The Department of Justice brought its first-ever criminal case against so-called “stalking apps,” which use spyware to track smartphones, said a Monday DOJ news release (http://1.usa.gov/1pomOUo). The maker and CEO of the app StealthGenie was indicted in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. “Apps like StealthGenie are expressly designed for use by stalkers and domestic abusers who want to know every detail of a victim’s personal life -- all without the victim’s knowledge,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell. StealthGenie -- hosted at a Virginia data center but run by Hammad Akbar in Lahore, Pakistan -- contained spyware that can also intercept communications to and from smartphones. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., reintroduced in March the Location Privacy Protection Act to ban stalking apps and the secret collection of location data (S-2171), later holding a hearing on the issue in the Privacy, Technology and the Law Subcommittee that he chairs (WID June 5 p3). “People ought to be able to control who can access their sensitive information, and stalking apps on cell phones directly violate that principle,” Franken said in a Tuesday statement. “There is no federal law banning the secret collection of location data.” Akbar could not be reached for comment. DOJ did not comment on whether it was pursuing action against similar spyware apps. Several other spyware app companies we contacted did not comment.
PayPal will spin off from eBay into an independent, publicly traded company by the second half of 2015, eBay said in a Tuesday news release (http://bit.ly/YI3jzo). Dan Schulman will become PayPal’s CEO after the separation. Schulman for the past four years has been president of the American Express Enterprise Growth Group.
Ireland’s tax breaks for Apple could be illegal state aid, said the European Commission in a report released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1nFn0DF). The findings are preliminary, but could result in Ireland being forced to collect back taxes from Apple. The EC is looking into tax breaks given to Apple between 1991 and 2007, said the report. Apple in a statement said it had “received no selective treatment from Irish officials over the years” and has been “subject to the same tax laws as the countless other companies who do business in Ireland."
Wireless is thriving in Africa, with innovation there “an amazingly positive story,” said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in remarks on African Immigrants Heritage Month, posted by the commission Tuesday (http://fcc.us/1yxYj0o). Communications in Africa is an “American dream,” Clyburn said. “Among the many nations, there is a young consumer population that has grown up with wireless devices and a yearning for connectivity to the world,” she said. “There is a thriving entrepreneurial spirit that is driving innovation and new products.” Clyburn said Americans shouldn’t forget that Africa produces “much of the raw material that makes communication and computer hardware devices actually operate.”
One of every eight U.K. homes uses streaming services to watch TV, while tablets and smartphones are the “go-to” browsing devices in a third of British homes, and one in every 10 millennials doesn’t own a PC or laptop, said a survey report released Monday by the U.K. firm Post Office HomePhone and Broadband (http://bit.ly/1uz0VZk). Streaming or downloading TV programs ranked as one of the top three most popular uses for broadband at home, with 12 percent of homes viewing TV shows mainly via online channels, the report said. The survey of 2,000 British consumers in mid-August also found that nearly a third of U.K. homes use a smartphone or tablet as their main browsing device at home. But PCs and laptops still remain popular for accessing the Internet at home, though not among the youngest consumers, it said. Only 15 percent of 18-24-year-olds use PCs as their main browsing platform compared with two in five consumers over 55, it said. “Streaming and on-demand entertainment services respond to the needs of the time-poor consumer and our report demonstrates how the convenience of these entertainment channels is beginning to dominate the UK’s home browsing activity,” the company said. “While smartphones and tablets provide convenience when accessing the Internet away from home, it’s interesting to see that they are now superseding the PC and laptop as the device of choice in nearly of third of households as well."
American Commitment has gathered 2.4 million letters from constituents asking Capitol Hill lawmakers to stop what it says is the FCC attempt to “impose regulations on the Internet,” the free market-oriented group said in a news release Tuesday. “A Washington takeover of the Internet would be disastrous for free speech, commerce, and the future of the Internet as a sphere of innovation,” said American Commitment President Phil Kerpen in a statement. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., also issued a statement welcoming the letters as part of the net neutrality debate: “We have said all along that these rules continue to be a solution in search of a problem. We will continue working to get government out of the way in our effort to create jobs, boost the economy, and spur innovation.” The group had included a form letter at StopInternetRegulation.org, which said it would send a petition to the FCC as well as to the sender’s relevant member of Congress. “The unregulated Internet is probably the greatest success story of the century,” said the form letter, which does not explicitly mention net neutrality. “Tens of billions of private dollars pour into its networks every year, even in a bad economy. The only reason to change this is to appease a small left-wing political faction that is ideologically obsessed with government control over the economy.”
Texas-based GVTC said it began offering gigabit Internet service to residential and business customers in metropolitan San Antonio, the Texas Hill Country and Gonzales who are connected to its fiber network. Gonzales and two San Antonio suburbs -- Boerne and Bulverde -- are partnering with GVTC to offer the gigabit service to “generate economic development and appeal to residents seeking access to faster Internet speeds, while enjoying the lifestyle of a smaller community,” GVTC said Monday. The partner cities “have a valuable asset they can use now to compete for the types of jobs that will help their communities grow and prosper,” said GVTC CEO Ritchie Sorrells in a news release (http://bit.ly/10fnhTb).
The U.S. Department of Labor gave Virginia State University a $3.25 million grant to help develop a training program for the wireless workforce of the future, with $750,000 set aside for PCIA to help create “nationally recognized competencies and credentials in the field of wireless infrastructure deployment,” PCIA said Monday in a news release. The grant will help VSU, an historically black university, “strengthen a new program aimed at building a network of colleges to train students for high-wage, high-skilled careers in wireless infrastructure,” PCIA said (http://bit.ly/10fxY8i). The grant runs through 2018, PCIA said. The department announced $450 million worth of “job-driven training grants” Monday, including the award to VSU (http://1.usa.gov/1qOZGhd).
The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) should consider, in its review of Comcast’s planned buy of Time Warner Cable, whether the cable companies adequately serve the state’s Jewish community, said 15 Democratic members of the New York Legislature in a letter posted Monday. The two senators and 13 assembly members said they believe the companies have underserved the Jewish community because they provide The Jewish Channel, a New York-based Jewish news and public affairs cable channel, only on an a la carte basis. Comcast/TWC would represent “at least 75 percent of Jewish households, and perhaps as many as 90 percent or more” in the U.S., the legislators said. “We are concerned that allowing a single cable television provider to represent so much of the Jewish community would allow it to be unresponsive to the community’s needs, as it would face little competition from other providers” (http://bit.ly/10f2YVZ). A Comcast spokeswoman disputed the legislators’ claims, noting in part that post-merger “we'll reach a much smaller percentage of Jewish homes across the country than DirecTV or Dish do -- they reach almost 100 percent of Jewish homes.” The companies agreed to let the PSC delay its ruling on Comcast/TWC until the commission’s Nov. 13 meeting. The PSC will issue a final order based on that ruling by Nov. 19 under that agreement, Comcast and TWC said Friday (http://bit.ly/1uW4GV6). The PSC launched its review of Comcast/TWC in May and had originally anticipated it would take about four months to complete. The PSC review is being viewed as more stringent than most states’ reviews and is seen more likely to produce stronger public interest conditions (WID Aug 14 p2).
Facebook on Monday revealed its rebuilt advertising platform, Atlas, for Internet-wide targeted ad campaigns (http://bit.ly/1rvS7zE). Facebook bought Atlas in 2013 and has helped rework the platform to focus on “reaching people across devices and bridging the gap between online impressions and offline purchases,” said Erik Johnson, head of Atlas, in a Monday blog post. “Marketers can easily solve the cross-device problem through targeting, serving and measuring across devices.” Facebook was criticized in June by privacy advocates and some lawmakers after the company announced it would look at a user’s entire browsing history to inform targeted ads on Facebook (WID June 13 p3). Atlas’s website said it operates as a separate entity from Facebook.