August 2011

News Corp. Editors Had Been Aware of Phone Hacking Since '07

News of the World executives may have been aware of widespread phone hacking at the U.K. tabloid since 2007, U.K. lawmaker Damian Collins said, citing a letter by former royal reporter Clive Goodman. Goodman wrote that hacking was discussed at editorial conferences in a letter in which he was suing for unfair dismissal, Collins said in an interview today. Goodman is the only journalist from the newspaper who has been jailed for phone hacking. Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee examined responses from former News Corp. employees and found “devastating revelations.”

News Corp COO James Murdoch is likely to be called back to testify again before the Media Committee. Among the conflicts, some former News of the World and News Intl. editorial and legal executives say James Murdoch was more informed than he claims about pertinent details, including the reason for making a high-end settlement with a hacking victim.

Verizon Calls In Reinforcements On Day 10 Of Strike

Verizon Communications has called in hundreds of additional management and non-union employees to handle customer service and network operations duties, as the strike by 45,000 workers wore into its tenth day. The union-represented Verizon employees in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions have been on strike since Aug. 7. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) represents about 33,000 Verizon workers, while the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers represents some 12,000. "We've called up hundreds of additional employees in the last few days," Verizon spokesman Rich Young said. "Our plan is to do what we have to do to keep our networks running. By and large, 10 days into the strike, our networks are performing solidly." Previously Verizon had said it trained 40,000 management employees, retirees and contractors to fill in for the strikers.

The CWA said that more than 100,000 people have signed an online petition calling on Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam to "get serious about bargaining." "We will never have an economic recovery if profitable companies like Verizon can demand huge concessions from workers," CWA communications director Candice Johnson said. "You don't build a middle class by cutting workers' wages, benefits and standard of living. That's just one reason why Verizon is becoming synonymous with 'VeryGreedy.'" According to Chaison, Verizon lacks credibility "by demanding concessions simply because it would like them despite being profitable, and their no guarantees that the striking workers will be able to keep their jobs even if they agree to cost-cutting concessions."

Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Times of Crisis

About 20 percent of the emergency management community is involved in some form of social media, according to Kim Stephens, a senior associate at Abt Associates and creator of the blog iDisaster. Some 550 emergency management offices have a presence on Facebook, including many state offices. “It all boils down to having an avenue for communications,” Stephens said. “If you look at the way people are communicating with each other, they don't watch the news, especially the younger generation,” Stephens said. “They are looking for content when and where they want it. If you are not in that space, you are missing an opportunity.” Twitter’s promise of two-way talk is one that pervades social networks, and it’s a major draw for emergency managers looking not just to disseminate their message, but also to hear what the public has to say. In particular, social networks can be a boon to situational awareness.

It Ain't Over Yet: Samsung Galaxy Tab Injunction Suspended Outside Germany

Looks like Samsung is getting a little relief in its ongoing case versus Apple in Europe: the Dusseldorf court that last week issued a preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 model has now suspended that ban between today and the next court date on August 25.

The suspension applies to all of the EU except Germany and The Netherlands. Meanwhile, it turns out that the reason why Germany is still bearing the injunction is because Germany is the only country where the court has determined that the original preliminary junction can now apply -- in other words, the decision made in Dusseldorf does not apply EU-wide as originally mandated.

How Android came to dominate

When Google acquired a tiny wireless startup called Android in 2005, few at the search giant had particularly high hopes for the deal -- if they even knew about it.

At that point Google had purchased just a handful of companies, mostly software makers it had quietly folded into its operations. (Big, high-profile deals like YouTube and DoubleClick came later.) Besides, not many people knew exactly what Android did: The upstart was in stealth mode, and co-founder Andy Rubin, best known for creating the Sidekick mobile device, said little about its product or mission. Executive chairman Eric Schmidt would later joke that he scarcely noticed when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin bought the company. Today, of course, Android is impossible to ignore. It is the mobile operating system -- the brains of a cellphone -- that powers more than 100 million gadgets. (That number will be out of date by the time you read this: Every day another 400,000 Android devices are activated.) Apple's iPhone gets credit for showing consumers just how cool and powerful a mobile device could be, but Google democratized smartphones by making Android available free to any handset maker that wanted to use the platform. At last count, Android software was on more than 300 different phones and tablets around the world. The only smartphones that use the iPhone operating system? iPhones. "If you just plot the graph looking at how quickly we grew," says Rubin, now senior vice president of mobile at Google, "it's almost vertical."

Fighting China's Golden Shield: Cisco sued over jailing and torture of dissidents

Cisco, one of the world's largest technology companies, is being sued by Chinese political prisoners for allegedly providing the technology and expertise used by the Chinese Communist Party to monitor, censor and suppress the Chinese people.

Air Force must subject cyber weapons to legal review

The Air Force must subject cyber capabilities to legal review for compliance with the Law of Armed Conflict and other international and domestic laws, says an order from the secretary of the Air Force, signed by the judge advocate general, Richard Harding. The instruction says the Air Force judge advocate general must ensure that all cyber capabilities "being developed, bought, built, modified or otherwise acquired by the Air Force" must undergo legal review--except for cyber capabilities within a Special Access Program, which must undergo review by the Air Force general counsel.

Charter to Cut Off Service to First Responders

Charter Communications intends to cut off cable service to police and fire departments in small towns in Missouri, unless they now pay to receive these services.

“Cable service to municipal buildings has been provided free of charge for over thirty years as part of the franchise agreements in exchange for cable companies’ use of the public rights of way,” said John Rocco, President of ACT. “This move by Charter demonstrates the failure of the statewide franchising laws in Missouri and across this country.” Historically, local governments would negotiate with the cable operator for free service to municipal buildings, schools, libraries, police and fire department buildings. The service was considered part of the obligation of cable operators as they built their plant in the public rights of way. However, since Missouri adopted a statewide franchising regime, local governments have lost the power to regulate cable providers.

Fox Starts Its Web Pullback, and ABC Gets Ready to Follow

Fox followed through with its previously announced plans to keep its new shows off the Web for eight days, except for Hulu Plus and Dish Network subscribers. Disney’s ABC is now set to do the same thing.

Disney hasn't formally commented on its plans for “authentication” for ABC broadcast shows on ABC.com and Hulu, but CEO Bob Iger pretty much spelled it out last week. Iger said he was all for distributing his stuff via nontraditional outlets like Hulu and Netflix — as long as it didn't disrupt his existing relationships with the cable guys who are paying him big money for his shows. And that’s the main point of authentication — keep the cable guys happy. You won't hear much carping about the pullback yet, but that’s because there’s barely any new programming going up in August. Right now, this only affects folks who want to catch up on “Hell’s Kitchen” and “MasterChef”. You'll hear plenty more griping once the new fall shows go up next month.

UK says Google needs further privacy improvements

Google was praised by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), UK's data protection watchdog, for strengthening its privacy policies but the agency said the company still needs to improve.

Google has been under scrutiny by the ICO since the company admitted in May 2010 to collecting payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks it was indexing as part of its Street View imagery program. The ICO said in November 2010 that Google broke the law with the data collection, which in some cases recorded entire e-mails, passwords and URLs. The ICO declined to impose a fine and instead demanded that Google submit to an audit of its privacy polices. The audit took place last month, the ICO said in a statement. "The audit found that Google has taken action in all of the agreed improvement areas," the agency said. "The ICO has now asked the company to go further to enhance privacy, including ensuring that users are given more information about the privacy aspects of Google products." Google is training its engineers now on advanced data protection and overall is paying more attention to privacy issues when products are designed, the ICO said. But Google should also ensure that its products have a so-called "privacy story," used to educate users about products' privacy features.

Benton

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