August 2011

US Internet providers hijacking users' search queries

Searches made by millions of Internet users are being hijacked and redirected by some Internet service providers in the US. Patents filed by Paxfire, the company involved in the hijacking, suggest that it may be part of a larger plan to allow ISPs to generate revenue by tracking the sites their customers visit. It may also be illegal.

Reese Richman, a New York law firm that specializes in consumer protection lawsuits, filed a class action against one of the ISPs and Paxfire, which researchers believe provided the equipment used to hijack and redirect the searches. The suit, filed together with Milberg, another New York firm, alleges that the process violated numerous statutes, including wiretapping laws. The hijacking seems to target searches for certain well-known brand names only. Users entering the term "apple" into their browser's search bar, for example, would normally get a page of results from their search engine of choice. The ISPs involved in the scheme intercept such requests before they reach a search engine, however. They pass the search to an online marketing company, which directs the user straight to Apple's online retail website.

More than 10 ISPs in the US, which together have several million subscribers, are redirecting queries in this way

Dot-Gov Web Sites and Ad Revenues: Why Not Cash In?

[Commentary] Shouldn't government find creative new ways to raise revenue before it imposes higher taxes on anybody? Government websites have been around, in one form or another, for decades. In 1985, the feds launched the "dot-gov" domain as a trusted and secure zone for virtually all government websites—everything from IRS.gov to Virginia.gov. Today these sites have become vibrant hubs of web activity, used by citizens to pay their taxes, renew their driver's licenses, talk to their elected representatives, and a lot more. So why aren't more governments -- many of which are already facing sizeable deficits -- lining up behind Washington state to cash in on what could be a multibillion-dollar ad bonanza? Simple: A federal regulation effectively bans commercial ads on any dot-gov Web address, which most governments -- federal, state and local -- use as their virtual homes. While some side-step the rule by putting ads on websites using a dot-com address -- which is what Washington state did, and some others are now doing -- these sites often aren't as well-known to citizens as their dot-gov cousins. Therefore there's less opportunity for governments to cash in on ads.

Seoul Warns of Latest North Korean Threat: An Army of Online Gaming Hackers

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has found a novel way of raising badly needed cash, according to the South Korean authorities: unleashing young hackers on South Korea’s immensely popular online gaming sites to find ways to rack up points convertible to cash.

Despite its decrepit economy, North Korea is believed to train an army of computer programmers and hackers. The police in Seoul said Thursday that four South Koreans and a Korean-Chinese had been arrested on charges of drawing on that army to organize a hacking squad of 30 young video gaming experts. Working from Northern China, the police said, the squad created software that breached the servers for such popular South Korean online gaming sites as “Lineage” and “Dungeon and Fighter.” The breach allowed round-the-clock play by “factories” of dozens of unmanned computers. Their accumulated gaming points were exchanged for cash at Web sites where human players are focused on acquiring enhancements for their online personas, or avatars. The gaming software was also sold, the police said; such factories, while illegal, are common in South Korea and China.

Sharis Arnold Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division

Attorney General Eric Holder announced the appointment of Sharis Arnold Pozen as Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Pozen will become Acting Assistant Attorney General upon the departure of Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney. Pozen came to the department’s Antitrust Division in February 2009, as Chief of Staff and Counsel, and has served as a key deputy to Varney.

Pozen is instrumental in the overall enforcement and management of the division and played a leading role on several matters, including in the healthcare, technology, energy and agriculture industries. This includes the department’s pending lawsuit against Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM), which alleges that BCBSM’s agreements with hospitals stifle competition, and a settlement with United Regional Health Care System of Wichita Falls, Texas, that prohibited anticompetitive contracts with health insurers–the first case brought by the department since 1999 that challenged a monopolist with engaging in traditional anticompetitive unilateral conduct.

Pozen was the lead antitrust official for the CPTN Holdings LLC and Novell Inc. matter in which the division required the companies to change the terms of their proposed merger in order to address open source concerns. Pozen was also an important principal in the department’s update of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines and its revision of the division’s Merger Remedy Guidelines.

A Call to Rethink Internet Search

“We could soon view today’s keyword searching with the same nostalgia and amusement reserved for bygone technologies such as electric typewriters and vinyl records.”

So declares Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, in an essay published in the science journal Nature. The missing ingredients, he writes, are mainly the necessary investments in money and science by leading technology companies and universities. The better world of search, according to Mr. Etzioni, will be services that field spoken or typed questions and generate useful answers. Or, as he writes, “natural-language searching and answering, rather than providing the electronic equivalent of the index at the back of a reference book.”

Sen Franken calls on FCC to enforce merger conditions on Comcast

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) wrote to the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department urging them to enforce a condition attached to the NBC Universal-Comcast merger that requires all news channels to be grouped in the same neighborhood.

Sen Franken called Comcast's attempt to challenge the condition rather than negotiate to reach a solution a troubling indication the cable giant plans to fight over the language of the merger conditions rather than attempt to implement them in good faith. Sen Franken said he fears that other stakeholders such as small online video providers and independent channels may not have the resources of a Bloomberg to file a complaint and see it to fruition. He urged the FCC to examine the dispute and act if Comcast has violated the neighborhooding condition. Sen Franken also said he hopes that if a violation is found, the FCC considers extending the length the conditions apply to match the date Comcast first came into compliance with them.

Expert: Cyberattacks might be the tip of the iceberg

A five-year long series of cyberattacks targeting more than 70 companies and government organizations may be just the tip of the iceberg, a cybersecurity expert said.

Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at cybersecurity firm McAfee, discussed a new report on a series of cyberattacks that his company discovered. McAfee gained access to the logs belonging to one server, based in a Western country the company declined to identify, that was used by the hackers. It revealed which companies and organizations had been hit in the past five years by the operation. Alperovitch said that it's likely that there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of other servers engaged in the same type of shenanigans. "If you extrapolate the 70-plus victims into hundreds or thousands [of computers] you see the whole economy is impacted by these intrusions," Alperovitch said. He said such intrusions pose a threat not just to U.S. national security but also to its economic security.

Tea Party and Debt Ceiling Lead Online

The top story on blogs last week was the debt ceiling drama unfolding in Washington. Bloggers aimed their commentary on one of the key players in that drama -- the Tea Party.

For the week of July 25-29, almost one quarter (23%) of news links on blogs were about the debt ceiling, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. And while several stories were linked to, the one that triggered a heated debate involved Republican Senator John McCain's unflattering reference to the Tea Party as hobbits- characters in J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Bloggers seized on McCain's remarks to express their opinions on the Tea Party, and the response was largely mixed. Some rebuked the Tea Party while others praised it

RTDNA/Hofstra Survey Finds Changing Social Media Landscape for TV & Radio

It's not simply that television and radio stations are doing more with social media these days, it's also that -- at least in the case of TV -- they're doing something different. Those are the latest findings from the RTDNA/Hofstra University Annual Survey. More and more, at least at TV news operations, social media is about connecting with and having conversations with the audience. Radio, in contrast, looks more like television did a year ago.

7% Of Arab Bloggers Have Been Arrested: Harvard Survey

Seven percent of Middle Eastern bloggers were arrested and detained in the past year -- and nearly 30% were personally threatened, according to a new Harvard University survey of 98 bloggers throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The survey, which was released this week, was conducted by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in collaboration with world news aggregator Global Voices Online (GVO). Some financial support for the survey was offered through the State Department, via a subgrant from the United Kingdom-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting. The State Department has been vocal about their desire to conduct pro-democracy outreach through social media and emerging technologies. While the blogs and bloggers who participated in the survey were not named, they were drawn from the pool of Middle Eastern bloggers whose posts were reprinted by Global Voices. Eighty-one percent of correspondents blogged in English, with the remainder being divided between Arabic- and French-language bloggers --indicating that respondents were primarily drawn from the Arabic-speaking Middle East and the Maghreb, with minimal contributions from Iran, Turkey, and Israel.

Benton

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