled with the NSA director position: head of the Central Security Service, another arm of the US’ 17-tentacled intelligence apparatus, and commander of US Cyber Command, the hub of the military’s cyber efforts. That means one man is in charge of the NSA’s domestic and foreign surveillance, along with defending US government networks, coordinating cyberattacks against enemies, and supervising what is essentially the security IT department for the rest of the Defense Department. So, who is he?

Aereo is dead, so what's next for television?

The broadcast industry can breathe again: Aereo -- the startup that streamed broadcast TV over the Internet for cheap -- is dead. Or at least, the incarnation of Aereo that wasn’t paying copyright fees is dead, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling. So what happens now?

A decision in favor of Aereo would have changed things quite a bit for the television industry, but the ruling means back to business as usual. While some have raised fears that the opinion will impact cloud computing services, the court intended for the ruling to apply narrowly to Aereo. "It just means you can expect more of the same," says Michael Greeson, president of The Diffusion Group, a research firm focused on the future of TV. "The broadcasters won the case. There were no caveats, except for that this is a limited case. It would be untenable to extend this decision beyond its limited scope."

Reacting to the news, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said that "our work is not done," and that it will "continue to fight for our consumers." Realistically, though, the company is unlikely to survive. "Aereo will go out of business immediately," Greeson says. The fees Aereo is now required to pay broadcasters, which can range from a few cents to a few dollars for every channel, for every subscriber, every month, will make it impossible to continue charging only $8 to $12 a month.

For consumers, the ruling means no change in the high prices from cable companies and limited options for watching TV online or on mobile devices. Cable companies have started to offer streaming online options and mobile apps like Time Warner’s TWC TV app and Comcast’s Xfinity streaming service, but those offerings are expensive, slow to roll out, and tend to be poorly designed.

This site is trying to make Google forget you

A controversial ruling from a European court recently granted people the so-called "right to be forgotten," forcing Google to remove some search links upon request.

If you'd like a medium for sending such a request, Forget.me will now step in, spiriting away everything about you.

The site, a European privacy advocacy project, gives requesters a step-by-step procedure for lodging a request with Google, no knowledge on the finer points of law required. Log in, choose your country, perform a search for yourself, select the offending link, decide on which category your request falls under, and ship it all off to Google. While you wait, Forget.me will track the link's status, informing you when the information has left the physical plane.

Google is quietly testing a service for registering website domains

Google has quietly launched its own Internet domain registration service. And like many Google projects, Google Domains is starting off in beta; you'll need an invite to get in and purchase your own URL.

But the company's latest effort could present GoDaddy -- the world's leading domain registrar -- with some fresh competition. With Google Domains, you can set up a custom domain of your choosing, but Google won't actually be hosting your website. It's only handling the domain registration aspect; for everything else, the company has partnered with Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and Shopify -- businesses that specialize in helping consumers build complete websites in mere minutes.

First, Google is promising not to charge users anything extra to conceal personal information (e.g. name and address) that must be provided when registering a URL. Lastly, there's the benefit of real customer support. Google says phone and email support will be available Monday through Friday from 9AM to 9PM EST.

The Pentagon is trying to make the Internet more anonymous

If you want to use the Internet and you don’t want the National Security Agency to see what you’re doing, you basically only need one tool: Tor, a network that anonymizes web traffic by bouncing it between servers.

The NSA has been working on ways to get around "the Tor problem" for years without much success. "It should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract targets’ use of technologies to hide their communications," the agency told BusinessWeek back in January. The NSA says Tor is now used by "terrorists, cybercriminals, [and] human traffickers," so you’d think the Pentagon might consider that investment a mistake. Not so.

The military has been working on a new generation of even bigger and better anonymity tools to supplement and replace Tor. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the Pentagon’s high-tech research lab, started working on anonymity roughly four years ago through the Safer Warfighter Communications program, a collection of tools designed to thwart blacklisting, redirection, and content filtering.

Warrantless cellphone location tracking is illegal, US circuit court rules

A US Appellate Court has ruled that police must obtain a warrant before collecting cellphone location data, finding that acquiring records of what cell towers a phone connected to and when it was connected to them constitutes a Fourth Amendment search.

This ruling, from the 11th Circuit, is in opposition to a ruling made nearly a year ago by a separate appellate court. While this ruling won't overturn that one because of their separate jurisdictions, it adds critical precedent to a privacy question that's still far from decided across the country.

In its reasoning, the court notes that while the Fourth Amendment has traditionally been applied to property rights, it's gradually expanded to protect much more, including communications. "In the 20th century, a second view gradually developed," the court writes, "that is, that the Fourth Amendment guarantee protects the privacy rights of the people without respect to whether the alleged 'search' constituted a trespass against property rights."

In particular, the court cites a Supreme Court ruling that found that tracking a person using a GPS unit installed in their car requires a warrant. Even though the location data of a cell site can only place the person holding the phone within a certain range, the court feels that that range is still quite detailed. In the case at hand, cell site data was used to place the defendant near the location of several robberies.

Pocket wants to be your permanent digital library, for a price

Pocket, which lets you save articles and videos to view later, is introducing a paid option. Pocket Premium -- which offers power users new features for archiving, searching, and tagging their saves -- launches for $5 a month or $42 a year.

Seven years after the company began as a bookmarklet, and two years after making its apps free to build its base of customers, the save-for-later service says it's now big enough for a "freemium" business model to make sense. At a time when webpages routinely disappear without warning, Pocket is making a bet that users will pay for peace of mind. Whether the company is right will determine its fate as an independent business.