About half of multichannel video programming distributor subscribers say they're aware of TV Everywhere services, a study by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing found. It said 44 percent of MVPD customers “have verified at least once to view TV content in the past six months,” in a news release. The study also identified correlations between TV Everywhere and increased positive perceptions of MVPDs and content providers. Fifty-five percent of respondents said the service “makes the MVPD subscription a better value for the money,” it said. About half of respondents said TV Everywhere makes them feel more positive about their service providers, it said. Hub Entertainment conducted the survey of 608 TV consumers ages 16-74 in April.
Cybersecurity needs a “holistic approach,” White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel said in a blog post Wednesday. “In an overall strategic context, I think that we need to continue to work on how we can flip the economics of cyberspace; specifically, how we can change our overall approach to cybersecurity to more directly address economic and human behavioral factors,” Daniel said (http://1.usa.gov/1o96mr4). “For example, we need to figure out how to use economic incentives to create a market for systems that are secure by default and that increase [the] cost of conducting malicious activities in cyberspace.” The non-technical aspects of cybersecurity are the hard parts, Daniel said.
"To gain access to documents showing how intelligence agencies choose whether to disclose software security flaws known as ‘zero days,'” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (http://bit.ly/1xd6US0) seeking injunctive relief against the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), said an EFF blog post (http://bit.ly/1qkG4p8) Tuesday. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, “seeks transparency on one of the least understood elements of the U.S. intelligence community’s toolset: security vulnerabilities,” said Andrew Crocker, EFF legal fellow, in the post. “A thriving market has emerged for these zero days; in some cases governments -- including the United States -- will purchase these vulnerabilities, which they can use to gain access to targets’ computers,” said the blog post. EFF filed a related FOIA request May 6, but hadn’t received any documents, “despite ODNI agreeing to expedite the request,” it said.
Seven Internet service and communications providers filed a legal complaint Wednesday against the U.K.’s NSA equivalent for “attacking” network infrastructure, said a Wednesday Privacy International news release (http://bit.ly/1sXgee5). The complaint, filed at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (http://bit.ly/TPu6as), said the British government’s attempts to access networks to gather individual’s communications “undermine the trust we all place on the internet and greatly endangers the world’s most powerful tool for democracy and free expression,” said Privacy International Deputy Director Eric King in a statement. “It completely cripples our confidence in the internet economy and threatens the rights of all those who use it.” King said NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters run the activities jointly. Reports of such surveillance activities surfaced partly from documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said Privacy International.
IP and mobile technology company Vringo received a notice from the Patent and Trademark Office confirming the “validity” of company patent No. 6,314,420, said a company news release (http://bit.ly/1vxzFpT) Wednesday. Google challenged Vringo’s patent claim in 2012, but was rejected, it said. The USPTO began reexamining the claim in 2013, only to uphold its previous decision, it said.
The Supreme Court denied Google’s petition to have it rule on whether the U.S. District Court in San Francisco erred in ruling that “radio communications” don’t include Wi-Fi communications (http://1.usa.gov/1qJRp17). Google has faced a series of lawsuits over its practice of gathering data over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks for its Street View program, collectively known as the “Wi-Spy” cases. The company settled for $7 million with dozens of states and lost several merged class-action lawsuits but was cleared of wrongdoing by the Justice Department and FCC (CD April 3 p20). “We're disappointed that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the case,” said a Google spokesperson. The case is docket 13-1181.
The National Security Administration (NSA) looked at the Internet activity of nearly 90,000 individuals, groups, individuals, or organizations in 2013, said a transparency report released Friday from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (http://bit.ly/TE8H3W). The report is part of ODNI’s ongoing efforts to declassify more information, at the direction of President Barack Obama last summer, ODNI said. But it’s just the first step of many the government must take, said several lawmakers. ODNI should release the total number of people whose information is collected under these authorities, said Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. Franken’s Surveillance Transparency Act (S-1452) would mandate such reporting from intelligence agencies, he said. “The administration’s report is a far cry from the kind of transparency that the American people demand and deserve,” said Franken in a statement. “It still leaves Americans in the dark.” The report also showed the FBI issued almost 20,000 national security letters in 2013, but did not disclose the number of targets of those letters because Congress does not require the FBI to track that number, ODNI said. “When the FBI says it conducts a substantial number of searches and it has no idea of what the number is, it shows how flawed this system is and the consequences of inadequate oversight,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a statement. “This huge gap in oversight is a problem now, and will only grow as global communications systems become more interconnected.”
A survey commissioned by Ipswitch said U.S. workers using streaming media to watch the World Cup presents a “serious wireless network bandwidth drain and network management challenge,” with a potentially negative effect on overall productivity. Ipswitch polled more than 200 information technology professionals in the U.S. (http://bit.ly/1lsmq9c). Seventy percent said streaming of matches “is having an adverse effect on employee productivity, network and application performance and overall business operations.”
A GAO report released Wednesday said the FTC “has complied with all” information security requirements it examined, said a response the FTC sent the GAO (http://1.usa.gov/1mqUq5U). The FTC was one of six federal agencies whose information security practices GAO investigated, including a review of the agencies’ compliance with the Privacy Act, the E-Government Act and the Federal Information Security Management Act. Because of the sensitive nature of information protected by federal agency security measures, the report discussed the agencies only generally. The FTC’s response, however, provides more insight. “While the GAO found that the FTC has written policies in place for the required elements of its information security program, it noted several areas where we could improve the documentation of our procedures,” said the response, which is an appendix issued with the GAO report, noting the FTC will complete all improvements by the end of June. “For example, although we continually conduct risk assessments -- both formal and informal -- on our systems, by the end of this month we will have standardized the formats of these assessments to align with guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.” The response also noted the FTC would improve the tracking of annual training it provides for “individuals with specific security responsibilities."
The Obama administration will work with Congress to pass legislation that would allow European Union citizens to sue in U.S. courts over misuse of their personal data, said a Department of Justice news release Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1pOVxNH). Under the hypothetical bill, an EU citizen whose personal data is intentionally disclosed after it’s shared with U.S. authorities for law enforcement actions would have the same rights granted in the Privacy Act as American citizens currently have, said DOJ. The announcement came as part of the negotiations on the EU-U.S. Data Protection and Privacy Agreement, said DOJ. “In a world of globalized crime and terrorism, we can protect our citizens only if we work together internationally, including through sharing law enforcement information with and by EU Member States and other close allies,” said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. “At the same time, we must ensure that we continue our long tradition of protecting privacy in the law enforcement context. The step we are announcing today will help advance both goals."