Policy

John McAfee brings his 'Where's Waldo' act to Portland

Last time we checked, John McAfee was on the lam from, well, whoever it was that he said was after him in Belize. But the former software mogul, who was deported to the United States after fleeing to Guatemala, has decided to pitch his tent in Portland, Ore., for a while. (Assuming, of course, that he's not yanking the media's chain for kicks and giggles.)

Willamette Week snagged an interview this week with McAfee, who said he was "looking for a home here and plans to live in Portland for the next year and a half while … Read more

EU privacy laws to spell an end to Facebook for free?

Facebook, Gmail, and other ad-supported online services would need to start charging users if proposed changes to EU data protection laws go ahead, a legal expert has warned.

Substantial restrictions on how companies handle personal data have been put forward under the draft European Data Protection Regulation, which will shortly be put before the European Parliament.

The proposals would severely curtail the ability of services to claim they have legitimate grounds for collecting, analyzing, or selling the personal data of their users. They also make it far more difficult for services to claim they have a user's consent for … Read more

Cisco CEO is the year's 'Chief Obfuscation Champion' -- FT

Following in the footsteps of the language purist (and gentle scold) Edwin Newman (also a former CBS and NBC newsman), the Financial Times' Lucy Kellaway had some fun in her column today singling out corporate bosses she found to have a penchant for "guff, cliché, euphemism and verbal stupidity."

The hands-down winner in her list: None other than Cisco's CEO John Chambers, who was deemed to be last year's "Chief Obfuscation Champion":

When I conceived this award a few months ago, I promised it to Angela Ahrendts for writing in her annual report: &… Read more

Facebook yanks Instagram usage data from public view

Facebook has pulled Instagram traffic from public view, according to a story out yesterday from TechCrunch.

Instagram's page on AppData, which reports user numbers based on data obtained through Facebook's API, now states that "Facebook no longer reports new data for this application."

As an example cited by TechCrunch, Instagram showed 45.8 million monthly active users on January 7 as measured by Facebook logins. That number was zero as of yesterday.

Facebook told TechCrunch that the move was designed to bring Instagram in accord with its other apps, which don't appear separately in AppData.… Read more

Iran develops software to control access to social networks

Iran's government is developing "intelligent software" designed to give citizens controlled and restricted access to banned social-networking sites, the chief of Iran's national police tells the local media.

"Smart control of social networks will not only avoid their disadvantages, but will also allow people to benefit from their useful aspects," Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghadam said, according to a 7Sobh report cited by AFP. "The designing of intelligent software to control social networking Web sites" is under way.

"Smart control of social networks is better than filtering them completely," he said.

Access … Read more

EU: FTC decision on Google won't affect our case

Google may be free and clear in the U.S. over its search practices, but the European Union still has a thing or two to say.

The European Commission, which is the executive body of the European Union, told Reuters that the FTC settlement with the Internet search giant wouldn't affect own decision-making process, although it has taken note of it.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission yesterday announced a settlement with Google, allowing competitors unhappy with how its search results are displayed to opt out and forcing the company to make some changes to its search practices to … Read more

The snoop state's still alive and well (Anybody notice?)

In mid-December, a good portion of our wired world had a collective cow after Instagram put out a confusing statement about how it planned to treat users' photos. (The company blamed the ensuing uproar on imprecise wording and retreated to its original terms of service.) Oh, we love our photos. Fine. Whatever.

Now compare that uproar with the (relative) sound of silence greeting the five-year extension of extraordinary spying powers handed to the National Security Agency. Even in an age when attention deficit disorder seems to be the default mode, this was something else. In the closing days of 2012, … Read more

Revealed: NSA targeting domestic computer systems in secret test

Newly released files show a secret National Security Agency program is targeting the computerized systems that control utilities to discover security vulnerabilities, which can be used to defend the United States or disrupt the infrastructure of other nations.

The NSA's so-called Perfect Citizen program conducts "vulnerability exploration and research" against the computerized controllers that control "large-scale" utilities including power grids and natural gas pipelines, the documents show. The program is scheduled to continue through at least September 2014.

The Perfect Citizen files obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and provided to CNET shed more … Read more

Dish faces challenges ramping up its LTE network

Dish was recently given a thumbs up by the FCC to build its own LTE network, but the company is up against some stiff obstacles along the way.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission granted Dish's request to allow it to use 40 MHz of spectrum in the 2 GHz band to create a 4G LTE network. At the time, the FCC indicated that some restrictions would apply, though it didn't reveal the specifics... until now.

The satellite TV provider must finish 40 percent of its LTE network within the next four years, and 70 percent within seven … Read more