The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules violate the free speech rights of broadband providers because the regulations take away their ability to block Web traffic they disagree with, one ISP has argued.The FCC’s net neutrality rules take away broadband providers’ First Amendment rights to block Web content and services, ISP Alamo Broadband argued to an appeals court this week. While not a new argument for ISPs, it’s a curious one, given that most broadband providers have argued the regulations aren’t needed because they promise never to selectively block or degrade Web traffic.The FCC rules violate the First Amendment because they prohibit broadband providers’ ability to engage in political speech by “refusing to carry content with which they disagree,” wrote lawyers for Alamo Broadband, a small wireless ISP based in Elmendorf, Texas. Broadband providers, by carrying their own and other Web content, have the ability to “exercise editorial discretion,” wrote lawyers with Wiley Rein, a Washington, D.C., law firm.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission should reject a privacy group’s push to extend the E.U.’s controversial right to be forgotten rules to the U.S. because such regulations would have a “sweeping” negative effect on many U.S. companies, a trade group said.The FTC should dismiss a July 7 complaint from Consumer Watchdog against Google, the Association of National Advertisers [ANA] said Friday, because the privacy group’s request that Google and other Internet firms enforce the right to be forgotten could open the door to more European privacy regulations in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission should reject a privacy group’s push to extend the E.U.’s controversial right to be forgotten rules to the U.S. because such regulations would have a “sweeping” negative effect on many U.S. companies, a trade group said.The FTC should dismiss a July 7 complaint from Consumer Watchdog against Google, the Association of National Advertisers [ANA] said Friday, because the privacy group’s request that Google and other Internet firms enforce the right to be forgotten could open the door to more European privacy regulations in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Opponents of a U.S. Senate bill intended to encourage businesses to share information about cyberthreats may have stalled a vote on the legislation.Recent news reports had Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushing for a vote on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) before a four-week summer recess starting Aug. 10, but a spokesman for the Kentucky Republican said Thursday there were no immediate plans for a vote.CISA is “one of the bills we want to get done,” however, the spokesman said by email.CISA would give businesses immunity from customer lawsuits when they share information about cyberthreats with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but opponents of the legislation say it would allow businesses to share personal information about customers. DHS could then pass that personal information on to the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, critics say.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. President Barack Obama won’t pardon National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, despite strong public support for it, the White House said Tuesday.A petition on WhiteHouse.gov calling for Obama to pardon Snowden has nearly 168,000 signatures, but that’s not enough to sway the president, said Lisa Monaco, Obama’s advisor on homeland security and counterterrorism.Obama has pushed for surveillance reforms “since taking office,” Monaco wrote on the WhiteHouse.gov petition site. “Instead of constructively addressing these issues, Mr. Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it,” she added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. communities looking for faster broadband service than incumbent ISPs provide have alternatives to the increasingly controversial choice of seeking to publicly fund a network, according to a new handbook for city officials.
Public funding of broadband is just one of several possibilities, according to "The Next Generation Connectivity Handbook: a Guide for Community Leaders Seeking Affordable Abundant Bandwidth," released Tuesday by Gig.U, a coalition of universities focused on building high-speed broadband networks, and the Benton Foundation, an advocacy group focused on media and telecom issues.
Most city officials say that their local broadband networks aren't good enough in the long term, according to the report, which advises that "the time to begin thinking about faster speeds, more competition and better service is now. Network upgrades do not happen overnight."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A proposed set of software export controls, including controls on selling hacking software outside the U.S., are “dangerously broad and vague,” Google said Monday.Google, commenting on rules proposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), said the proposed export controls would hurt the security research community.A DOC Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) proposal, published in May would require companies planning to export intrusion software, Internet surveillance systems and related technologies to obtain a license before doing so. Exports to Canada would be exempt from the licensing requirement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A proposed set of software export controls, including controls on selling hacking software outside the U.S., are "dangerously broad and vague," Google said Monday.Google, commenting on rules proposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC), said the proposed export controls would hurt the security research community.A DOC Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) proposal, published in May would require companies planning to export intrusion software, Internet surveillance systems and related technologies to obtain a license before doing so. Exports to Canada would be exempt from the licensing requirement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
T-Mobile USA will pay a US$17.5 million fine in a settlement with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for two 911 emergency dialing outages on the company’s mobile network last year.The separate but related outages left T-Mobile customers without the ability to dial in to emergency response centers for about three hours. In the settlement, T-Mobile agreed to strengthen its 911 service procedures and adopt compliance measures ensuring it adheres to the FCC’s 911 service reliability and outage notification rules in the future, the agency said in a press release.The settlement represents the largest fine that the FCC has assessed against a carrier in connection with a 911 outage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
EBay has reached a deal to sell its enterprise unit, a division focused on building and running online shopping sites for bricks-and-mortar retailers, for less than half than it paid four years ago.The $925 million deal, announced Thursday, will give control of eBay Enterprise to a group of private equity firms led by Sterling Partners and Permira Funds, eBay said in a press release.EBay acquired its enterprise unit, then called GSI Commerce, in June 2011, for $2.4 billion. The unit has more than 500 customers, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, American Eagle Outfitters, Abercrombie & Fitch, PetSmart, Ikea and Major League Baseball. Many of those businesses compete for online sales with eBay itself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Law enforcement agencies from 20 countries working together have shut down a major computer hacking forum, and U.S. officials have filed criminal charges against a dozen people associated with the website, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.Darkode.com on Wednesday displayed a message saying the site and domain had been seized by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.Darkode, a password-protected online forum for criminal hackers, represented one of the gravest threats to the integrity of data on computers across the world, according to David Hickton, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. “Through this operation, we have dismantled a cyber hornets’ nest of criminal hackers which was believed by many, including the hackers themselves, to be impenetrable.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Vietnamese man linked to a data breach of 200 million personal records at a subsidiary of credit monitoring firm Experian has been sentenced to 13 years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said.Hieu Minh Ngo, 25, was sentenced Tuesday on charges including wire fraud and identity fraud in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, the DOJ said.Ngo was linked to a data breach at Court Ventures, a data broker Experian purchased in 2012.Ngo apparently tricked Court Ventures into giving him access to a personal records database by posing as a private investigator from Singapore, according to news reports. Much of the information about the breach came out when he pleaded guilty to multiple charges in March 2014 in the New Hampshire court.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. appeals court should immediately shut down the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records because the practice is illegal, the American Civil Liberties Union said.The ACLU, in a request for an injunction filed Tuesday, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to act now on its ruling from May that the bulk collection of U.S. phone records is illegal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. appeals court should immediately shut down the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records because the practice is illegal, the American Civil Liberties Union said.The ACLU, in a request for an injunction filed Tuesday, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to act now on its ruling from May that the bulk collection of U.S. phone records is illegal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A U.S. government agency will start its third attempt to develop voluntary privacy standards for an emerging area of technology, this time with a series of meetings on drone privacy scheduled to begin Aug. 3.The U.S. National Telecommunication and Information Administration has already hosted similar discussions on mobile app privacy and facial recognition privacy but with mixed results. Privacy groups pulled out of the facial recognition discussions in June, saying the process wouldn’t lead to enough protections for consumers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A push to allow Internet voting in elections is growing stronger along with advances in the underlying technology, but systems are not yet secure enough to use with relative certainty that the vote counts will be accurate, according to a new report.
Still, while "no existing system guarantees voter privacy or the correct election outcomes," election officials could take several steps to significantly improve the security and transparency of Internet voting systems, said the report, commissioned by the U.S. Vote Foundation, an organization that helps U.S. residents vote.
+ A LOOK BACK: Voting groups release guidelines for e-voting checks +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two sister mobile and telecom service providers will pay a combined US$3.5 million after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission found that they were storing customers’ personal data on unprotected servers accessible over the Internet.TerraCom and YourTel America failed to adequately protect the personal information of more than 300,000 customers, the FCC said. The settlement stems from a 2013 incident when an investigative reporter found customer records from the companies’ low-income Lifeline programs online, the agency said in an October 2014 proposal to fine the companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two sister mobile and telecom service providers will pay a combined US$3.5 million after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission found that they were storing customers’ personal data on unprotected servers accessible over the Internet.TerraCom and YourTel America failed to adequately protect the personal information of more than 300,000 customers, the FCC said. The settlement stems from a 2013 incident when an investigative reporter found customer records from the companies’ low-income Lifeline programs online, the agency said in an October 2014 proposal to fine the companies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The “possibility exists” for the U.S. Department of Justice to cut a deal that would allow surveillance leaker Edward Snowden to return to the U.S., a former attorney general said in a media interview.Snowden, who leaked information about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, “spurred a necessary debate” about the collection of U.S. telephone records, former Attorney General Eric Holder told Yahoo News.The DOJ, however, hasn’t changed its official position on Snowden, a spokesman said. The DOJ wants Snowden to return to the U.S. from Russia and face criminal charges, the spokesman said by email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two U.S. Supreme Court justices owned stock in tech vendors or other companies that filed briefs in cases under review by the high court in the past year, a watchdog group said Thursday.The justices’ ownership of stock in three companies that filed amicus, or friend of the court, briefs in Supreme Court cases during the past year represent a “minefield of potential conflicts of interest and ethical problems” that could damage the court’s reputation, said Fix the Court, a group advocating for more transparency at the court.Chief Justice John Roberts owned up to US $750,000 in shares of Time Warner and its subsidiaries at the time the media giant filed a brief in ABC v. Aereo, which broadcasters won 6-3 last June, with Roberts in the majority. Aereo was a start-up offering TV service to subscribers through specialized antenna farms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Grant Gross