The BroadbandUSA initiative under the NTIA’s auspices uses the agency’s experience with the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) “and brings that skill set to share with communities around the country to help them with the issues they’re facing to ensure” they can improve their broadband access, Douglas Kinkoph, acting associate administrator of the Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications, said in an interview. The White House announced the BroadbandUSA initiative Wednesday as part of its package of plans to improve access to affordable high-speed broadband. President Barack Obama also declared his support for ending state laws that restrict municipal broadband deployments as part of that plan (see 1501140048). BroadbandUSA is “a continuation in some ways of NTIA’s mission of always pushing and helping in the broadband space, but we’re not funding this time,” Kinkoph said Thursday. “We’re providing expertise and sharing it on a no-cost basis.” New NTIA grants would have required legislation from Congress, and the White House emphasized that its new broadband plan would focus on initiatives that didn’t require Congress. NTIA’s BTOP experience means it has “expertise that cuts across infrastructure, broadband mapping, broadband adoption, digital inclusion and public access,” which can all be integrated into advice the agency can provide to local communities, said Laura Breeden, program director-public computing and broadband adoption.
The Worcester Polytechnic Institute was given $4.4 million by the National Science Foundation to address the “critical national shortage of highly trained experts in cybersecurity,” a WPI news release said Thursday. The program, funded by NSF’s CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service initiative, will provide scholarships to 25 undergraduate and graduate students who commit to government employment upon graduation, it said. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said in the release: “We have a critical need for additional experts in this field -- a need that the federal government can and should help to fill.”
The Department of Justice partnered with Microsoft's Bing to broaden the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Amber Alert system's reach, DOJ said in a news release Tuesday. Facebook users will begin to see targeted Amber Alerts in their News Feeds, the company said earlier Tuesday (see 1501130030). DOJ said Bing will let users access alerts through its online tools.
Facebook users will soon see issued Amber Alerts on their News Feed, the company said in a news release Tuesday. The alerts, through a partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, won’t trigger phone notifications. Facebook will send alerts to the News Feeds in Facebook users' search areas, a Facebook spokeswoman told us Tuesday. Amber Alerts on Facebook will include such information as a photograph of the missing child, a license plate number, the child’s name and descriptions of the child and the suspected abductor. Facebook users will be able to learn more about a specific alert or share it.
The Internet Society’s Singapore Chapter was selected as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Coordination Group’s (ICG) secretariat contractor, ICANN said in a news release Tuesday. The chapter will coordinate meetings and communications for the ICG, it said.
Verizon FiOS topped the list of Internet service providers in the Netflix December ISP Speed Index, Netflix said Monday in a blog post. Historically, December is the “heaviest viewing month” for Netflix, with Dec. 28 being the year’s biggest streaming day in terms of Internet traffic, it said. Despite the heavy demand, “we saw continued increases in average speeds across the largest ISPs,” with Verizon FiOS topping the list at 3.36 Mbps, Cablevision second at 3.32 Mbps and Bright House third at 3.30 Mbps, Netflix said. That’s up from November average speeds of 3.27 Mbps, 3.20 Mbps and 3.16 Mbps, respectively, it said. Time Warner Cable posted the largest gain in December, jumping three spots to sixth place with average speeds of 3.18 Mbps, up from 2.97 Mbps in November, it said. Netflix defines the index as a measure of prime time Netflix performance on a particular ISP and not a measure of overall performance for other services/data that may travel across the specific ISP network, it said. “Faster Netflix performance generally means better picture quality, quicker start times and fewer interruptions.”
The Department of Justice asked the U.S. District Court in San Francisco to dismiss Twitter’s lawsuit against it for refusing the social media company’s request to release a redacted transparency report, according to court documents filed Friday. Twitter sued the FBI and Justice Department in October, asking the court to let it release the “actual scope of surveillance of Twitter users by the U.S. government,” a company blog post said (see 1410080057). “The additional material that Twitter seeks to publish is information that the Government has judged is properly protected classified national security information, the disclosure of which would risk serious harm to national security,” said DOJ's Friday filing. “The law is clear that the First Amendment does not permit such publication, and any restrictions imposed by statutory authority or judicial order on the publication of classified information are lawful under the First Amendment, both on their face and as they may have been applied to Twitter." Twitter didn’t comment. The case number is 14-cv-4480.
U.S. Central Command confirmed that hackers claiming to belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group temporarily took control of the military command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts earlier Monday. The hackers claimed their actions were retaliation for recent U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Both accounts went offline soon after the hacking occurred and remained suspended at our deadline. The hackers changed the profile picture and background image on the command’s Twitter page to an image of an ISIL militant that included the word “Cybercaliphate” and the phrase “i love you isis,” referring to the group’s alternate name Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Hackers sent out multiple Tweets, including images that listed the phone numbers and email addresses of active-duty and retired U.S. Army officers. Another Tweet included an image of a document listing purported “scenarios” involving China and North Korea. Hackers also uploaded several videos to Central Command’s YouTube account. “We are taking appropriate measures to address the matter,” a command spokesman said. The hacks occurred as President Barack Obama began a four-day rollout of proposed broadband and cybersecurity policies (see 1501120043 and 1501120045).
Average global Internet connection speeds decreased in Q3 of 2014, while “attack traffic” increased, said the Akamai Technologies 2014 State of the Internet Report released Thursday. The report’s data was collected by Akamai’s Intelligent Platform and included responses from the company’s customers. Although global Internet connection speeds stayed above the 4 Mbps “‘broadband’ threshold,” those speeds dropped by 2.8 percent to 4.5 Mbps in Q3, said Akamai. The global broadband adoption rate of more than 4 Mbps reached 60 percent in Q3, a 1 percent increase quarter-over-quarter. Adoption rates of more than 10 Mbps decreased by 0.5 percent in Q3. The report located attack traffic from 201 unique countries or regions in Q3, up from 161 in Q2. Fifty-percent of the attacks came from China. The number of Chinese attacks were three times greater than those that came from the U.S., although China and the U.S. were the only countries that accounted for more than 10 percent of global attack traffic. Akamai customers reported 270 distributed denial of service attacks in Q3, a 4 percent decrease from Q3 in 2013. More than 790 million IPv4 addresses connected to the company’s Intelligent Platform from more than 246 countries or regions in Q3. South Korea had the fastest average mobile connection speed, growing from 15.2 Mbps in Q2 to 18.2 Mbps in Q3. Iran’s 0.9 Mbps was the lowest average mobile connection speed in Q3.
Former Department of Health and Human Services cybersecurity official Timothy DeFoggi received a 25-year prison sentence for his conviction on child pornography charges, the Department of Justice said Monday. DeFoggi, 56, was convicted in August on the charges, which stemmed from his use of a Tor-network-based child pornography website. The site was one of three the FBI shuttered in a December 2012 sting (see 1408270094). “DeFoggi attempted to sexually exploit children and traffic in child pornography through an anonymous computer network of child predators,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell in a news release. “But dangerous criminals cannot be allowed to operate on-line with impunity. Today’s sentence shows that the Department of Justice will bring criminals and child predators to justice, even when they employ anonymous networks like Tor.”