Articles Posted in Technology

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MUMBAI, India (AP) – It looks like an iPad, only it’s 1/14th the cost: India has unveiled the prototype of a $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students, which it hopes to bring into production by 2011.

If the government can find a manufacturer, the Linux operating system-based computer would be the latest in a string of “world’s cheapest” innovations to hit the market out of India, which is home to the 100,000 rupee ($2,127) compact Nano car, the 749 rupees ($16) water purifier and the $2,000 open-heart surgery.

The tablet can be used for functions like word processing, web browsing and video-conferencing. It has a solar power option too – important for India’s energy-starved hinterlands – though that add-on costs extra.

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Visa Inc., the world’s biggest payments network, fell as much as 5 percent after saying the U.S. Department of Justice may sue the company over a policy that bars merchants from charging extra to customers who pay with credit cards.

“The department has indicated that it is considering filing a civil lawsuit,” Chief Executive Officer Joseph W. Saunders said yesterday in a conference call with analysts after San Francisco-based Visa reported fiscal third-quarter results. “We are currently engaged in constructive negotiations with the department to resolve its concerns as it relates to Visa without litigation or payment of monetary damages.”

Visa, American Express Co. and Purchase, New York-based MasterCard Inc. disclosed in 2008 that the Justice Department was investigating the companies over so-called anti-surcharging policies and rules prohibiting merchants from “steering” customers to other forms of payment.

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NEW YORK (AP) – Apple Inc. will hold a press conference on Friday to discuss the latest iPhone model amid complaints about its antenna and Consumer Reports magazine’s refusal to endorse it until the problems get fixed.

Apple would not provide details on the nature of the event at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., other than to say it will involve the iPhone 4.

On Monday, Consumer Reports said careful testing has confirmed user reports that holding the phone over a particular spot drastically reduces the signal strength it receives. Covering the spot with duct tape or a case alleviates the problem.

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Organizers claim more than 30,000 people deleted their accounts on the world’s most popular social network service (SNS), a drop in Facebook’s half-billion-person ocean, but an important symbol.

What did Facebook do wrong?

They’ve been playing fast and loose with privacy. Every time Facebook restructures its privacy controls—say whether your photos can be seen by only certain friends, all your friends, friends of friends, or the whole world—the new default settings always open up your private information to more viewers. Check this infographic.

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AT&T Inc. acknowledged Wednesday that a security hole in its website had exposed iPad users’ email addresses, a breach that highlights how corporations still have problems protecting private information.

A small group of computer experts that calls itself Goatse Security claimed responsibility for the intrusion, saying the group had exploited an opening in AT&T’s website to find numbers that identify iPads connected to AT&T’s mobile network.

Those numbers allowed the group to uncover 114,000 email addresses of thousands of iPad customers, including prominent officials in companies, politics and the military, the group said. Gawker Media LLC reported the breach Wednesday. It doesn’t appear any financial or billing information was made public.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently filed a series of comment letters with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) supporting that agency’s consideration of privacy and data security in the development of its Broadband Plan. The first of these letters,[1] dated December 9, 2009, highlights the extent to which federal agencies, including the FTC and FCC, are focusing their resources on privacy and data security issues in response to the rapid expansion in recent years of Internet-based software and data services (commonly referred to as “cloud computing”), and the growing dependence by businesses on authentication and credentialing (what the FTC terms “identity management”).

By way of background, the FCC’s National Broadband Plan[2] sets various goals aimed at providing affordable broadband coverage to areas of the U.S. that go underserved in the current market, including homes, schools, hospitals and local government. The plan also focuses on improving public safety, both through expanding or enhancing broadband services, and promoting cybersecurity and the protection of critical broadband infrastructure. In this respect, the plan makes a number the recommendations, including the creation by the FCC of a “cybersecurity certification regime” and (in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security) “a cybersecurity information reporting system.” The depth and breadth of these recommendations appears to move the FCC closer to the regulation of data security, an area where activity at the federal level, at least with respect to consumers, has generally fallen under either the Justice Department through criminal investigations, or the FTC via enforcement actions and various other initiatives.

The letter goes on to emphasize some of the FTC’s more significant efforts in this regard, including a 2007 workshop on customer authentication technology and policy, followed by a 2008 report on the same topic, and most notably, the Commission’s enforcement action and $15 million settlement against ChoicePoint for failure to follow reasonable data protection procedures ,— the largest civil money penalty in FTC history. The letter also mentions some of the Commission’s more recent efforts to address privacy challenges surrounding cloud computing, including three roundtable forums on privacy in the age of cloud computing and social networking, the last of which took place in March of 2010.

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Is text-messaging protected against surveillance by an employer? Currently, it is if the employer is a governmental entity. But for how long? The Supreme Court recently agreed to review the Ninth Circuit’s panel opinion in Quon v. Arch Wireless, 529 F.3d 892 (9th Cir. 2008), cert. granted sub. nom. City of Ontario v. Quon, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1011, 175 L.Ed.2d 617 (Dec. 14, 2009).

The central issue in Quon was whether a policeman who was issued a text message pager by the city for police business had a reasonable expectation that his personal messages sent over the pager would remain private. The city argued that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy in personal messages, because it had a written policy that personal use of city computer equipment and software for personal use was considered a violation of city policy, and that use of the Internet and the email system outside the course of business was expressly deemed not confidential. Quon had acknowledged in writing having read the policy. Quon had also been informed that text messages were considered email and would be subject to audit.

The Ninth Circuit disagreed and found Quon did have a reasonable expectation of privacy in personal messages, on the ground that the foregoing city policy was not actually followed. Officer Quon’s immediate superior had told Quon that, if Quon paid for overruns on his monthly allotment of characters, his text messages would not be audited. But in the fullness of time, Officer Quon’s messages were audited when he continued to exceed his monthly limit, and it was discovered that many of his text messages were personal. Officer Quon sued, alleging that the police department and City employees who reviewed the text messages violated Quon’s rights under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and similar provisions of the California constitution. The District Court and the Ninth Circuit found that Officer Quon was entitled to rely on his superior’s assurances that his text messages would remain private on the conditions stated.

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A type of “driver’s license” for the Internet. Yeah. That’s what Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, proposed this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

It’s not as ominous as it sounds since Mundie was suggesting a simple solution for the complex world of cybercrime, and his analogy was a “driver’s license” for the Internet.

I wasn’t in Davos, so I’ll let Time magazine’s Barbara Kiviat explain it better:

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The state’s high court said today that sexually explicit instant messages used by a Beverly man to arrange a sexual encounter with someone he thought was a 13-year-old girl are not illegal under current state law.

The Supreme Judicial Court reversed the conviction of Matt H. Zubiel, who in 2006 used IMs to chat not with a teenager but with Plymouth County Deputy Sheriff Melissa Marino, who was searching the Internet for child predators.

In 2007, Zubiel was convicted in Plymouth Superior Court of attempted dissemination of materials harmful to a minor and was sentenced to one year in jail.

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China’s police are working with the country’s highest investigative organ and the Supreme People’s Court to release a judicial interpretation on hacking crimes, according to the People’s Daily, the official paper of the Communist Party, citing a Chinese police representative. The report gave no details, but such documents are used to direct lower-level Chinese courts on how to apply laws.

The move would be the latest of China’s efforts to strengthen laws against cybercrime, which have come alongside a growing number of reported arrests and court sentences for hacking in the country in the last year.

The report comes after Google last month drew global attention to hacking in China by saying it had been hit by cyberattacks from the country. Google cited the attacks, which resulted in the loss of intellectual property, as one reason it plans to stop censoring its China-based search engine, even if the move forces it to shut down its China offices.

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