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Five days of harrowing footage from Boston has allowed a voracious nation to experience Monday’s bombings and their aftermath almost as the events were happening, with ever-present cameras at once documenting history and pushing it relentlessly forward. Fueling this situation has been a series of technological shifts that are likely to accelerate in the years ahead as police, corporations and even private citizens gain access to unprecedented troves of video imagery and the tools to analyze them.
Advances in computing power and analytical software have allowed for individuals to be identified and tracked as never before — especially when that information is combined with the location data emitted by most cellphones. The role of these technologies in the Boston investigation is unclear, but law enforcement experts say that video surveillance and analysis is especially valuable in cases such as this, with an unexpected attack and no obvious suspects at first. The process of winnowing happened with remarkable speed, moving in just days from a mountain of unsorted video, to blurry images of potential suspects, to pictures crisp enough to drive a manhunt. For those seeking to protect privacy in the digital age, however, the news is not all good.
Advances in image analysis empower law enforcement but worry privacy advocates
The Obama Administration is considering a raft of options to more aggressively confront China over cyberspying, officials say, a potentially rapid escalation of a conflict the White House has only recently acknowledged.
Options include trade sanctions, diplomatic pressure, indictments of Chinese nationals in U.S. courts and cyber countermeasures—both attack and defense, officials said. Officials said such a counterpunch, while likely not imminent, would be the natural culmination of a carefully choreographed escalation of warnings in recent weeks from President Barack Obama and top administration officials. The escalation was launched with a secret démarche, or formal diplomatic protest, to the Chinese government in January, officials said.
US Eyes Pushback On China Hacking
[Commentary] The House passed a new cybersecurity bill, and the accompanying report emphasizes what many corporate and government experts know only too well. “A number of advanced nation-state actors are actively engaged in a series of wide-ranging, aggressive efforts to penetrate American computer systems and networks” and “these efforts are targeted not only at sensitive national security and infrastructure information but are also often aimed at stealing corporate research and development information that forms the very lifeblood of the American economy.” The report called it nothing less than “pillage.” With all this urgency in the air, there is a real need for the government, which has the sophisticated tools and expertise, to team up with the private sector, where the majority of vulnerable networks exist. But such information sharing requires a basis in law. Congress deadlocked over legislation in the last session. On Feb. 12, President Obama issued an executive order, a stopgap attempt to begin doing something to meet the threat. The new Congress must do better.
Government, private sector must team up to fight cyberthreats
EBay Inc Chief Executive John Donahoe began e-mailing millions of users of the company's online marketplace in an unprecedented lobbying effort to change looming Federal sales tax legislation.
The e-commerce giant plans to send e-mails from Donahoe to at least 40 million eBay users, including most sellers on the marketplace. The first messages were sent out April 21. In the e-mails, Donahoe said the legislation, known as the Marketplace Fairness Act, unfairly burdens small online merchants and asked eBay users to send an email message to members of Congress asking for changes.
EBay recruits users in push against sales tax legislation
[Commentary] Every time Congress has taken a serious look at proposals to boost Internet sales taxes, it has rejected them. That's probably why pro-tax Senators are trying to rush through an online tax hike with as little consideration as possible.
For Senators curious about what they're voting on, it is the same flawed proposal that Mike Enzi (R-WY) introduced in February. It has been repackaged to qualify for a Senate rule that allows Majority Leader Harry Reid to bypass committee debate and bring it straight to the floor. The Marketplace Fairness Act discriminates against Internet-based businesses by imposing burdens that it does not apply to brick-and-mortar companies. For the first time, online merchants would be forced to collect sales taxes for all of America's estimated 9,600 state and local taxing authorities.
The Internet Sales Tax Rush
Sprint Nextel is up to its neck in a merger fight, and it's all about airwaves. Pay-TV provider Dish Network has offered $25.5 billion for the mobile-phone carrier, in a headline-grabbing attempt to break up Sprint's agreement to be bought by SoftBank Corp. But Sprint is waging another battle over a separate, lower-profile effort to buy the roughly 50% stake it doesn't own in wireless-broadband operator Clearwire. The fight is against a little-known but determined investment fund called Crest Financial Ltd., and Sprint could end up the loser. The standoff underscores how the long-awaited wave of consolidation in the telecom industry that kicked off last year has been stymied by activist shareholders wary of selling on the cheap, or even selling at all. It also highlights the messy, interlocking series of deals now consuming the industry.
Big Clearwire Holder Resists Sprint
Over the last few days, thousands of people have taken to the Internet to play Sherlock Holmes.
Armed with little more than grainy surveillance camera videos, cellphone photos and live tweets from police scanners, they have flooded the Web with clues, tips and speculation about what happened in Boston and who might have been behind it. The bombings, the first major terrorist attack on American soil in the age of smartphones, Twitter and Facebook, provided an opportunity for everyone to get involved. Within seconds of the first explosion, the Internet was alive with the collective ideas and reactions of the masses. But this watershed moment for social media quickly spiraled out of control. Legions of Web sleuths cast suspicion on at least four innocent people, spread innumerable bad tips and heightened the sense of panic and paranoia.
Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of control
Blame the iPhone. Since the debut of Apple’s smartphone in 2007, wireless data consumption in the US has mushroomed. Consumers now expect rapid access to email and the internet and video streamed to their handset cheaply and swiftly. For a few years the five big US wireless carriers were able to maintain the status quo. But as increasing demand for spectrum shows no sign of letting up, the industry has entered into a tumultuous round of consolidation.
There are more than 320 million mobile subscribers in the US and four major US mobile network operators -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA unit. Smaller providers like MetroPCS, and wireless internet operator Clearwire, are also in the mix. Each is now pursuing deals that would strengthen it at home, and in some cases, abroad. Although Verizon and AT&T, the two largest US carriers, are constrained by regulators in their ability to expand through acquisitions, each is looking at other options. All these deals may just be precursors to a merger of the third and fourth largest players. Many in the industry believe that neither Sprint nor T-Mobile will be able to independently compete with Verizon and AT&T, and will be pressured to merge in the coming years.
US telcos pave way for more mergers
In one tweet, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski may have single-handedly changed the agency's policy on F-words forever. Genachowski's tweet was in reaction to the fleeting expletive dropped by Red Sox hitter David Ortiz during a rousing pre-game ceremony in Fenway Park, a day after law enforcement captured the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. "This is our #&*%ing city, and nobody's is going to dictate our freedom," Ortiz said.
Ortiz's statement prompted Genachowski to tweet:
David Ortiz spoke from the heart at today's Red Sox game. I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston - Julius
FCC Tweet Lets Slide Ortiz F-Word David Ortiz forgiven by FCC for expletive Boston will never forget (CSM) FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski tweets on David Ortiz f-bomb (Politico)
Time Warner and CBS have flirted for years. A marriage now may make more sense than ever.
CBS shares, while trading near the highest price since the company and Viacom split seven years ago, fetch the lowest valuation versus earnings when compared with its five largest U.S. peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gabelli & Co. said buying the most-watched broadcast network would give Time Warner, owner of cable channels such as CNN and TNT, more negotiating leverage to win higher fees from pay-television systems that carry its programming. Their strengths are complementary -- Time Warner runs Hollywood’s most-prolific studio and CBS has the highest broadcast TV ratings -- and both plan asset sales to focus on those areas.
Time Warner-CBS Seen Candidate for Merger: Real M&A