March 2012

A pair of cryptic court filings surfaced in Virginia this week that suggest Google is in a fight with the federal government over Megaupload, the file-sharing site that was shut down in a dramatic raid in January.

It appears that the FBI likely demanded that Google turn over Kim Dotcom’s e-mail account and any related information, and then forbid the company to notify him of the investigation. In the past, companies—notably Twitter—have been aggressive in challenging gag orders so that they can notify customers about government searches. Such notification gives subscribers the option of challenging the searches in court. The new filings are two orders in which U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Jones Jr. refuses to extend a gag order that the government has imposed upon Google. The gag order forbids Google from telling a subscriber that an account has been the target of a search warrant and subject to a § 2703(d) investigation—a controversial search procedure that gained attention when the Justice Department used it to obtain the Twitter accounts of people tied to WikiLeaks.

[Commentary] The Mobile World Congress convened in Barcelona, Spain, this week. The agenda-setting event is where wireless network operators, cellphone manufacturers, content providers, advertising gurus, and Internet players gather to assess the nearly $2 trillion wireless industry. Although we like the shiny new devices launched at the event as much as anyone, we’ll focus instead on trends in the business and the changes sought in regulation of the industry.

We noted a bit of defensiveness as event kicked-off. You might find the defensiveness surprising. Here in the US, 88% of US adults are now cell phone owners and a total of 46% of all American adults are smartphone users. But most companies, the Wall Street Journal reported, would be looking to explain in Barcelona one of two things -- "why they haven't done as well as they thought, or what they will be doing differently in order to do better," said Neil Mawston, a telecom analyst at Strategy Analytics. So there was a lot of talk about revenue-building strategies, financial services in a mobile world, and how to capture more of the connected consumer's time and money.

A Redmond (OR) man was convicted of seven counts of wire fraud by a federal jury in Boston (MA). Ryan Harris, 26, was the owner of TCNISO, a company that distributed products enabling users to steal Internet service.

From 2003 through 2009, Harris developed and distributed hardware and software tools that allowed his customers to modify their cable modems so that they could disguise themselves as paying subscribers and obtain Internet service without paying. The products included a “packet sniffer,” which Harris dubbed “Coax Thief.” “Coax Thief” surreptitiously intercepted (or “sniffed”) Internet traffic so that the user obtained the media access control addresses and configuration files of surrounding modems. TCNISO and Harris also offered ongoing customer support, primarily through forums that it hosted on the TCNISO website, to assist customers in their cable modem hacking activities.

Concern about cyberterrorism was evident this week among security experts at the RSA security conference in San Francisco, who find that some people with extremist views have the technical knowledge that could be used to hack into systems.

Cyberterrorism does not exist currently in a serious form, but the threat shouldn't be underestimated, said F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hypponen. Other security experts agree. "I think it's something that we should be concerned about. I wouldn't be surprised if 2012 is the year when we start seeing more cyber terrorism," said Mike Geide, a senior security analyst at security vendor Zscaler.