Google, Microsoft, Facebook tell NSA: ‘let us prove we’re innocent’

12.06.2013, 12:03

Microsoft, Facebook and Google have come together to ask for the ability to publish details of data handover requests, as they continue to deny involvement in the PRISM surveillance program.

The tech giants have all asked the National Security Agency to allow them to publish Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests so they can prove that they’re not guilty of handing over users’ private information.

Currently, these companies are blocked by non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from revealing information about NSA-requested data – which they claim has not been disclosed.

In its request, Google asked the Attorney General and Federal Bureau of Investigation to wave this restriction so it can prove that it’s not guilty.

“Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide,” it said.

Facebook made a similar move, posting a public message that declared it “would welcome the opportunity to provide a transparency report that allows us to share with those who use Facebook around the world a complete picture of the government requests we receive, and how we respond.”

Microsoft confirmed that it had also put forward a transparency request, telling Reuters: “Our recent report went as far as we legally could and the government should take action to allow companies to provide additional transparency.”

Twitter lawyer Alex Macgillivray meanwhile tweeted “”We’d like more NSL transparency and Twitter supports efforts to make that happen”.

Each of these companies have been accused of being implicated in the massive PRISM scandal, involving a program used by the US government to request information on users from the world’s biggest tech companies, including emails and photos.

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Telstra now sending warning SMS for every 20MB of data used overseas

02.05.2013, 7:25

Telstra has finally made motions to try and prevent some of the horrendous bill shock received from downloading data on your mobile phone while overseas.

The telco has just introduced a new system that will send global roamers an SMS message every time they use 20MB of data while travelling internationally.

Telstra has announced it will do this automatically, to help try and restrict the number of customers who return home to astronomical bills.

Of course, with the rate that roaming data is charged at, it’s still better to switch off data roaming altogether when travelling overseas. At Telstra’s going rate of 1.5 cents per kilobyte, each 20MB SMS tier still equates to around $300.

The telco has tried to ease this by introducing slightly improved pre-paid global roaming rates for travellers who can’t live without data.

Roaming data packs start at $29 for 20MB of data, and range up to a whopping $1800 for 2GB.

The new packs are now available in more countries too, from 25 locations to 50.

While $29 is significantly cheaper than $300 though, you’re still better off picking up an international SIM card or relying exclusively on Wi-Fi for your international data needs.

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Scientists find a way to store data on DNA

24.01.2013, 15:05

Researchers have developed a way to store data in the form of DNA, and reckon it will be a viable alternative to hard discs within ten years.

The problem of what to do with the world’s data is one that is yet to be completely solved. Expensive, bulky, electricity-sapping hard disks are one option, while magnetic tape is another – cheaper, but it degrades over time and you’d need a lot of it to handle the 3 zettabytes’ worth of data that is estimated to be around these days.

Scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) think they might have come up with a viable third option: storing data in DNA-like strands. They have successfully created a way to keep MP3s, PDFs, text files and photos in the form of DNA which requires no power and should, they say, last for tens of thousands of years.

Unless you have 11,408 years going spare, you’ll never make it through 100 million hours of HD video but that’s about how much data you could store in a cup of DNA, just in case.

“We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from wooly mammoth bones, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it,” explains Nick Goldman of EMBL-EBI.

“It’s also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy.”

The downside is that this approach is insanely expensive for now – synthesising DNA from encoded information is a hugely intensive operation – but the researchers estimate that the DNA-storage option may come down in price enough for us mere mortals to invest our most precious data in within ten years.

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iPhone 5, Galaxy S3 gobble up tons of data

15.01.2013, 7:56

Big data is being consumed by small packages like the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3, according to a study released today, and now smartphone data usage trumped tablets for the first time.

This surprise analysis, by network optimization solutions firm Arieso, flies in the face of the spike in tablets sales, devices that one might assume would be the more data-hungry.

“This is pretty counterintuitive, but it seems the capabilities of the newest smartphones – not tablets – are unleashing even greater user demand,” said Arieso Chief Technical Officer Michael Flanagan in a press release.

“Once you move away from raw consumption statistics, the most remarkable finding is the way in which people use smartphones and tablets.”

The iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 split the top spot when it comes to downloads and uploads, according to the Arieso report that studied 125 devices.

iPhone 5 users downloaded twice as much data as those with an iPhone 4S, and they quadrupled the amount of data consumed by iPhone 3G owners.

However, the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note II generated so many uploads of things like photos and videos, they knocked the iPhone 5 back to third place on uplink data usage chart.

Tablets did rank in this study, but placed fourth, fifth and ninth, when the original iPad and iPad 2 had dominated the second and third spots just twelve months ago.

So it’s even more surprising to see that data usage among Samsung Tab 2 10.1 users is No. 1, and has outpaced iPad users by as much as 20 percent in the last year.

This study, which comes on the same day that Apple reportedly cut its iPhone 5 screen orders in half, concludes that “for the first time in three years, [Apple's] dominance is being challenged.”

This may be just another sign of more Apple highs and lows to come in 2013.

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Apple co-founder thinks the cloud will be “horrendous”

06.08.2012, 11:54

Steve Wozniak isn’t a fan of storing all his data online. The Apple co-founder says the idea of everyone uploading everything they own to the cloud is going to be “horrendous.”

Speaking after Mike Daisey’s one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Woz let his thoughts on the cloud be known.

“I really worry about everything going to the cloud,” he said. “I think it’s going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years.”

Losing control

His main issue seems to be that when you sign up to the cloud, you hand over your ownership rights to someone else. “With the cloud, you don’t own anything,” he said. “You already signed it away.

“The more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.”

One man who’ll attest to that is Mat Hornan, a reporter at Gizmodo. Hackers managed to gain access to his devices and his iCloud through Apple’s tech support. They remote wiped his iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air within minutes, and managed to delete his Google account. Scary stuff.

The Reuters Twitter feed was hacked this weekend as well, with ne’er-do-wells sending out false tweets about Syria.

Woz it all about?

Woz is known for his straight talking. Recently he sang the praises of the Windows Phone operating system, proclaiming it more beautiful and intuitive than Android.

So when he tears into something, you know he’s saying what he really thinks.

It does make you wonder: if it’s online, just how secure is it?

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Google back in the spotlight over Street View data

13.06.2012, 10:40

Google is back under investigative scrutiny about how and what data it collected while mapping the UK for its Street View service.

A previous investigation fell apart after an Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was told that any non-map-based data had been collected by accident, and we can’t see why you wouldn’t take a statement like that from the massive multinational internet company that you’re investigating at face value.

Since then, someone has let slip that “a Google engineer”, referred to as Engineer Doe, wrote software that was capable of skimming more information from Wi-Fi networks as the cars drove around the country, suspected to include emails, IMs, log-in details and more.

Word on the street

The case has been reopened partly because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US found that at least three people at Google, including a senior manager, knew about this sneaky software, although it concluded that Google had not broken any Stateside laws.

The ICO penned a letter to Google explaining that the FCC had found “complete email messages, email headings, instant messages and their content, logging-in credentials, medical listings and legal infractions, information in relation to online dating and visits to pornographic sites.”

“It… seems likely such information was deliberately captured during the Google Street View operations conducted in the UK,” the ICO said, thus reopening the investigation.

Google is playing it cool, of course. A spokesman for the company said it was “happy” to answer any queries the ICO has, adding that, “We have always said that the project leaders did not want and did not use this payload data.

“Indeed, they never even looked at it.”

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Anonymous ‘has access to all classified data in the US government’

22.05.2012, 13:33

Christopher Doyon, Commander X of hacking collective Anonymous, has revealed that there are many more leaks to come from the group – and believes that the entire US government has been compromised.

Currently laying low in Canada and facing up to 15 years in jail for hacking into the databases of Sony, PayPal and other high-profile companies, Doyon has spoken candidly about Anonymous and the People’s Liberation Front and has explained that even with his arrest there’s a lot more to come.

In an interview with the National Post, Doyon reveals that the leaks so far from Anonymous are only a small part of the information the company has gotten hold of. And that most of the information it has procured hasn’t actually come from hacking.

“We have access to every classified database in the US government,” Doyon claimed.

“It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems.

“The five-star general [and] the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that.”

Crime database

Speaking of Manning – the US soldier arrested in 2010 for releasing 250,000 sensitive cables – Doyon believes that the information he revealed is something that needed to be seen by the public, along with all the other hacked material Anonymous and Wikileaks have managed to get hold of.

“Every email database that I’ve ever been a part of stealing, from President Assad to Stratfor security, every email database, every single one has had crimes in it,” said Doyon.

“Not one time that I’ve broken into a corporation or a government, and found their emails and thought, ‘Oh my God, these people are perfectly innocent people, I made a mistake’.”

As for now residing in Canada, which means he is currently avoiding prosecution, Doyon revealed just how much influence Anonymous has: “We have a lot of contacts in the Canadian government. We were well prepared when I came here, we have an underground railway and safe houses in Canada.

“We might be wrong, but our understanding is that the Canadian government is about equally concerned with Anonymous and the United States.”

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Exclusive: UK networks respond to EU’s decision to intro data roaming caps

11.05.2012, 11:22

Yesterday we reported that the European Parliament had given the go ahead for roaming data caps to be introduced.

TechRadar has now heard back from the UK networks, and we’re please to say that the mood seems to be positive.

The caps will come into effect from July, with new limits set at 90 cents (72p) a MB and calls at 29 cents (23p) per minute. Data will eventually drop to 50 cents (40p) by 2014.

Networks fully behind the caps

O2 told TechRadar: “We will be fully compliant with these new regulations when they come into effect in July.”

“Since July 2010 we’ve applied a £40 cap to data usage both inside and outside the EU, allowing customers to use data abroad knowing that they will not be charged more than £40 in any one billing period.”

A spokesperson for the Vodafone Group said: “Vodafone has led the industry in offering roaming services that are innovative and affordable, whatever the regulatory environment.

“In terms of data, we’re well below the capped rate already. In Europe we offer 25MB data for £2 a day.”

Three welcomes the changes, which will improvement competition in the market: “Three has campaigned for these proposed changes as they enable competition and will deliver a better deal for consumers when travelling in Europe.”

We’re still waiting to hear from Everything Everywhere (Orange and T-Mobile) and we’ll update this article once we get its response.

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Google pays users to lay bare their web use

09.02.2012, 9:46

Google has set up a program to accurately assess how people are using their browsers, including exactly which sites they visit.

As an incentive to take part, the company is offering participants a US$5 Amazon voucher when they sign up, and another every three months.

That trickle of Amazon vouchers is set to dry up after a year, with a current maximum of $25 in vouchers stated by Google, though that will be re-evaluated later if it decides to continue the program.

Furthermore, an Ars Technica reader has flagged up that Google has been offering members of Knowledge Networks, a survey and market research company, the opportunity to take part in a more lucrative, but more invasive scheme.

While the basic $5 every three months setup uses a Chrome browser extension to send web surfing habits back to the Google mothership, the Knowledge Networks participants will be sent a Screenwise Data Collector.

This black box is a Wi-Fi-enabled router that monitors the “household’s web access”, but excludes “other devices” like game consoles.

For this more comprehensive monitoring program Google is offering $100 for signing up and $20 every month for up to a year.

It looks like Google has stopped taking signups for the basic program, while the more lucrative one is open to just 2,500 Knowledge Networks members.

Would you want to hand over your browsing habits to the big G for cash? Let us know.

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Facebook agrees to data changes following Irish audit09

22.12.2011, 9:35

Facebook has agreed to make key changes to the data it currently keeps indefinitely about which adverts its non-US users click on.

Because its headquarters are located in Ireland, an audit by the country’s data protection commissioner (IDPC) has brought about recommendations and immediate changes from the social network.

“Audit reports are not frequently made public, but in this case, the DPC and Facebook agreed at the outset that – in the interests of transparency – the contents of the audit should be made public, in full, immediately upon completion,” blogged Facebook’s director of public policy in Europe, Richard Allan.

Best way

“We believe this is the best way for users and policymakers around the world to understand how thoroughly the DPC performed its examination and how closely we will be working together in the future,” he added.

Interestingly, Facebook’s targeted advertising (based on the user’s profile) was considered legitimate and the ‘real name policy’ in which people are not allowed pseudonyms is valid and justified.

The controversial “suggested tagging” system – which stirred up huge controversy – did lead to some criticism from the IDPC: “The introduction of Tag Suggest, a popular tool to make the tagging of large numbers of images quick and easy, could have been done in a more transparent fashion,” added Allan.

“Despite these concerns, the DPC did not find that the launch of Tag Suggest breached Irish data protection law, and confirmed that the function used to delete the user’s facial profile is invoked when the user disables “tag suggestions.”

“The DPC recommended we take a ‘best practice’ approach in this area and display additional notifications to users in Europe, to help them learn more about the feature.”

Among the other key commitments from Facebook are:

Offer additional notifications to European users about Facebook’s photo Tag Suggest feature so that they can decide whether or not to use this feature to help people tag them in photos

Change a number of our policies related to retention and deletion of data including how data is logged when people access websites with social plugins to minimise the amount of information collected about people who are not logged in to Facebook

Work with the DPC to improve the information that people using Facebook are given about how to control their information both on Facebook and when using applications.

“We work on a daily basis with regulators around the world, and we appreciate the investment of time and effort by the DPC and its leadership to improve the experience of Facebook users,” concluded Allan.

“We have benefited from the open, honest and cooperative relationship and look forward to continue working together.”

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