Yahoo disclosed content in response to 1,396 of the 6,791 government data requests it received between Jan. 1 and June 30, according to the company’s most recent transparency report, released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1rgdrvA). The company rejected 382 requests. Those statistics show numbers that are roughly equal to the previous six-month period but significantly lower than the first six-month period Yahoo reported on -- January through June 2013. Yahoo said it disclosed content for 4,604 of the government’s 12,444 data requests over that stretch.
The number of consumers using tablets to watch TV shows and movies has skyrocketed, a survey by Altman Vilandrie & Co. found. Tablet ownership penetration increased to 50 percent last year, up from 40 percent in 2012, said the consulting firm Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1v4tL2l). The portion of all consumers watching TV shows or movies on tablets on a weekly basis jumped from 17 percent to 26 percent last year, it said. More than 40 percent of consumers under age 35 use smartphones to watch TV or movies, it said. More than 70 percent of the consumers binge watch at least once a month, and 41 percent use their cable providers’ TV Everywhere service each month, it said. The survey also found that over-the-top use increased from 26 percent last year to 35 percent in 2014. The survey received input from more than 3,000 U.S. respondents. It was drawn from an online panel by Research Now, Altman Vilandrie said.
Car-ride sharing service Sidecar joined the Internet Association as its 28th member, said an association news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1sqGde3). “As with many innovative companies, policies don’t always keep pace with innovation and progress,” said Sidecar CEO Sunil Paul. IA members include Amazon, Facebook and Google (http://bit.ly/1oi5uA8).
The NFC Forum released a free white paper (http://bit.ly/1wLwwox) targeted to developers so they can give consumers “seamless access” to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi services using near-field communication (NFC), the group said Wednesday. The white paper describes the process for the connection handover capability built into the NFC technical spec that enables secure one-touch setup of NFC combined with high-speed, longer-distance communication of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, the forum said. Use cases include situations where the amount of data to be transferred is too large to be sent over NFC or when data is to be streamed for a longer time, the forum said. Examples include enabling audio streaming between a smartphone and speaker or headset, streaming between a smartphone and TV or the transfer of a photo from a digital camera to a smartphone over Wi-Fi, it said. NFC spokeswoman Ruth Cassidy told us the NFC Forum and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group formed an alliance and jointly created a document that gives examples for simple, secure pairing of Bluetooth devices using NFC. “Wireless technology providers are increasingly turning to NFC to help ensure a positive user experience during device-to-device communications, whether pairing consumer electronics or enabling the Internet of Things,” said Koichi Tagawa, NFC Forum chairman, saying a revised application document will make it easier for developers to implement the two technologies. The NFC Forum also partnered with the Wi-Fi Alliance, and the latter recently added NFC to its Wi-Fi Protected Setup, which allows consumers to “tap-to-connect” to wireless networks using smartphones or tablets, Cassidy said. That capability enables devices including cameras, gaming devices, smart home appliances and thermostats to connect to networks with a single tap, she said.
Stanford University pushed back Wednesday in a blog post against reports it had decided to stop using Google funding for privacy research at the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) (http://stanford.io/Y47dBR). ProPublica said Tuesday that a document filed in a Stanford legal proceeding (http://bit.ly/1rngkJU) contained this sentence: “Since 2013, Google funding is specifically designated not be used for CIS’s privacy work.” In the blog post, CIS Director-Civil Liberties Jennifer Granick said the sentence meant CIS had other funding sources for its privacy work that year, and its decision not to use Google’s funding on privacy was not a comment on Google. “Funding sources impose no restrictions on CIS researchers. Period,” Granick said. “All donors to the Center -- and to Stanford more generally -- agree to give their funds as unrestricted gifts, for which there is no contractual agreement and no promised products, results, or deliverables.” Stanford could in the future designate Google money for privacy research, she said. In 2012, Jonathan Mayer, a Ph.D. candidate at CIS, found Google was circumventing the Apple Safari browser’s cookie blocking feature, which led to a $22.5 million settlement with the FTC (http://1.usa.gov/19VRGcD).
Facebook is “unlikely” to renew its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Yelp withdrew, said spokespeople for the companies Wednesday. A Yelp spokesperson said the online review website pulled its membership several months ago. Facebook is evaluating whether to renew its membership and hasn’t made a final decision, said its spokesperson. “While we have tried to work within ALEC to bring that organization closer to our view on some key issues, it seems unlikely that we will make sufficient progress so we are not likely to renew our membership in 2015.” Earlier this week, Google said it was pulling its financial support from ALEC because of the organization’s denial of climate change (CD Sept 23 p15).
Google is pulling its financial support from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) because of the group’s denial of climate change, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said during a Monday interview on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show (http://bit.ly/1mpFfMD). “The facts of climate change are not in question anymore,” he said. “Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people -- they're just, they're just literally lying.” Google shareholders had previously voted down a measure to disclose more information about Google’s funding for groups such as ALEC, which advocate for issues Google doesn’t actively support (CD May 16 p16). In a statement, Forecast the Facts, which supports advocates for the existence of climate change, said, “We hope Google will also take this opportunity review its over $699,000 in contributions since 2008 to another group that is ‘just literally lying’ -- climate change deniers in Congress."
White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel urged the private sector Friday to “work as a community to strengthen our collective defenses to make it harder for those who wish to cause harm.” That collaboration includes differentiating between what the government can do and what the private sector can do to strengthen cybersecurity, he said in a blog post. That differentiation will help both sectors determine how to respond to cyberattacks and “from that understanding would flow the information requirements to take those actions, and it would define who needs to provide what kind of information to whom on what timeline,” Daniel said. The private sector can also collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security to build better networks “that can adapt rapidly based on the threat we jointly face,” he said. Daniel also encouraged the private sector to file comments with the National Institute of Standards and Technology on its use of the Cybersecurity Framework. Comments are due Oct. 10 (http://1.usa.gov/1C6cQyN).
Communications services company WPP is investing $25 million in ad tech provider AppNexus, it said in a Monday news release (http://bit.ly/1C5YoXv). The investment includes its ad server platform, WPP said, and “continues WPP’s strategy of investing in fast-growing sectors such as ad technology and programmatic media buying.” The company said the “AppNexus’ platform allows real time buying and selling of digital advertising for marketers, publishers and content providers and media investment management companies."
Access to archived court documents must be fully restored, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a Tuesday blog post (http://bit.ly/1BMJJjX). The Administrative Office of the Courts (AO) recently removed historic documents for five federal courts -- including four federal appeals courts -- from PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) (http://1.usa.gov/1p64Ap4). Lawyers, think tanks, media outlets and nonprofits frequently access court records through PACER, a government-run, fee-based system, EFF said. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. sent a letter to AO last week, pressing the agency to restore access to the removed documents (http://bit.ly/1uTVpgx). “Senator Leahy’s letter implies something that really should be explicit: the removal of these historic documents should be seen as a blow to access to democracy,” EFF said. “That a PACER account is required to view court records is already an unacceptable obstruction of access to public information.” AO did not comment.