May 2014

Microsoft Challenged Secret FBI Request for Data About Customer

Microsoft challenged a secret request for data about a business customer from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The government backed down -- but only after it got the information it sought without the company's help. Microsoft joined a short list of companies known to have challenged National Security Letters, the term for the secret government data requests. Recipients are barred from disclosing that they've even received such a request.

Comcast ‘Goliath’ Seen Buoyed by AT&T-DirecTV in Review

AT&T’s deal for satellite-TV provider DirecTV is a boon for Comcast as the biggest US cable company tries to win antitrust approval to take over Time Warner Cable.

By acquiring DirecTV, AT&T will get the scale to compete more effectively against a combined Comcast-Time Warner Cable, making that transaction appear less threatening to regulators, said Herbert Hovenkamp, a law professor at the University of Iowa. “This merger will improve Comcast’s chances,” Hovenkamp said. “What you want to do in a merger case is show that there are other competitors out there and as a result any opportunity to behave anticompetitively is going to be disciplined by this other competitor.” With DirecTV, AT&T will be able to combine services it can sell to customers, including mobile phone, Internet and television, Hovenkamp said. The antitrust review of the two deals will look at the “cluster market” for the bundle of services the companies sell, he said. “The players who are going to come out ahead are the ones that can make these technologies piggy-back on each other or blend in together, and that’s what AT&T is attempting to do,” Hovenkamp said.

The question for antitrust regulators reviewing the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal is how much competition from other providers really matters, said Amanda Wait, an antitrust lawyer at Hunton & Williams LLP in Washington. With AT&T combining with DirecTV, Comcast gains a stronger argument that the competition is real, she said. “Instead of being David versus Goliath, it’s more like Goliath versus Goliath,” Wait said about the two companies. “Comcast will say we’re not going to be able to raise prices. We have to compete with AT&T and AT&T is going to be huge.”

Fight Over 'Do Not Track' Web Rules

Small advertising-technology companies are complaining that proposals meant to protect Internet users from being tracked online will end up benefiting the likes of Facebook and Google.

Their concerns surround how online-advertising companies would work with "do not track" buttons that have been added to Web browsers. Such buttons enable users to send online-advertising companies a message that they don't want to be tracked, but there are no rules that force the advertising companies to comply. The dispute is the latest potential setback to the years-long effort to let Internet users shield their browsing habits from marketers.

A cacophony of woe over indecipherable AT&T bill

[Commentary] I receive complaints almost every day from consumers who say their phone, cable and satellite bills are too darn hard to decipher.

Emily Rusch, executive director of the California Public Interest Research Group, said it appears that telecom companies go out of their way to make it difficult for customers to know what they're paying for. "Consumers are less likely to challenge a fee or cancel an optional service if they don't understand their options," she said. Telecom companies should be required to break down their bills in plain English, making clear what each charge or credit is for, as well as spelling out which charges are required by government entities and which ones are from the company. Bills also should include the Web address of a site where customers can obtain a more detailed accounting of statements, with plain-English explanations of each fee and tax.

The Federal Communication Commission has so-called truth-in-billing rules that require "non-misleading, plain language" on phone bills. But this isn't good enough. All telecom bills should be required to be truthful, and that includes honest explanations of what you're paying for.

Jesse Jackson presses Facebook on lack of diversity

Jesse Jackson isn’t keeping quiet about the lack of diversity in the tech industry’s ranks. He is pressing Facebook, eBay, Google and Hewlett-Packard to include more minorities on their boards and within their executive ranks.

“At its best, technology can be a tremendously positive change agent for the world,” Jackson said. “At its worst, it can hold on to old patterns that exclude people of color and women from opportunity and advancement. Silicon Valley and the tech industry must transform itself to mirror the America it depends upon for talent and customers.” Staff diversity among tech companies has come under increasing scrutiny, with many critics decrying a “bro culture” that often tends to be white and male. Jackson and his Rainbow PUSH Coalition are trying to focus some of that attention on the lack of diversity in the tech world’s board rooms and C-suites.

US Case Offers Glimpse Into China’s Hacker Army

Five men were indicted by the United States Justice Department this week, charged with being part of a Chinese military unit that has hacked the computers of prominent American companies to steal commercial secrets, presumably for the benefit of Chinese companies. Much about them remains murky.

But Chinese websites, as well as interviews with cybersecurity experts and former hackers inside and outside China, reveal some common traits among those and other hackers, and show that China’s hacking culture is a complex mosaic of shifting motivations, employers and allegiances. Many hackers working directly for the Chinese government are men in their 20s and 30s who have been trained at universities run by the People’s Liberation Army and are employed by the state in myriad ways. Those working directly for the military usually follow a 9-to-5 weekday schedule and are not well paid, experts and former hackers said. Some military and government employees moonlight as mercenaries and do more hacking on their own time, selling their skills to state-owned and private companies. Some belong to the same online social networking groups.

House Passes Federal IT Reform Yet Again, This Time With Defense Bill

A fundamental overhaul of how federal agencies build and buy information technology systems passed the House for the second time in 2014.

The chamber in February approved the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA, which among other reforms would limit each federal agency -- including the Defense Department -- to one person with the title chief information officer and give that person authority over the agency’s IT spending.

This time around, the legislation was tacked on as an amendment to the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, which the House approved by a vote of 326-98.

A similar measure made it into the Defense bill in November 2013 but was stripped out at the last minute in the following month, when lawmakers also cut more controversial amendments -- including one addressing sexual assault in the military -- to ensure the bill would pass both the House and the Senate.

Google is working with Ruckus Wireless to build a Wi-Fi network in the cloud

Google is working with Wi-Fi equipment maker Ruckus Wireless to build a large-scale Wi-Fi network in the cloud off of which any business could hang its wireless routers, according to a source familiar with the project who asked not to be named.

Google has been working closely with Ruckus, trialing a new software-based wireless controller that virtualizes the management functions of the Wi-Fi network in the cloud, according to a source. The end result would be a nationwide -- or even global -- network that any business could join and any Google customer could access. The source also confirmed earlier reports that:

Google will offer the service to businesses for free as long as they agree to join its public network, though businesses will have to supply their own broadband connections.
Hotspot 2.0 will have a big role to play in the network, connecting smartphones and tablets automatically and securely to any Google-powered access point, much like they would connect to their mobile carrier’s 3G of 4G network.
Google will be able to provide analytics to businesses about consumers that use networks, separating out location-specific information from the data collected by the virtual network as a whole.

Why 76 lawmakers just voted against their own bill to reform the NSA

The House passed the USA Freedom Act, a bill aimed at reforming the National Security Agency's bulk collection of domestic phone records. But the version of that bill was different from the one that was recently approved by the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.

The new version from the House Rules Committee, privacy advocates say, significantly weakened the reform and included loopholes that could potentially allow bulk data collection on US citizens to continue.

Privacy advocates weren't the only ones upset about the changes. Many co-sponsors of the original version were also concerned. In fact, a Washington Post analysis of the votes shows that 76 of the 152 co-sponsors of the earlier version voted against passage of the altered version on the House floor. So, half of the co-sponsors ended up voting against what was supposed to be their own NSA reform bill. That includes Rep Jared Polis, (D-CO), who released a press statement about his change of heart after the vote.

“Unfortunately, the USA Freedom Act, which I cosponsored as introduced, has been watered down and co-opted to the point that it creates the possibility that NSA could misuse the bill- contrary to the legislative intent- to conduct broad searches of communication records," Rep Polis said.

Senators take on cyber spying

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to crack down on people and businesses that steal valuable economic secrets from American companies.

They say that the Deter Cyber Theft Act is necessary to protect US firms from foreign hackers who try to break in, steal their valuable secrets and strategies and then ship that information abroad.

The bill comes days after the Obama Administration filed landmark charges against a team of Chinese hackers for stealing trade secrets from American companies.

“It is time to fight back to protect American businesses and American innovation,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI), in a statement. “Battling the wave of computer espionage targeting the American economy requires law enforcement actions such as the indictment, and it requires action by Congress to hit those who profit from these crimes where they’ll feel it: in the wallet.”

Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sens John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) joined Sen Levin to introduce the bill. The Deter Cyber Theft Act would allow the Treasury Department to impose sanctions and freeze monetary assets of people behind the cyber snooping. Additionally, it would require the director of national intelligence to publish an annual report naming which countries target US company information through computer espionage, as well as a watch list of egregious offenders, how stolen information is being used and what the federal government is doing about it.

Benton

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