Obama Internet kill switch plan approved by US Senate

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By Grant Gross

A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

The committee unanimously approved an amended version of the legislation by voice vote Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said. The bill next moves to the Senate floor for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled.

The bill, introduced earlier this month, would establish a White House Office for Cyberspace Policy and a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications, which would work with private US companies to create cybersecurity requirements for the electrical grid, telecommunications networks and other critical infrastructure.

Obama Internet kill switch plan approved by US Senate

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Internet trends

If you are not interested in Internet Trends then go to slides 43-48 but whatever you do don’t miss slide 48. It shows the impact of entitlement spending and how unsustainable it is.

Morgan Stanley Internet Trends

The trillion-dollar fraud

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BY JOHN R. TALBOTT

Commercial banks, by law, have to hold a certain percentage of their deposits as cash at the Federal Reserve. From January 1959 until August 2008, the total of these reserves held by the commercial banks at the Fed grew from $11.1 billion to $46.2 billion. At no time during this almost 50-year period did the total bank reserves held at the Fed exceed the minimum required by law by more than $2 billion.

But since August 2008, these bank reserves held at the Fed have exploded to more than $1.2 trillion (as of March 2010), even though only $65.6 billion was required to be deposited by law.

This increase in excess reserves resulted directly from the Fed's policy of dramatically increasing the quantity (and lowering the quality threshold) of assets it bought in the marketplace. During the past 20 months, the Fed has tripled the size of its balance sheet by acquiring more than $1.5 trillion of new assets, more than $1 trillion of which are mortgage-backed securities.

What is going on here? Why would commercial banks hold $1 trillion more than they legally had to in reserves at the Fed, earning only 0.25 percent interest per year, and why would the Fed buy more than $1 trillion of mortgage securities of undisclosed quality in the marketplace?

The trillion-dollar fraud

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The FCC Doesn’t Have Authority to Regulate the Internet–and Shouldn’t

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Posted by Jim Harper

In the fall of 2007, word emerged that Comcast had degraded the Internet traffic of some customers, whose use of a protocol called BitTorrent interfered with other Comcast customers’ Internet access.

Comcast handled it badly, and sites like TechLiberationFront covered the “Comcast Kerfuffle” extensively. Consumers prefer unfiltered access to the Internet.

By springtime, Comcast had sorted things out and made a deal with BitTorrent to develop a neutral traffic-management protocol.

Four months later, the FCC weighed in, finding that Comcast had acted badly and telling Comcast not to do that again. Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit concluded that the FCC exceeded its authority and reversed the FCC’s order against Comcast.

The court’s decision marks another turning point in the debate over whether the federal government should regulate Internet access services. What’s entertaining about it is that the problem was solved two years ago by market processes—sophisticated Internet users, a watchdog press, advocacy groups, and interested consumers communicating with one another over the Internet.

The next step will be for advocates to run to Congress, asking it to give the FCC authority to fix the problems of two years ago.  But slow-moving, technologically unsophisticated bureaucrats do not know better than consumers and technologists how to run the Internet. The FCC’s “net neutrality” hopes are nothing more than public utility regulation for broadband. If they get that authority, your online experience will be a little more like dealing with the water company or the electric company and a little less like using the Internet.

As I’ve noted before, Tim Lee’s is the definitive paper. The Internet is far more durable than regulators and advocates imagine. And regulators are far less capable of neutrally arbitrating what’s in the public interest than most people realize.

The FCC Doesn’t Have Authority to Regulate the Internet–and Shouldn’t

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Week in tech: Google vs. China edition

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By Eric Bangeman

Google and China dominated the news this week. First came Google's decision to stop censoring search results in China and the announcement that it is prepared to abandon the country over the issue. The move came amid revelations that Chinese hackers spied on human rights advocates around the globe by infiltrating Google's network.

Next came the reaction. Google's dramatic decision to call out Chinese hackers and its decision to stop censoring search results has prompted an extraordinary worldwide reaction. Here's what we learned.

Then came word that VeriSign iDefense researchers have identified the source of the recent cyber-assault against Google and have found the command-and-control servers that were used to orchestrate the attack.

Week in tech: Google vs. China edition

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CES 2010 - best in show

by Chris Nuttall

The 2010 Consumer Electronics Show , which closed in Las Vegas on Sunday, was arguably the best in years in featuring products ready for primetime rather than the vapourware often on display.

Sony impressed with its 3D-readiness, there were plenty of appealing eReaders and smartphones on show, while new  netbooks, smartbooks and tablets galore are on their way to the PC market.

Our round-up of the best of CES is after the jump with links to the announcements, our coverage and reviews from other tech sites.

 Sony and Samsung led the way on  3D , Panasonic also promised a  full lineup of 3D TVs by the spring and  Toshiba emphasised 2D to 3D conversion and its forthcoming 3D Blu-ray player. The other big theme was internet connectivity, content and services. LG and Panasonic  showed Skype video calls through the living room TV and Toshiba demonstrated its own version of a videophone. Blu-ray players and internet-integrated TVs will have more than Netflix streaming in future, with companies such as DivX, Vudu and Yahoo bringing hundreds of video channels, widgets and applications to this developing platform .

CES 2010 - best in show

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List

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By Kim Zetter

Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services it provides law enforcement agencies has leaked onto the web.

Shortly after Threat Level reported this week that Yahoo had blocked the FOIA release of its law enforcement and intelligence price list, someone provided a copy of the company’s spying guide to the whistleblower site Cryptome.

The 17-page guide describes Yahoo’s data retention policies and the surveillance capabilities it can provide law enforcement, with a pricing list for these services. Cryptome also published lawful data-interception guides for Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and service providers.

But of all those companies, it appears to be Yahoo’s lawyers alone who have issued a DMCA takedown notice to Cryptome demanding the document be removed. Yahoo claims that publication of the document is a copyright violation, and gave Cryptome owner John Young a Thursday deadline for removing the document. So far, Young has refused.

Yahoo’s letter was sent on Wednesday, within hours of the posting of Yahoo’s Compliance Guide for Law Enforcement at Cryptome. In addition to copyright infringement, the letter accuses the site of revealing Yahoo’s trade secrets and engaging in “business interference.” According to the letter, disclosure of its surveillance services (.pdf) would help criminals evade surveillance.

Yahoo Issues Takedown Notice for Spying Price List

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HTC Droid Eris Review

Mihai Andrici

Ok, now that you’ve taken a good look at the HTC Eris, you might have noticed that it does not have a physical keyboard. It’s all touch. The capacitive display with haptic feedback is not bad, not by a long shot, but it is not as good as an iPhone (nothing is). If you are very picky about your typing solutions, you might need to look further, but if a decent onscreen keyboard doesn’t seem that repulsive, read on to find what the HTC Eris can do.

Because we mentioned the screen, you have to know that the 3.2” incher (capable of a “standard” 320×480 resolution) is very bright and sharp and if you leave the Droid’s high resolution out, the HTC Eris has the best screen you can get from an Android smartphone.

The physical buttons on the HTC Eris are only three in number: you have the send and end call buttons and the traditional HTC trackball that really does its job great. The electrostatic buttons just above the physical ones are not the easiest buttons to trigger, but you’ll get the hang of it once you get used to the phone.

HTC Droid Eris Review

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IBM Competes with Google, Offers Discount E-mail Service

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By Kelly McGuire

IBM (News - Alert) will stop at nothing to be the best of the best in the Web world. And, with companies like major Web mogul Google Inc., vying to breaking into the business software market, IBM’s newest email service offer gives Google (News - Alert) some stiff competition. 

In efforts to compete with Google, IBM is offering a bare-bones email service called LotusLive iNotes for $36 per worker annually, compared to a more comprehensive software package that Google offers for a slightly higher cost at $50 per worker annually.
"Candidly, Google has shown itself to be weak" in some areas of e-mail, Sean Poulley, an IBM executive overseeing the company's e-mail service, said. "There is a world of difference between supporting a consumer-grade service and a business-grade service."

Dave Girouard, who oversees Google's e-mail and other services tailored for companies, responded that Google will learn the ins and outs of selling software to businesses more quickly than IBM will adapt to cloud computing and Google isn't planning to lower its prices.

IBM Competes with Google, Offers Discount E-mail Service

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LG announce the LG-GW620 Android powered smartphone

LG has announced the release of its first foray in to the Android powered world of smartphones, the LG-GW620, aimed at meeting the demands of both first time and existing smartphone users.

Set to be available by the end of 2009, the LG-GW620 will feature a 3” full touch screen and slide out QWERTY keypad. The addition of a stylus suggests that the user will not be relying solely on finger based input. Also included will be a 5.0 megapixel camera along with built-in GPS navigation, push email and Wi-Fi and HSDPA network connectivity.

LG is planning to integrate their own S-Class user interface on top of Google's burgeoning Android OS, with a view towards making the unit equally accessible for those accustomed to smartphone use as well as first time buyers, with an emphasis on ever popular social networking functions.

No word on price yet, with the LG-GW620 due for release in the last quarter of the year.

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Digsby Updates Facebook

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by Jeff Hester

Digsby, the multi-network IM and social media tool has been updated with tighter Facebook integration and added support for MySpace IM. This is good, but the really great news is that dotSyntax has also removed the confusion mess of crapware nags from their installer.

The new installer now gives you an option to install the ‘Digsby Toolbar’ and asks if you want to contribute unused CPU cycles to sponsored research. While all of the adware/sponsor programs used in the old Digsby installer were optional, the new installer makes opting out easier and more obvious — a real plus considering that most users don’t really read the fine print during installation.

Digsby Updates Facebook

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Facebook introduces @mentions

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by John Burke

Facebook has been pretty busy today releasing new features on the popular social networking website. In addition to launching Facebook Lite, a stripped down version of the social networking site, the company also announced a new way to connect your content to friends.
Status updates have always been one of the most popular and most used features of Facebook andtoday's introduction of "friend tagging" in updates is sure to make the it even more popular. Much like Twitter's @reply feature, tagging in Facebook status updates work by adding an @ symbol in front of the name of your friend or family member. Facebook recognizes this and will show you a list of your friends, making finding the right person quick and easy.
A plus to Facebook's version of this feature, is while the @ symbol makes including friends easy, it won't actually be displayed. You'll also soon be able to tag friends in applications as well. Friends you tag in your status updates will get a notification and a wall post linking them to your update. They can also remove the tag if they don't want to be linked.
Like most new Facebook features, most users won't see this right away as they take time rolling out the feature to their millions of users.

Facebook introduces @mentions

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South African pigeon 'faster than broadband'

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Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery - but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon.

A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom.

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds.

SA pigeon 'faster than broadband'

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Facebook | The Future of News Will Be Social

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by Arianna Huffington

Despite all the current hand-wringing about the dire state of newspapers, we are actually in the midst of a Golden Age for news consumers. We can surf the net, use search engines, access the best stories from around the world, and interact by commenting and forming communities.
The days of publishing pooh-bahs dictating to us what's important and what's not are over. We now can get the news we want, when we want it, how we want it and where we want it.
The Web has given us control over the news we consume. Now the explosive growth of online social networking is fundamentally changing our relationship with news as well. It's no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, react to news and share news.
News has become an important element of community—something around which we gather, connect and converse. We all are part of the evolution of a story now—expanding it with comments and links to relevant information, adding facts and differing points of view.

Facebook | The Future of News Will Be Social

Facebook pages can tweet

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by Mark Andrews

Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. Facebook has produced an app that will automatically send Facebook Page updates to Twitter, allowing businesses, organizations, bands — anyone with a Facebook Page — to have posts automatically generate a tweet to their Twitter followers. The details were posted on the Facebook blog by Michael Gummelt — the summer intern who developed this app.

If you administer a Facebook Page, you can set up Twitter updates by visiting http://www.facebook.com/twitter/. You’ll be asked to configure what kinds of new posts will trigger Twitter updates

 

Twitter Blog: Location, Location, Location

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Twitter platform developers have been doing innovative work with location for some time despite having access to only a rudimentary level of API support. Most of the location-based projects we see are built using the simple, account-level location field folks can fill out as part of their profile. Since anything can be written in this field, it's interesting but not very dependable.

We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.

Twitter Blog: Location, Location, Location

Unemployment Spike Compounds Foreclosure Crisis

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By Renae Merle

The country's growing unemployment is overtaking subprime mortgages as the main driver of foreclosures, according to bankers and economists, threatening to send even higher the number of borrowers who will lose their homes and making the foreclosure crisis far more complicated to unwind.

Economists estimate that 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year, up from 1.4 million last year, according to Moody's Economy.com. And the government, which has already committed billions of dollars to foreclosure-prevention efforts, has found it far more difficult to help people who have lost their paychecks than those whose mortgage payments became unaffordable because of an interest-rate increase.

"It's a much harder nut to crack, unemployment," said Mark A. Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. "It's much easier to bash lenders than to create jobs."

Unemployment Spike Compounds Foreclosure Crisis - washingtonpost.com

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Tweeting First: The New Way Mainstream Media Breaks News

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by Josh Catone
An interesting thing happened in the past 24 hours or so: two major news stories were broken on Twitter (). By itself, that’s not very remarkable; news breaks on Twitter all the time. But usually, when news first appears on social media channels such as Twitter, it’s the type of broad-reaching story that affects a lot of people on the ground. Things like wildfires, earthquakes, and riots.
The two news stories that broke over Twitter in the past day, however, came from the sports world, and they’re unique because they were broken by mainstream news sources. Over Twitter. Why?
Tweeting First: The New Way Mainstream Media Breaks News

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HOW TO: Take Advantage of FriendFeed's Unique Features

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 by Barb Dybwad

With the ink on the deal still fresh, many are wondering what exactly will come out of the Facebook-FriendFeed acquisition deal. And many who’ve never used FriendFeed before may be wondering what the big deal is: why bother with Yet Another Social Network?

If you’re new to FriendFeed or have perhaps tried it and wandered away, your curiosity might be piqued now. If so, we have a quick power tip for you to help take advantage of its unique features right away.

If you’ve ever used the saved searches feature on Twitter you’re going to immediately understand the power of the equivalent feature on FriendFeed. The great thing about FriendFeed’s saved searches feature, however, is that it’s a lot more customizable.

HOW TO: Take Advantage of FriendFeed's Unique Features

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Project Retweet: The End of RTs as We Know Them?

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by Jennifer Van Grove

Today’s big news is that Twitter () has just announced phase one of Project Retweet, their program to formalize the retweeting movement on Twitter. They’re opening up the flood gates so that developers can tap into the four new APIs and update their applications, or build new ones, in preparation for the official release, which is expected to happen in just a few weeks.

We’re definitely excited to see Twitter embrace the art of retweeting and try to support it. In fact, it reminds us of Twitter’s early days, prior to the official support of mentions. The original version of Twitter did not include a formal way for Twitterers to respond to others’ tweets, so users took it upon themselves to copy a BBS-style reply format and add an @ symbol in front of a username, and replies were born. Twitter eventually caught on to the reply movement, making replies a very real part of the Twitter ecosystem.

Project Retweet: The End of RTs as We Know Them?

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