Indeed.com Chairman Rony Kahan joined the Coalition for Local Internet Choice’s (CLIC) board of advisers, the group said Tuesday. CLIC’s board also includes Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, Netflix Vice President-Global Public Policy Christopher Libertelli and Gig.U Executive Director Blair Levin. The pro-broadband deployment group said Tuesday that its membership has now expanded to 225 entities. CLIC said it believes the FCC’s current consideration of petitions from the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the city of Wilson, North Carolina, is an opportunity for the commission to remove state restrictions on community choice and encourage local broadband competition. “That can happen only if elected local officials are free to decide what’s best for their communities, whether that means working with willing incumbents, entering into public-private partnerships with new entrants, establishing their own networks, or developing other innovative solutions that work for their communities,” CLIC President Jim Baller told us in an email.
Self-censorship among writers in liberal democracies is growing due to surveillance activities in the U.S. and Western Europe, said a PEN American Center survey released Monday. PEN commissioned the FDR Group to do the survey, which received 772 responses from writers living in 50 counties. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed said freedom of expression “enjoys less protection” in the U.S. than in their home countries, said PEN. “Mass surveillance has also gravely damaged the United States’ reputation as a haven for free expression at home, and a champion of free expression abroad,” it said. Self-censorship among writers in liberal democracies is approaching levels “seen in non-democratic countries,” it said. “Writers are concerned that expressing certain views even privately or researching certain topics may lead to negative consequences,” said PEN.
The Internet of Things will remain a “trending topic” in 2015, as more than a third of online U.S. consumers now own at least one smart device other than a smartphone, said Ipsos research conducted for data privacy management company TRUSTe. The most popular devices are smart TVs (owned by 20 percent of those sampled), in-car navigation systems (12 percent), fitness bands (5 percent) and home alarm systems (4 percent). The survey canvassed 1,000 U.S. adult consumers online Nov. 28 to Dec. 5 and found that the number of connected devices available on the market continues to grow, and so does the amount of data being collected, TRUSTe said. Nearly eight of 10 consumers canvassed said they’re concerned about the idea of their personal information collected, it said. Only 20 percent “think that the benefits of owning a smart device outweigh any privacy concerns about the data they may collect,” it said. Though ownership of smart devices is high, consumer awareness of Internet of Things as a term is remarkably low, it said. The survey that 82 percent were unfamiliar with the term, it said.
The “problem” with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition is that “no one yet has a convincing explanation for how the multi-stakeholder model will be immune to pernicious influences from governments,” said The Washington Post in an editorial Sunday. “Details of the technical transition are being hammered out, but the accountability measures and controls that will be vital to establishing and preserving a legitimate global Internet governance are taking longer.” The Commerce Department “still holds a trump card: It can renew its contract with ICANN,” said the Post. The surveillance revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden shouldn’t be used as a “pretext” for foreign governments to “gain control” of Internet governance, it said. ICANN and NTIA didn’t comment.
The White House kicked off what it said is the first part of a counter-response to the high-profile hack into Sony Pictures Entertainment. It issued an executive order imposing additional sanctions against the government of North Korea, which it says committed the cyberattack. It’s “a response to the Government of North Korea’s ongoing provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies, particularly its destructive and coercive cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement Friday. “The E.O. authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to impose sanctions on individuals and entities associated with the Government of North Korea. We take seriously North Korea’s attack that aimed to create destructive financial effects on a U.S. company and to threaten artists and other individuals with the goal of restricting their right to free expression.” The order is targeted at North Korea's government and not its people, President Barack Obama said in a letter to Capitol Hill leaders. The order “provides criteria for blocking the property and interests in property of any person determined” to be affiliated with the North Korean government or “to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, the Government of North Korea or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked" pursuant to the order, Obama said. North Korea has denied responsibility for the attack. The FBI issued a news release Dec. 19 saying it concluded the North Korean government is responsible and that the attack reaffirms that “cyber threats pose one of the gravest national security dangers” to the U.S. The Department of the Treasury issued its own news release Friday saying three entities and 10 individuals are targeted under the sanctions order. “Even as the FBI continues its investigation into the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, these steps underscore that we will employ a broad set of tools to defend U.S. businesses and citizens, and to respond to attempts to undermine our values or threaten the national security of the United States,” Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew said in a statement.
The FTC approved a final order in a 5-0 vote that settles charges made against Snapchat, an application allowing users to share photos that disappear within seconds, said an agency news release Wednesday. The charges alleged Snapchat “deceived consumers with promises about the disappearing nature of messages sent through the service,” said the news release. In the order dated Dec. 23, the FTC ordered that Snapchat “shall not misrepresent in any manner, expressly or by implication, in or affecting commerce, the extent to which respondent or its products or services maintain and protect the privacy, security, or confidentiality of any covered information, including but not limited to: (1) the extent to which a message is deleted after being viewed by the recipient; (2) the extent to which respondent or its products or services are capable of detecting or notifying the sender when a recipient has captured a screenshot of, or otherwise saved, a message; (3) the categories of covered information collected; or (4) the steps taken to protect against misuse or unauthorized disclosure of covered information.” Snapchat also must create a “comprehensive privacy program” that takes into account risks and controls. A third-party professional will have to assess that program on a biennial basis, it said.
More than six of 10 U.S. broadband homes never back up their data to an online storage service, despite the many options available, Parks Associates said Thursday in a report. The finding suggests there’s “a huge addressable market for cloud-based storage in 2015, as consumer consumption of digital content is on the rise,” Parks said. In U.S. broadband homes, smartphone users alone spend 18 minutes on average per session when streaming music apps, it said. That exceeds the time they spend on average on gaming, social media or video apps, it said. “As the connected consumer achieves greater mobility, device storage becomes a limiting factor for consumer content, prompting a shift to cloud-enabled storage and access," the firm said. Starting at CES and throughout 2015, the firm expects to see CE makers and online technology companies “leverage cloud-based storage as a value-added feature,” it said. “CE companies and cloud-based storage providers are struggling to differentiate in the market, prompting device and service providers like Amazon, with its Fire Phone, and Kodak, with its upcoming Android devices, to rely on cloud-enabled storage and functionality to attract new customers." Wearables in particular stand ready “to form a large chunk of the personal cloud in the new year as consumers store their health and fitness data in the cloud,” Parks said.
Sony’s decision to release The Interview on Christmas Eve for rental or purchase through Google Play, YouTube Movies and Xbox Live came a week after Sony began contacting “a number of companies, including Google, to ask if we’d be able to make their movie, 'The Interview,' available online,” said Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond Wednesday in a blog post. “We'd had a similar thought and were eager to help -- though given everything that’s happened, the security implications were very much at the front of our minds,” Drummond said. “Of course it was tempting to hope that something else would happen to ensure this movie saw the light of day. But after discussing all the issues, Sony and Google agreed that we could not sit on the sidelines and allow a handful of people to determine the limits of free speech in another country (however silly the content might be)." Xbox Live also is offering the movie for sale and rental, Drummond said. It’s also available through a website Sony set up called seetheinterview.com. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith wrote in a blog post Wednesday that his company made the decision to support Sony after “substantial thought.” Microsoft “decided to stand up with Sony and work with others to ensure that freedom of expression triumphs over cyberterrorism,” Smith wrote. Through Xbox Live, the movie is available to U.S. customers who own an Xbox console, a Windows Phone, or a PC or tablet running Windows 8 or 8.1, Smith said. Sony also is releasing the movie in select theaters nationally on Christmas Day. Sony Entertainment representatives didn't comment on why The Interview isn't being offered online through such Sony vehicles as the PlayStation Store.
The FTC should review Oracle’s agreement to buy Datalogix, a digital marketing service, Jeff Chester, Center for Digital Democracy executive director, said in a statement Monday. Oracle announced the proposed acquisition in a news release Monday. “Datalogix aggregates and provides insights on over $2 trillion in consumer spending from 1,500 data partners across 110 million households to provide purchase-based targeting and drive more sales,” Oracle said. The FTC “must examine” the proposed deal’s “impact on competition and also protect the privacy of Americans,” Chester said. In light of the FTC’s consent decree with Facebook, which works with Datalogix, the agency should decide whether that decree “requires additional safeguards,” he said. “The growing consolidation of information on every American and whatever we do … should trigger action, as well as soul searching by both policymakers and the public,” Chester said. Oracle and the FTC didn’t comment.
High-level Internet governance officials agreed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition should continue, but the issues on the NETMundial Initiative (NMI) need more work, in a meeting last week, an ICANN news release said Monday. The meeting’s participants included several ICANN board members, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, Internet Engineering Task Force Chairman Jari Arkko, Internet Society (ISOC) CEO Kathy Brown and Interactive Architecture Bureau Chairman Russ Housley, it said. ISOC refused to endorse the NETMundial Initiative’s Coordination Council in November (see 1411170031). Arkko and Housley want the initiative’s “structure defined after setting the terms of reference and scope of the work,” ICANN said. “More work needs to be done by NMI and with the various communities involved.”