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  2. December 2015

December 2015

Why Silicon Valley Won't Enlist in Anti-Terror Fight

Apple and Facebook have designed technology that even they can't break into, because a system that is unbreakable even to its creator is more secure than the alternatives. Steven Bellovin, a computer-science professor at Columbia University, says designing cryptography is difficult enough without worrying about granting special access to certain people or organizations. Trying to accommodate law enforcement will add a layer of complexity that others -- read hackers -- could exploit. "Maybe it'll make it easier to track ISIS, maybe it won't," Bellovin says. "It might let in the Chinese, Russians and Iranians."

Even if Washington did require US technology companies to build so-called backdoors into their encrypted products, it wouldn’t eliminate the ability of terrorists -- or anyone else -- to use encrypted communications to talk privately. Silicon Valley doesn't hold a monopoly on this technology, says Kevin Bankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute. "Any software engineer anywhere in the world can create and distribute their own encryption apps," he says. "That's exactly what the jihadists do. They don't need WhatsApp."

FCC's Wheeler Connects With Facebook’s Zuckerberg

Apparently, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has "connected" with Facebook chairman, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg about the issue of social media and violence. The source did not characterize the conversation, but said the bottom line for the Chairman remains that the FCC does not regulate edge providers -- like Facebook. A group of legislators sent a letter to Chairman Tom Wheeler seeking more information following his testimony at a House oversight hearing. At that hearing, several legislators wondered, in the wake of the Paris attacks, if the FCC could do something to shut down websites that endorsed violence.

The Online Habits That Trigger NSA Spying

Worried about the National Security Agency monitoring you? If you take certain steps to mask your identity online, such as using the encryption service TOR, or even investigating an alternative to the buggy Windows operating system, you're all but asking for "deep" monitoring by the NSA. How does the NSA access the TORY encryption network? Through a computer system called XKeyscore, one of the various agency surveillance tools that NSA leaker Edward Snowden disclosed last summer. The revelations underscore the fact that in the post-Snowden environment, privacy is less of a give and more of a fast-paced cat-and-mouse game.

One out of every 10 Florida households has an “Obama phone”

The “Obama phone” isn’t dead in Florida, but the number of households receiving a discount or a free cell phone through the Florida Lifeline program decreased to 833,162 customers from 957,792 a year ago. That means that one out of every 10 Florida households received either a $9.95 discount on their monthly phone bill or a free Lifeline cell phone with 250 free monthly minutes as of June 30, a Florida Public Service Commission report shows. That amounted to $100 million in discounts and free phones for the 12 months ended June 30.

The program was not started by President Barack Obama, and actually dates back to 1985. The 13 percent decrease in the number of participants from 2013-14 is attributed to subscribers failing to respond to re-certification efforts, the success of fighting fraud waste and abuse in the program, and the initiation of the National Lifeline Accountability Database.

For tech companies, tis the season for cleaning house & killing apps

Now is the winter of tech companies’ discontent. By that I mean December is fast becoming the time of the year for tech companies to shutter apps and services that haven’t quite made their mark. Most recently, LinkedIn has decided to fully discontinue its Pulse News reader application, which it first acquired back in 2013, on December 31. The move isn’t very surprising, considering that the company launched a completely overhauled version of Pulse (officially called LinkedIn Pulse) back in September that doesn’t look much at all like the old service.

Need more evidence that December is the month of cleaning? Well, it started with Dropbox’s announcement that it’s going to pull the plug on its Mailbox and Carousel apps. That revelation is supposed to help the company focus on collaboration features, like the business-focused Paper service, and finally give it the evidence it needs to prove that it’s more than just a feature. Then it continued with Facebook shuttering its Creative Labs, which gave the company’s workers an outlet for their creative energies. (Or at least their desire to work on something tangential to the jolly blue giant -- the products were mostly rip-offs.) The company also pulled all the Labs’ output from app stores.

42 California government entities sue wireless companies

Forty-two California government entities, including the Regents of the University of California and Sacramento and Los Angeles counties, have joined a lawsuit against four giant wireless companies alleging they overcharged government customers by more than $100 million. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are accused of ignoring two cost-saving requirements included in their contracts with California state and local government customers. Those contracts required the carriers to determine and report to the government customers which rate plans would result in the lowest cost available and to provide wireless services at that cost. Selecting the rate plan that best matches usage patterns can reduce costs by 20 percent to 30 percent over the term of a contract, according to the suit.

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