July 2014

13 ways the NSA spies on us

Here's a handy guide to the most significant ways the National Security Agency spies on people in the United States and around the world:

The NSA collects every American's phone records
The PRISM program lets the NSA access private user data on leading online services
The NSA engages in offensive hacking operations
The NSA taps long-distance Internet connections
The NSA intercepted data flowing within Google and Yahoo data centers
The NSA spies on foreign leaders
The NSA spies on millions of ordinary people overseas
The NSA tracks cell phone locations around the world
From 2001 to 2011, the NSA collected vast amounts of information about Americans' Internet usage
The NSA has undermined the security of encryption products
The NSA uses tracking cookies to choose hacking targets
The NSA has cracked a popular standard for encrypting cell phone communications
The NSA can record every phone call in a certain, unspecified, country and store it for 30 days

Businesses and Public Interest Groups Challenge Copyright Proposals on International Trade Agreement

Public Knowledge, its partners in the global Our Fair Deal coalition, and a diverse international network of businesses, creators, innovators, start-ups, educators, libraries, archives, and users have released two new open letters to negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The TPP is a highly secretive, supranational agreement reported to include copyright provisions that could significantly constrain access to information, impede legitimate online activity and innovation, and impair freedom of expression online. Members of the Our Fair Deal coalition are especially concerned that rules proposed in the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the TPP would reduce the ability of ordinary people to access information - seriously hindering innovation both on and offline.

Copyright provisions remain a major sticking point for the negotiations, and the coalition has warned negotiators about the negative impacts these provisions would have on their respective countries.

A Supremely broken Aereo

[Commentary] Even though it reaches the correct outcome, the Supreme Court’s Aereo opinion is staggeringly, and confusingly, bad. The court’s “looks like cable” analysis fails to address the difficult questions about the meaning of the Copyright Act; rather, it has added to existing confusion.

The most perplexing and problematic aspect of the Supreme Court’s opinion is that it never uses the term “primary transmission.” A primary transmission is a signal broadcast to the public that is later retransmitted by another service (a secondary transmission). Section 111(f) of the Copyright Act defines this term, and notes expressly that any streams broadcast by a broadcast television station are primary transmissions. The Act then defines “secondary transmission” as the “further transmitting of a primary transmission simultaneously with the primary transmission.”

This is precisely what Aereo was doing: it made a secondary transmission of a primary transmission. The implication -- supported by one of the most basic principles of statutory construction -- is that any secondary transmission is in fact a copyright violation unless it falls into one of the listed exceptions. In their briefs, the parties argue, obliquely, over whether Aereo is making a secondary transmission.

Regardless of their purpose, the parties’ briefs would have made the Justices sufficiently aware of Section 111’s framework to find answers to their questions there.

[Hurwitz is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law]

Hospitals Not Bilking Medicare Using Electronic Medical Records

A new study says there's no need to worry about hospitals using their new electronic medical records to generate bigger bills and boost their income. It's been a concern since at least 2012, when the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services sent hospitals a strongly worded letter warning them against using electronic records inappropriately.

The letter followed reporting by the Center for Public Integrity and the New York Times that found hospitals that used electronic records were billing Medicare for significantly more than hospitals still using paper records.

Computers, the theory goes, make it easier to charge for more procedures or more expensive procedures than a paper record would. Dr Ashish Jha, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Julia Adler-Milstein at the University of Michigan designed a study to compare billing records from 393 hospitals with electronic records to 782 hospitals still using paper records.

“To my surprise, we found nothing,” says Jha. “We found that electronic health records didn't really change billing practices at all.” He concludes the study with advice for policymakers: “This worry about excessive billing, the empirical evidence says this should not be a big focus of attention.”

RootMetrics Ranks Verizon Wireless Highest in Overall Network Performance

Verizon Wireless has continued its long-standing commitment to offer its customers a superior network experience, and a series of metro and airport studies, issued by RootMetrics in the first half of 2014, lends further support to that claim.

In independent testing conducted by RootMetrics as part of its bi-annual RootScore Reports for metro markets in the United States, Verizon Wireless ranked first or tied for first in 115 of 125 RootMetrics metro reports in overall network performance, more than any other among the four national carriers.

Verizon Wireless also ranked first or tied for first in 30 of 50 RootMetrics Airport RootScore Reports, which measured data network performance in the first half of 2014: more wins than any other national wireless carrier tested. Verizon Wireless won or tied for data network performance in four of the top five largest airports in the United States -- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International; Chicago O’Hare International; Los Angeles International; and Denver International.

How the PC Is Merging With the Smartphone

[Commentary] Over the last seven years, since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the PC has gradually been dethroned by the smartphone (and to a lesser extent, by the tablet) as the key digital device.

PC sales have fallen significantly in recent years, racking up their worst annual sales in 2014, while smartphone and tablet sales have soared.

Almost all of the energy that developers once put into making software for laptops and desktops is now devoted to making mobile apps and mobile websites.

Just recently, it has become clear that a serious effort has begun to merge the smartphone and the PC, or at least to bring some of the more familiar features of the surging smartphone to the tanking PC. We are seeing the start of what I expect to be a long-term trend to make PCs look and act more like smartphones, and to bring to the PC some of the functions of the phone.

Robert Weller Joins NAB as Vice President of Spectrum Policy

The National Association of Broadcasters announced that Robert Weller, the Federal Communications Commission's Chief of Technical Analysis, will join NAB as Vice President, Spectrum Policy on July 28, 2014.

He will report to Rick Kaplan, Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning.

Since 2008, Weller has led the FCC's group tasked with rulemaking and analysis of spectrum policy areas, including radio propagation, interference, RF safety, frequency allotments and new technologies. He has also served as the technical lead on broadcast coverage and interference issues during the Commission's broadcast spectrum incentive auction proceeding.

Weller first joined the FCC in 1984 as a radio inspector in its San Francisco Field Office before departing in 1993 as director of its Denver District Office. Prior to rejoining the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology in 2007, Weller spent 14 years with the consulting firm of Hammett & Edison, where he did work on broadcast systems engineering, emerging technologies, due diligence, and FCC rule-makings and applications.

Microsoft to Wade Into Complying with the Right to be Forgotten

Microsoft has kept its head down since a European court in May ruled that people could ask Internet search services to delink personal information.

But the company is about to invite a lot more attention. Microsoft plans to follow the lead of Google, which responded to the court ruling by creating an online form that lets individuals request removal of links to material they say violates their online privacy.

Microsoft, which operates the Bing search service, is expected to roll out its own request form. The release date of the online form is not yet certain, because Microsoft must coordinate with Yahoo, which also relies on the Bing search engine to power its own search services.

Apple suffers Siri patent case defeat in China

Apple has failed in its attempt to get a Chinese company's voice-recognition patent ruled invalid.

The verdict threatens Apple's ability to offer its voice-controlled virtual assistant, Siri, in the country. Shanghai-based Zhizhen Network Technology has sought to block Apple from selling products with the app installed, saying it infringed its rights. Apple said it would pursue an appeal with the Beijing Higher People's Court.

Broadcasting Board of Governors and Gallup
July 29, 2014
9:00 - 10:00 a.m.
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/contemporary-media-use-in-turkey-tickets-121...

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Gallup invite you to attend a research briefing on news consumption habits and attitudes in Turkey, along with, for the first time, an in-depth look at the distinctive media consumption habits among Turkey's Kurdish population.

Nationally, Turkish media consumers fall into three basic groups. Analyzing past-week use of different media platforms, about half of media consumers (48.0%) tend to only watch TV news. About one-third (32.0%) mostly watch TV and use the Internet to get news and two in 10 (20.0%) are "super users" who get news from a variety of media platforms. Super-users are more likely to be male, young, highly educated, and to live in urban areas.

While slightly more than seven in 10 adults in Turkey are satisfied with the information the media provide, dissatisfaction with media does not seem to be correlated with use of external sources.

This briefing will share data on media usage, a methodological overview and a review of attitudinal data on government and foreign policy.

Speakers will include:
* Chris Stewart, Partner, Gallup
* Bruce Sherman, Director, Office of Strategy and Development, BBG
* William Bell, Director of Audience Insights, International Broadcasting Bureau
* Rajesh Srinivasan, Regional Research Director - Asia and Middle East, Gallup

Read more about Contemporary Media Use in Turkey

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