July 2014

Why a government watchdog says your phone calls are private, but your e-mails are not

[Commentary] In a 191-page report, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board said that although the controversial PRISM program (among others) could be unconstitutional, it was mostly fine.

Privacy advocates have been quick to criticize the report. Here's why they're so upset, and it's not just because the PCLOB sided with the government: The oversight board apparently thinks collecting call records is out-of-bounds, but somehow sifting through the actual content of your e-mails and Skype calls is A-OK.

If that discrepancy strikes you as a little backwards, you're probably not alone. Internet-based communications let you do far more than a simple phone call. Yet the PCLOB believes the former actually deserve weaker protections than the latter.

Administration officials have made it a point to say that nobody is listening in on your phone calls. But that may be small comfort when electronic communications have become such a dominant part of US work and personal life.

Rep Grayson ‘disturbed’ by weak phone networks

Rep Alan Grayson (D-FL) wants the head of the Federal Communications Commission to do something to protect people’s phone calls. Rep Grayson said he was "disturbed" about devices that can cost as little as $1,800 and secretly pick up calls and text messages.

“Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their communications, and in information about where they go and with whom they communicate,” he wrote to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “It is extremely troubling to learn that cellular communications are so poorly secured, and that it is so easy to intercept calls and track people’s phones.”

The relatively simple technology known as ISMI catchers operate like a cellphone tower to pick up unique signals from people’s phones to listen in on their conversations and text message chats and nab any emails or contact data on the phones.

Aside from criminals and snooping neighbors, spies or terrorists could also use the devices, critics have worried. Even worse, Rep Grayson said, the FCC may have long been aware of how the devices pick up personal cellphone data.

Facebook To Acquire LiveRail

Facebook has just bought video ad tech startup LiveRail, which connects marketers to publishers on web and mobile to target 7 billion video ads to visitors per month.

One source said Facebook paid between $400 million and $500 million for LiveRail; and another source now reported that LiveRail sold for $500 million.

Facebook also said it will invest in keeping LiveRail running and is evaluating how to intermingle their data, but it plans to use its data to aid LiveRail with its targeting and vice-versa.

The acquisition of the 170-person company could help Facebook own a bigger chunk of video advertising, the fasting growing Internet ad medium.

Antenna firm offers free devices to Aereo customers

Days after the streaming TV service Aereo announced it was suspending its operations, one company is offering subscribers a free antenna to watch their favorite NBC, CBS and other broadcast shows.

“We have a solution to the Supreme Court ruling that resulted in the loss of your local broadcast television: A free antenna from Antennas Direct,” the Missouri-based retailer said.

The company is giving away antennas, coaxial cable and mounting to the first 1,000 Aereo subscribers who respond. “To receive your free antenna, simply upload your Aereo billion statement and pay $10.00 for shipping,” the company said.

Fighting the classroom tech war in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Unified School District had plans to give every kid an iPad; a billion-dollar proposition. But it turns out the one-size-fits-all approach may not be the best strategy after all.

Broadening the choices makes sense, said Brandon Martinez from USC’s Rossier School of Education. “It allows students and teachers to see what works best for them. And then they can give feedback, they can swap devices, and give a more informed decision when they look to purchase at a larger scale.”

What's more, Mike Fisher, who studies the education technology market for Futuresource, thinks big tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon will start forging more partnerships with curriculum providers.

“You’ll see some of the publishers in the marketplace, people like Scholastic, Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, partnering with hardware vendors,” he said. Schools are a $13 billion global battlefield for makers of educational technology. “It’s a green field,” said Stephen Baker, an analyst at the NPD group. “A place to sell that doesn’t have anything now, so it’s all new volume.”

Orange Fails to Reach Deal on French Wireless Consolidation

Orange said it failed to agree on a deal to help the French telecommunications market consolidate, leaving few options as a price war spreads from wireless to landline subscriptions.

French phone stocks declined. Orange “believes that it cannot pursue this avenue at the present time” as conditions weren’t met, the Paris-based carrier said, without elaborating.

Bouygues, the owner of Bouygues Telecom, is preparing for a future with four carriers in France as “now nothing is happening in this area,” Chief Executive Officer Martin Bouygues told a committee of the French National Assembly.

Bouygues Telecom, France’s third-largest mobile operator, was looking for a buyer as profitability and cash generation declined.

Sen Rockefeller Statement on FTC Action Against T-Mobile

Sen John (Jay) Rockefeller, IV (D-WV), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released the following statement after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it filed a complaint against wireless phone service provider T-Mobile USA, which alleges that the company made millions of dollars by placing unauthorized charges on consumers’ phone bills.

“I am deeply disturbed by the FTC’s allegations that T-Mobile allowed millions of dollars in unauthorized charges to be crammed on consumer wireless bills. […] The FTC’s allegations only heighten my concern about the industry’s repeated assertions that voluntary oversight effectively protects consumers from cramming. I am pleased the FTC is scrutinizing carrier practices and look forward to seeing how this FTC action will inform the Committee’s work to make sure the wireless industry is accountable to consumers.”

The Test We Can -- and Should -- Run on Facebook

[Commentary] For a widely criticized study, the Facebook emotional contagion experiment -- which deployed its own type of new techniques -- managed to make at least one significant contribution. It has triggered the most far-reaching debate we’ve seen on the ethics of large-scale user experimentation: not just in academic research, but in the technology sector at large.

Perhaps we could nudge that process with Silicon Valley’s preferred tool: an experiment. But this time, we request an experiment to run on Facebook and similar platforms. Rather than assuming Terms of Service are equivalent to informed consent, platforms should offer opt-in settings where users can choose to join experimental panels. If they don’t opt in, they aren’t forced to participate.

This could be similar to the array of privacy settings that already exist on these platforms. Platforms could even offer more granular options, to specify what kinds of research a user is prepared to participate in, from design and usability studies through to psychological and behavioral experiments.

Of course, there is no easy technological solution to complex ethical issues, but this would be significant gesture on the part of platforms towards less deception, more ethical research and more agency for users.

[Crawford is a visiting professor at MIT’s Center for Civic Media, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, and a senior fellow at NYU’s Information Law Institute]

How to Run Facebook's Mood Manipulation Experiment on Yourself

When news of Facebook’s attempt to emotionally manipulate its users has emerged, debate quickly focused on the experiment’s ethics. Lauren McCarthy, though, kept thinking about the experiment itself. But as discussion went on, she found that “no one was talking about what the study might mean. What could we do beyond the ethics?”

Now, she has a preliminary answer. McCarthy has made a browser extension, Facebook Mood Manipulator, that lets users run Facebook’s experiment on their own News Feeds.

Just as the original 2012 study surfaced posts analyzed to be either happier or sadder than average, McCarthy’s extension skews users’ feeds either more positive or more negative -- except that, this time, users themselves control the dials.

Unlike the Facebook study, which only surfaced posts judged happier or sadder, McCarthy’s software also lets people see posts that use more “aggressive” or “open” words in their feed. The extension, in other words, lets users reclaim some control over their own feed. It lets users discover what it’s like to wrestle with their own attentional algorithm -- as subtle, or as stupid, as it can sometimes be.

Is municipal broadband more important than net neutrality?

Annoyed by slower broadband speeds offered by a handful of private ISPs, multiple municipalities across the US have established their own public broadband services.

Comcast, Verizon, and other major ISPs routinely lobby against cities’ abilities to establish such networks; limits on public broadband have been enacted in 20 states so far.

“The cable companies especially have the capital to invest in bringing everyone a fast lane,” says Christopher Mitchell, director of Community Broadband Networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “They just don’t want to do that because they effectively have a monopoly on high-speed access.”

City-owned fiber-optic networks aren’t cheap, which is why many cities across the US continue to rely on private ISPs. But the public networks that are constructed have their intended effect, Mitchell says: Private ISPs drop their broadband prices and increase broadband speeds.

Put aside, for a moment, the notion of “fast lanes” bandied about in the current net neutrality fervor: the real problem is a lack of competition due to much of the US broadband market being controlled by large, private ISPs, a situation well documented by Harvard law professor Susan Crawford in her book Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age.

There’s a better way than the interconnection agreements proposed by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler. Why not instead undo the barriers facing municipal broadband instead?

Benton

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