June 2010

Google letter to lawmakers says "sorry" for Wi-Fi breach, downplays harms

Google is determined to "learn all the lessons we can" from a major privacy breach in which it may have collected users' personal information from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, the company said in a letter to House Commerce Committee leaders on June 8.

Google sought to downplay the danger of the breach in response to a list of questions in late May from Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking member Joe Barton (R-TX), and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA). The Internet giant owned up to the error while seeking to ease concerns about any harms it had caused, noting that the breach arose while it was systematically collecting Wi-Fi network information. This practice led it to mistakenly grab data running over those networks, it said. "In retrospect, it is clear there should have been greater transparency about the collection of this data," it said of its Wi-Fi collection program. The company maintained that it did not break the law.

FTC Said to Prepare Antitrust Review of Apple Tactics in Mobile Ad Market

Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission is preparing to review allegations that Apple is engaging in anti-competitive tactics to restrict rivals in the mobile- advertising market.

The FTC and Justice Department have been discussing which agency should conduct the investigation. Regulators decided earlier this week that the FTC would proceed. Regulators want to know whether moves by Apple will result in less competition in the growing market for ads on handheld computers and phones. Spending on mobile ads in the U.S. is expected to rise to almost $500 million this year from $220 million in 2009, according to IDC.

Apple likely to avoid antitrust battles

While US antitrust officials have been taking a more assertive approach in the past 18 months toward technology companies in the general and fast-growing Apple in particular, experts said on June 11 that the rising Silicon Valley powerhouse is likely to avoid the sort of brutal legal battles that beset Microsoft for a decade.

Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission lawyers, emboldened by a broader interpretation of the law, have been making inquiries in recent weeks about Apple's conduct in distributing digital music and in barring iPhone applications created with Flash. Those efforts will be a distraction for Apple and could help make sure it continues to step carefully as the technology landscape shifts and it faces off against competitors in new areas. But the worst-case scenario for the company and its investors - litigation against an opponent backed by bottomless tax coffers - remains only a remote possibility, because of the facts and the state of the law.

Is the new Apple ruthless at its core?

[Commentary] Although federal antitrust officials are reportedly looking into Apple's effort to bar rival advertising networks, it's hard to see how the company's tactics violate the law. Simply put, the iPhone doesn't dominate the smartphone market. The more important question is how consumers will react to the emerging picture of Apple. They may shrug off all these developments because they don't change how Apple's products perform. Or they may decide that the company revered for thinking different has become just another corporate bully.

Groups Wary Of Scope Of Latest Cybersecurity Bill

Business and public interest groups June 10 praised the latest congressional effort aimed at bolstering cybersecurity but voiced concern with provisions such as one that would give the federal government emergency powers.

Center for Democracy and Technology President Leslie Harris praised privacy protections in the bill covering Internet communications. CDT, however, questioned the scope of the emergency powers granted to the president under the bill. ""The authors of the bill have signaled their intent to give the president no Internet 'kill switch' authority," Harris said in a statement. "We look forward to working with them to make sure the bill clearly reflects that intention."

FCC Confirms Broadband Reclassification on June Agenda

On June 17, the Federal Communications Commission will consider a Notice of Inquiry to begin an open, public process to consider possible legal frameworks for broadband Internet services in order to promote innovation and investment, protect and empower consumers, and bring the benefits of broadband to all Americans. This is the only item on the agenda for the FCC's June open meeting.

Some educators question if whiteboards, other high-tech tools raise achievement

Under enormous pressure to reform, the nation's public schools are spending millions of dollars each year on gadgets from text-messaging devices to interactive whiteboards that technology companies promise can raise student performance.

Driving the boom is a surge in federal funding for such products, the industry's aggressive marketing and an idea axiomatic in the world of education reform: that to prepare students kids for the 21st century, schools must embrace the technologies that are the media of modern life.

Increasingly, though, another view is emerging: that the money schools spend on instructional gizmos isn't necessarily making things better, just different. Many academics question industry-backed studies linking improved test scores to their products. And some go further. They argue that the most ubiquitous device-of-the-future, the whiteboard -- essentially a giant interactive computer screen that is usurping blackboards in classrooms across America -- locks teachers into a 19th-century lecture style of instruction counter to the more collaborative small-group models that many reformers favor.

Mind Over Mass Media

[Commentary] New forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers' brainpower and moral fiber. So too with electronic technologies.

PowerPoint, we're told, is reducing discourse to bullet points. Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention spans. But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously. For a reality check today, take the state of science, which demands high levels of brainwork and is measured by clear benchmarks of discovery. These days scientists are never far from their e-mail, rarely touch paper and cannot lecture without PowerPoint. If electronic media were hazardous to intelligence, the quality of science would be plummeting. Yet discoveries are multiplying like fruit flies, and progress is dizzying.

Legislative Hearing On Public Safety Broadband Network And H.R. 4829

Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet
House Commerce Committee
Thursday, June 17, 2010
10:00 a.m.

Witnesses:

James Arden Barnett, Jr., Rear Admiral, USN (Retired), Chief, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, Federal Communications Commission
Charles F. Dowd, Deputy Chief, New York City Police Department, Communications Division
Jonathan Moore, Director, Fire and EMS Operations and GIS Services, International Association of Fire Fighters
Steve Zipperstein, General Counsel, Verizon Wireless
Joseph Hanley, Vice President, Technology, Planning, and Services, Telephone and Data Systems, Inc.
Brian Fontes, Chief Executive Officer, National Emergency Number Association
Dale Hatfield, Adjunct Professor, Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program, University of Colorado at Boulder
Coleman D. Bazelon, Principal, The Brattle Group

Read more about Legislative Hearing On Public Safety Broadband Network And H.R. 4829 (updated)

FCC's Baker sees Title II as back door for network neutrality

Federal Communications Commission member Meredith Baker says FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski may be attempting to slip network neutrality rules through a back door, using his proposal to change how broadband is regulated.

"I have concerns that this Title II debate is really about putting potential net neutrality rules on firmer ground," she said in a speech on June 10. "It would be a disservice to consumers and the entire Internet ecosystem for us to allow this Title II debate to devolve into a take-it-or-leave-it reclassification fight," Commissioner Baker said. Reiterating her view that government-issued open Internet rules are not necessary at all, she pointed to the announcement Wednesday that major companies have decided to form a technical advisory group as evidence the Federal Communications Commission does not need to intervene to create net neutrality regulations. She called the group "a significant first step towards a viable self-governance model" to address net neutrality.

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