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Sprint Nextel shareholders look set to embark on married life. "Bliss" isn't the word that immediately springs to mind.
US satellite-TV provider Dish Network, DISH while still professing its love, says Sprint's conditions made submitting a bid by Tuesday's deadline "impracticable." Dish may yet make a hostile offer for the U.S. wireless operator directly to shareholders, but banking on that would be risky. The path now seems clear to Sprint shareholders approving a bid from Japan's SoftBank for 78% of the company. Assuming Dish doesn't spoil the nuptials at the last moment, 22% of Sprint will then be held by existing shareholders. They will be along for the ride as SoftBank attempts to turn the company into a better competitor to Verizon Wireless and AT&T. That is a worthy goal, but getting Sprint's network up to scratch will take money, and lots of it.
The Hard Work of Relationships for Sprint
On June 20, Apple and the Justice Department will wrap up a federal antitrust trial focused on alleged price-fixing of e-books, but with broader implications for Internet companies racing to provide videos, radio and other media offerings over the Web.
After three weeks of testimony from executives of Apple, Amazon and Google and personal insights of late Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, attorneys will deliver five hours of closing statements and field questions from U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote. It is unclear when Judge Cote will deliver her opinion on the case, but the press office of Manhattan district court estimated that a typical judge takes about two months to come to a decision. And that opinion is being closely watched for its potential to set first-time boundaries on Apple, Amazon, Google, Netflix and other tech giants that have become the most powerful gateways for Internet entertainment, antitrust experts say. And the Obama administration has moved more aggressively to police the Internet industry, largely unfettered of rules, to ensure competition isn’t stifled.
Apple e-book antitrust trial to wrap up With the end in sight, the winds have shifted in the Apple e-book trial (Fortune)
The US is weighing whether to prosecute foreign officials for the cyber theft of American commercial and government information in an effort to raise the potential cost of such attacks.
The justice department’s national security division has been studying whether to bring cases against foreign officials since at least 2012 and training prosecutors on how to proceed with such indictments. Any such decision would mark a substantial escalation in the US response to what it has said is an escalating number of attacks by foreign hackers on US business and government computer networks. The main source of those attacks in recent years has been China and groups that have been linked to the Chinese military. Such actions would also be diplomatically awkward following recent revelations regarding the US’s own large-scale cyber espionage, led by the National Security Agency, the electronic eavesdropping body.
US eyes prosecution of foreign cyber thieves
[Commentary] One fear often voiced about Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker, is that it is a secret agent of the Chinese government. If it were allowed into the US, could it not embed hidden code into its devices that would enable the Chinese intelligence services to monitor everything passing along its networks? Now substitute the word Verizon for Huawei.
Thanks to Edward Snowden, the US intelligence contractor gone rogue, we know that Verizon did something quite similar. According to an order from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, leaked by Snowden, Verizon was required to hand over information about all calls made by its 120m customers. If that’s true, should Verizon be banned from operating in China, or any other country for that matter? The question is posed half-facetiously. But only half. If Verizon – and most other US telecoms and internet carriers – routinely pass data to the government, does that not come awfully close to people’s suspicions about Huawei? One could argue that the National Security Agency, which monitors the traffic, is only looking for terrorist threats, not snooping on other countries’ governments. Then again, how could we possibly know that?
America cedes moral high ground on cyber spying
FBI Director Robert Mueller told lawmakers — some already skeptical of government surveillance — that the feds may need additional powers to track down criminals who hide their activities online.
Buried in his prepared testimony June 19 to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mueller reaffirmed the Obama administration’s long-held view that there’s a “growing gap between law enforcement’s legal authority to conduct electronic surveillance, and its ability to conduct such surveillance.” “The rapid pace of advances in mobile and other communication technologies continues to present a significant challenge for conducting court-approved electronic surveillance of criminals and terrorists,” Mueller noted. “Because of this gap, law enforcement is increasingly unable to gain timely access to the information to which it is lawfully authorized and that it needs to protect public safety, bring criminals to justice and keep America safe,” added the FBI director, acknowledging there still exists a need to balance security and privacy.
FBI’s Robert Mueller: Feds need broader surveillance powers
As other broadcasters urged the Federal Communications Commission to ease up on indecency regulations, Fox urged it to quit regulating broadcast indecency altogether.
“Fox urges the commission to conclude it is legally required and logically bound to cease attempting broadcast indecency limits once and for all,” Fox Entertainment Group and Fox Television Holdings said in a filing. “Time and technology have moved inexorably forward, but the commission’s untenable effort to define indecent content through a hodgepodge of inconsistent and uneven rulings remain stuck in a bygone era.” Fox also said that if the FCC "defies the Constitution and common sense" and continues to regulate indecency, it should do so narrowly.
Fox to FCC: Get Out of Indecency Regulation
Nearly four in ten U.S. adults (39%) are caring for an adult or child with significant health issues, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Caregivers are highly engaged in the pursuit of health information, support, care, and advice, both online and offline, and do many health-related activities at higher levels than non-caregivers. Indeed, being a caregiver is independently associated with key health-related activities.
When controlling for age, income, education, ethnicity, and good overall health, caregivers are more likely than other adults to:
- Gather health information online, particularly about medical problems, treatments, and drugs.
- Gather health information offline, from clinicians, friends, family, and others who share the same health condition.
- Go online specifically to try to figure out what condition they or someone else might have.
- Consult online reviews about drugs and other treatments.
- Track their own weight, diet, exercise routine, or other health indicator.
- Read online about someone else’s personal health experience (which, in the case of caregivers, could be related to their own or their loved one’s condition).
- Go online to find others with similar health concerns (again, there may be dual motivations to connect — to find more information about handling caregiver stress, for example, or about their loved one’s health challenges).
Family Caregivers are Wired for Health
Analytics Media Group (A.M.G.) was founded in late December by a splinter group of longtime Obama advisers: Larry Grisolano, who oversaw how the campaign spent its advertising dollars; Grisolano’s direct-mail partners Terry Walsh and Pete Giangreco; Jeff Link, a seasoned Iowa veteran who was an outside adviser in 2012; and Erik Smith, an advertising consultant for the 2012 campaign, whose work running one of the biggest 2004 pro-Kerry outside groups gave him an inside track with party donors from the corporate world. A.M.G.’s relatively grand promise: to deliver to commercial advertisers some of the Obama campaign’s secret, technologically advanced formulas for reaching voters.
The Obama Campaign’s Digital Masterminds Cash In
France is giving Google three months to be more upfront about the data it collects from users — or be fined.
The legal action accelerates a Europe-wide fight against Google over its use of personal data. While the fines threatened are small by the standards of one of the world's richest companies, the move puts new pressure on Google as it smarts from recent criticism over providing customer data to U.S. government surveillance efforts. The French agency that regulates information technology says that five other European countries are taking similar steps in a staggered offensive against Google's privacy policy between now and the end of July. The French National Commission on Computing and Freedom, known as CNIL, says Spain has joined France in the first wave of legal action, and that Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands will join in the coming weeks.
France threatens Google with privacy fines Google Gets 3 Months to Fix Privacy or Face French Fines (Bloomberg)
Ofcom, Britain's telecom regulator, will launch an investigation into satellite TV firm BSkyB over the wholesale supply of its sports channels after a complaint by Sky's increasingly bitter rival BT.
Ofcom said the probe would center on BT's claims that the terms on which Sky offered its sports channels, Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2, to BT's YouView platform amounted to an abuse of Sky's market dominance. BT has complained to Ofcom that Sky is making the supply of the two channels conditional on BT making its own sports channels available to Sky for retail on Sky's platform.
Ofcom to probe BSkyB over sports channel supply