Grant Gross
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FCC tells TracFone it must allow phone unlocking
TracFone, a major provider of prepaid mobile phone service, must keep its promise to let customers unlock their devices and transfer service to competing carriers, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said.TracFone must transition to unlockable phones in a settlement announced by the FCC Wednesday. In addition to the TracFone brand, the company provides pay-as-you-go mobile service through the brands Straight Talk, Net10 Wireless, SafeLink Wireless, Telcel America, Simple Mobile and Page Plus Cellular.TracFone, with about 25.7 million U.S. mobile customers, violated FCC rules by failing to live up to promises that it would unlock phones for customers enrolled in the agency’s Lifeline program, a subsidized mobile program for low-income people, the agency said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Surveillance court extends NSA’s phone records collection
A U.S. surveillance court has extended a controversial telephone records dragnet while the National Security Agency works to wind down the program on orders from Congress.Congress voted in June to rein in the NSA’s mass collection of U.S. telephone records, but the USA Freedom Act allowed for a six-month transition away from the program. On Monday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved an FBI application to continue the records collection program until December.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Surveillance court extends NSA’s phone records collection
A U.S. surveillance court has extended a controversial telephone records dragnet while the National Security Agency works to wind down the program on orders from Congress.Congress voted in June to rein in the NSA’s mass collection of U.S. telephone records, but the USA Freedom Act allowed for a six-month transition away from the program. On Monday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved an FBI application to continue the records collection program until December.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Robot apocalypse unlikely, but researchers need to understand AI risks
Recent concerns from tech luminaries about a robot apocalypse may be overblown, but artificial intelligence researchers need to start thinking about security measures as they build ever more intelligent machines, according to a group of AI experts.The fields of AI and robotics can bring huge potential benefits to the human race, but many AI researchers don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the societal implications of super intelligent machines, Ronald Arkin, an associate dean in the Georgia Tech College of Computing, said Tuesday during a debate on the future of AI.“Not all our colleagues are concerned with safety,” Arkin said during the debate, which was hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington, D.C. “You cannot leave this up to the AI researchers. You cannot leave this up to the roboticists. We are an arrogant crew, and we think we know what’s best.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Fiber broadband can drive up your home’s value
The availability of really fast broadband in your neighborhood could increase your home’s value by more than 3 percent.High-speed fiber broadband service, with 1 Gbps download speeds, can add more than $5,400 to the value of an average U.S. home, according to a study commissioned by the Fiber to the Home Council Americas (FTTH), an advocacy group made up of fiber equipment vendors and broadband providers.That $5,400 figure is approximately equal to adding a new fireplace, half of a new bathroom or a quarter of a swimming pool, according to the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Carnegie Mellon University.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Former Qualcomm exec sentenced for insider trading
A former executive vice president at Qualcomm was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison and fined US$500,000 on charges related to a three-year-long insider trading scheme.Jing Wang, 52, of Del Mar, California, also had served as president of global business operations at Qualcomm, where he worked for more than a decade. He pleaded guilty last July to insider trading, money laundering and obstruction of justice for “orchestrating” a scheme to trade confidential information about the mobile technology vendor and cover up the conduct, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release.Wang was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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FCC’s Wheeler defends net neutrality rules, discounts investment fears
Predictions from net neutrality opponents that regulations would choke off broadband investment haven’t come true, with several service providers announcing expansions in the four months since the U.S. Federal Communications Commission passed new rules, the agency’s chairman says.FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler defended the commission’s net neutrality rules Friday, saying that it would be “unthinkable” for the FCC to allow broadband providers to operate without consumer protection, interconnection and other basic rules. The FCC is focused on expanding broadband coverage and competition and increasing speeds across the U.S., he said, but the commission’s net neutrality rules won’t get in the way.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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OPM’s efforts to fix IT security are criticized by auditor
Efforts to fix cybersecurity problems at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may be doomed because the agency is moving too quickly and ignoring some best practices, an auditor said Thursday.Even before two recently disclosed breaches at OPM, agency director Katherine Archuleta pushed to improve cybersecurity at the agency, which still runs several mainframe systems.But a “massive” agency-wide effort to update decades-old systems is not following proper IT project management procedures, including a cost-benefit analysis, and the agency does not have a firm estimate on the cost of the project, said Patrick McFarland, OPM’s inspector general.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Privacy group complains about Uber data collection
Uber Technologies’ new data collection policy, allowing the ride-hailing company to access a user’s location even when the smartphone app is not actively in use, violates the privacy rights and personal safety of U.S. customers, according to a complaint filed Monday by a privacy group.With upcoming changes to its privacy policy, Uber “will claim the right to collect personal contact information and detailed location data of American consumers, even when they are not using the service,” the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote in a complaint to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.EPIC also objected to Uber’s plans to access the information from users’ phones’ address books and send out promotional materials to contacts listed there.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Lawmakers worry US OPM breaches endanger national security
Two recently disclosed data breaches at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) could endanger national security and the lives of federal workers in intelligence or other sensitive jobs, according to some lawmakers.One of the attacks compromised a database containing files of U.S. government workers and job applicants who filled out applications for security clearances, and other governments could use those files to identify federal employees in sensitive positions, members of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee said during a hearing Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Privacy groups to quit US talks on facial recognition standards
Nine privacy groups plan to withdraw from U.S. government-hosted negotiations to develop voluntary facial-recognition privacy standards because the groups feel the process won’t lead to adequate privacy protections.Industry representatives at the talks have been pushing to limit consumer control over the facial recognition data collected, the groups said in a letter to be released Tuesday.“We are convinced that in many contexts, facial recognition should only occur when an individual has affirmatively decided to allow it to occur,” wrote the groups, including the Center for Digital Democracy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Consumer Action. “Industry stakeholders were unable to agree on any concrete scenario where companies should employ facial recognition only with a consumer’s permission.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Group asks FCC to make websites honor do-not-track requests
A consumer rights group wants the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to address growing online privacy concerns by requiring websites to honor do-no-track requests.Consumer Watchdog filed a formal petition on Monday calling for new FCC rules forcing companies like Google, Facebook, Pandora and Netflix to respect do-not-track requests from a visitor’s browser.While some websites do honor the requests, there’s no regulation requiring them to do so, and many do not, noted John Simpson, Privacy Project director at the organization. Many available tools for online users block targeted advertising based on online tracking, but don’t block data collection, he said. Specific regulations that require websites to honor a do-not-track request and spell out penalties if it’s not “are essential,” he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Four things to watch for as net neutrality rules go into effect
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules went into effect Friday, after an appeals court denied multiple requests to delay them while the agency faces 10 lawsuits challenging the regulations.The rules prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Internet traffic and from charging website owners and providers of Web-based services for prioritized traffic. The rules also reclassify broadband from a lightly regulated information service to a more heavily regulated telecom-style service, although the FCC voted to exempt broadband providers from many of those common-carrier rules.Here are four things to watch for as the rules go into effect and the lawsuits go forward:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Appeals court denies requests to delay net neutrality rules
A U.S. appeals court has denied requests by several broadband providers and trade groups to delay the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules while they challenge the regulations.The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Thursday denied 10 requests to delay the implementation of the rules. The court’s denial of the stay requests means the new net neutrality rules will go into effect as scheduled Friday, even as 10 lawsuits against the rules go forward at the appeals court.The groups requesting a stay of the rules “have not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review,” a panel of three judges wrote Thursday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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FTC charges game developer with misusing money raised on Kickstarter
A project developer who raised more than US$122,800 on Kickstarter to create a new board game has been charged by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission with using the money for personal equipment, moving expenses, rent and licenses for a separate project.Erik Chevalier, doing business as The Forking Path, asked for money from individuals to produce a board game called The Doom That Came to Atlantic City, but cancelled the project more than a year after the May 2012 funding campaign, the FTC said in its first consumer-protection complaint involving crowdfunding.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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House panel votes to delay net neutrality rules
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee has voted to require the Federal Communications Commission to suspend new net neutrality rules until a series of lawsuits challenging the regulations are resolved.The action by the House Appropriations Committee’s general government subcommittee Thursday comes too late to stop the new rules from going into effect as scheduled Friday. The requirement could force the FCC to suspend the rules in the coming months though it’s unlikely that President Barack Obama, a strong supporter of net neutrality rules, would sign the appropriations bill requiring a delay of the regulations.The net neutrality rules, which classify broadband as a regulated telecom service, will go into effect Friday unless a U.S. appeals court decides at the last minute to delay the rules, as requested by several broadband groups.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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House panel adds requirements to ICANN transition
A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee has approved a bill that would add new requirements before a government agency ends its oversight of ICANN, the coordinator of the Internet’s domain name system.The goal of the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act is to safeguard Internet users and ensure a smooth transition away from U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) oversight of ICANN’s key domain-name functions, supporters said.Wednesday’s voice vote approving the DOTCOM Act in the Internet subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sends the bill to the full committee for action.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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US House votes to ban Internet access taxes permanently
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill to permanently extend a 17-year moratorium on taxing Internet access and other online services.By voice vote on Tuesday, the House agreed to pass the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act, which would prohibit states from taxing Internet access and from levying any new taxes that target Internet services but have no offline equivalent. The bill would prohibit taxes on bandwidth or email, for example.Congress has passed temporary moratoriums since 1998, and the current moratorium is set to expire Oct. 1.The House action sends the bill to the Senate. Some senators have resisted calls for a permanent tax moratorium in recent years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Two years after Snowden leaks, US tech firms still feel the backlash
Two years after the first leaks by Edward Snowden about U.S. surveillance programs, the country’s tech companies are still worried about a backlash from other governments.Several foreign governments continue to push policies requiring that data generated in their countries be stored within their borders, said Yael Weinman, vice president of global privacy policy at the Information Technology Industry Council.“We’ve all heard the metaphor—data is the new oil,” Weinman said at the Techonomy Policy conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. “Barriers to cross-border data-flows make doing business today ... much more difficult.”The first surveillance leaks from Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, came out two years ago, and the impact of the surveillance programs was part of the backdrop for several debates at the conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Two years after Snowden leaks, US tech firms still feel the backlash
Two years after the first leaks by Edward Snowden about U.S. surveillance programs, the country’s tech companies are still worried about a backlash from other governments.Several foreign governments continue to push policies requiring that data generated in their countries be stored within their borders, said Yael Weinman, vice president of global privacy policy at the Information Technology Industry Council.“We’ve all heard the metaphor—data is the new oil,” Weinman said at the Techonomy Policy conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. “Barriers to cross-border data-flows make doing business today ... much more difficult.”The first surveillance leaks from Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, came out two years ago, and the impact of the surveillance programs was part of the backdrop for several debates at the conference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here