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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Council takes Twitter to US court

29 May 2011 Last updated at 12:07 ET

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Councillor Ahmed Khan claims his human rights have been breached

An English council has taken Twitter to court in the US in a bid to discover the identity of a blogger behind allegedly libellous statements.

South Tyneside Council went to court in California after three councillors and an official complained they were libelled in a blog called "Mr Monkey".

Twitter said it could not comment on individual court requests.

But the councillor at the centre of the row said Twitter had already handed over his account details.

Media law experts suggest the case may prompt more UK citizens to take action in the US, where Twitter is based.

Independent South Shields councillor Ahmed Khan is suspected of being the author of the blog, which has made a series of unfounded allegations against council leaders.

Mr Khan, who denies being the author, said he was told by Twitter in May that his account details had been disclosed after a subpoena was lodged with the Californian court.

He said: "I don't fully understand it but it all relates to my Twitter account and it not only breaches my human rights, but it potentially breaches the human rights of anyone who has ever sent me a message on Twitter.

Is this a landmark moment for free speech online, with Twitter handing over confidential details of a user for the first time?

Probably not. Twitter - like other major American web firms - complies with US court orders and requests from law enforcement agencies.

We know, for instance, that the US government sought to obtain details from Twitter of people connected with Wikileaks.

That case is still under way, because the targets were notified by Twitter and chose to fight. The South Tyneside councillor decided not to go to court and details of his account were handed over back in April.

But it seems unlikely that this was a first, for Twitter or the wider web. Google, for instance, issues an annual transparency report which reveals that in just six months last year, it received more than 4,000 requests for user data from US agencies and more than 1,300 from Britain.

So what are the implications for the Ryan Giggs case? Again, it's not clear this makes a difference.

Whereas the South Tyneside case involved a defamation suit brought in a US court, the footballer's lawyers are trying to get a UK court order imposed on a US company. Which is, as someone close to the case put it, a very complex business.

"This is Orwellian. It is like something out of 1984."

He admitted being a critic of some council policies, adding: "People who had the courage to come forward and expose possible wrongdoing within South Tyneside Council will not now do so.

"I also think that constituents who have used Twitter to engage with me, to air any problems or concerns that they have, will also think twice before doing that."

The Mr Monkey blog has made a number accusations against the council's Labour leader Iain Malcolm, as well as David Potts, the former Conservative leader who now serves as an Independent councillor, Labour councillor Anne Walsh and Rick O'Farrell, the council's head of enterprise and regeneration.

They are all named on papers delivered by the council's lawyers to the Superior Court of California.

A spokesman for South Tyneside Council said: "This legal action was initiated by the council's previous chief executive and has continued with the full support of the council's current chief executive.

"The council has a duty of care to protect its employees and as this blog contains damaging claims about council officers, legal action is being taken to identify those responsible."

He said he had no knowledge of councillors attending court hearings in the US or whether Twitter had as yet handed over any confidential information.

'Seedy little blog'

A spokesman for Twitter said: "We cannot comment on any specific order or request.

"As noted in our law enforcement guidelines, it is our policy to notify our users before disclosure of account information."

Lawyers challenged Twitter in the High Court in London to reveal the identities of its users who violated a super-injunction involving Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs.

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Media lawyer Mark Stephens says he is unaware of anyone from the UK taking action like this before

MP John Hemming named the star in Parliament as the footballer who had used a super-injunction to hide an alleged affair, after Mr Giggs' name had been widely aired on Twitter.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens, who represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, said: "I am unaware of any other occasion where somebody from this country has actually gone to America and launched proceedings in a Californian court to force Twitter to release the identities of individuals.

"The implications are that people who have had their name released can actually now go to California and begin proceedings.

"Local authorities cannot sue for libel and, if individual councillors have been defamed, they should take proceedings at their own cost."

Mr Potts said: "This is a deeply tawdry, perverted and seedy little blog that has been in existence for quite a while.

"It's no longer active, as I understand, but the information is still on the internet for all to see.

"This was a blog that didn't just affect councillors, it also affected council officers.

"We have a duty of care, as any employer does whether public or private, to defend not only our commercial interests, but also the interests of our employees."

Friday, May 27, 2011

UK rural broadband plans move on

27 May 2011 Last updated at 03:28 ET

Homes in Devon, Somerset, Norfolk and Wiltshire will get super-fast broadband, the government has said.

Making sure rural areas have fast net services is part of a wider drive to make the UK the best place for broadband by 2015.

Each county will receive a portion of the �530m fund the government has set aside to fund rural broadband.

The Department for Culture said that all the UK's local authorities will receive funding in the next few years.

"This is part of our plan for virtually every community in the UK to have access to super-fast broadband," said culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

The government acknowledges that its �530m pot - which is money left over from an earlier digital switchover fund - will not be enough to give the entire country fast broadband.

Private investment will also be needed.

Fibre homes

The successful counties were among 18 which originally bid for the money.

Devon and Somerset will receive around �30m, Norfolk �15m and Wiltshire �4m and they will then choose a contractor and technology best suited for their needs.

The government anticipates that the technologies will be a mix of mobile, satellite and fibre connections.

Wiltshire Council has already pledged to spend �16m on broadband services across the county.

The government announced the first tranche of its rural broadband plan in October 2010, setting up three pilots in North Yorkshire, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Cumbria and Herefordshire.

It has been accused of being far too slow to get the trials up and running. So far none are live and only two have begun the process of finding a firm able to offer services.

Fujitsu has pledged to build a super-fast network across the whole of rural Britain. It has said it will offer fibre-to-the-home technology to around five million homes. That could provide homes with speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second).

In order to do so it will rely on using BT's infrastructure - the ducts and poles that provide telephone and broadband services around the UK.

Ofcom has forced the telco to open up its network but some have argued that the prices it is planning to charge for access are too high.

Revised pricing is expected in June.

According to BT, Fujitsu has yet to join its ducts and poles trial.

WWII code-breaker will run again

27 May 2011 Last updated at 05:56 ET By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Wrens working with an engineer on the replica Tunny machine

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The working replica of the Tunny machine in action

The National Museum of Computing has finished restoring a Tunny machine - a key part of Allied code-cracking during World War II.

Tunny machines helped to unscramble Allied interceptions of the encrypted orders Hitler sent to his generals.

The rebuild was completed even though almost no circuit diagrams or parts of the original machines survived.

Intelligence gathered via code-cracking at Bletchley underpinned the success of Allied operations to end WWII.

Time synch

Restoration work on Tunny at the museum in Bletchley was re-started in 2005 by a team led by computer conservationists John Pether and John Whetter.

Mr Pether said the lack of source material made the rebuild challenging.

"As far as I know there were no original circuit diagrams left," he said. "All we had was a few circuit elements drawn up from memory by engineers who worked on the original."

The trickiest part of the rebuild, he said, was getting the six timing circuits of the machine working in unison.

The Tunny machines, like the Colossus computers they worked alongside, were dismantled and recycled for spare parts after World War II.

The first Tunny machine was built in 1942 by mathematician Bill Tutte. He drew up plans for it after analysing the encrypted radio signals Hitler was sending to the Nazi high command and that the Allies had intercepted.

These orders were encrypted before being transmitted by a machine known as a Lorenz SZ42 enciphering machine.

Bill Tutte's work effectively reverse-engineered the workings of th SZ42 - even though he had never seen it.

Tunny worked alongside the early Colossus computer, which calculated the settings of an SZ42 used to scramble a particular message. These settings were reproduced on Tunny, the enciphered message was fed in, and the decrypted text was printed out.

By the end of WWII there were 12-15 Tunny machines in use and the information they revealed about Nazi battle plans aided the Russians during the battle of Kursk and helped to ensure the success of D-Day.

"We have a great deal of admiration for Bill Tuttle and those original engineers," said John Whetter.

"There were no standard drawings they could put together," he said. "It was all original thought and it was incredible what they achieved."

One reason the restoration project has succeeded, said Mr Whetter, was that the machines were built by the Post Office's research lab at Dollis Hill.

All the parts were typically used to build telephone exchanges, he said.

"Those parts were in use from the 1920s to the 1980s when they were replaced by computer-controlled exchanges," he said.

Former BT engineers and workers involved with The National Museum of Computing have managed to secure lots of these spare parts to help with restoration projects, said Mr Whetter.

The next restoration project being contemplated is that of the Heath Robinson machines, which were used to find SZ42 settings before the creation of Colossus.

That, said Mr Whetter, might be even more of a challenge.

"We have even less information about that than we had on Tunny," he said.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Rural areas get faster broadband

26 May 2011 Last updated at 19:11 ET

Homes and businesses in four rural English counties are to get superfast broadband connections.

Devon and Somerset will share �30m of government funding for the roll-out, Norfolk will get �15m and Wiltshire �4m.

Each area will also get cash from their council and private investors.

A further announcement is expected later this year on superfast broadband funding for every local authority in the country.

At the moment, the average speed of broadband in Somerset is 3MB per second, whereas superfast broadband is at least 10 times faster.

'Digital divide'

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "Broadband is becoming just as essential to homes and businesses as electricity and telephone lines and it is now only a matter for time before people in these three rural areas have access to the connection speeds more commonly associated with towns and cities.

"This is part of our plan for virtually every community in the UK to have access to superfast broadband."

The next step is for each local authority to tender for contractors to carry out the work. It is anticipated the necessary infrastructure will be in place within a year.

The government has pledged to make the UK the best place for super-fast broadband in Europe by 2015.

Apple fights fake security makers

26 May 2011 Last updated at 06:37 ET

Apple is releasing a security update that removes fake security software that has caught out thousands of Mac users.

Once installed, the fake MacDefender, MacProtector and MacSecurity programs pretend to scan a machine and then ask for cash to fix non-existent problems.

The gang behind the programs used search sites to help catch people out.

The clean-up plan starts as the creators of the fake programs release a version harder to avoid.

Fake fix

In a message posted to its support forums, Apple has warned users about the fake security software, also known as scareware.

It said a phishing scam had targeted Mac users by redirecting them to sites that warned them that their machine was infected with viruses.

Apple said it would release an OS X update soon to find and remove MacDefender and its variants. The message also gave advice about how to remove the software if they had already fallen victim.

MacDefender and its variants are thought to have caught some people out because the default security settings on the Safari browser allow it to download and queue itself for installation.

Those who install it can end up paying more than $70 (�43) to remove the non-existent viruses the scareware claims to have found.

As Apple was releasing its fix for Mac Defender, the gang behind it had started distributing a new version.

Like older versions, the new one - called Mac Guard - is being spread by tying it to popular phrases typed into search engines.

Mac Guard also gets round one of the factors that limited the spread of Mac Defender as it no longer needs a user's permission to be installed.

Security firm Intego issued a warning about the variant and said those who use the Safari browser should disable a setting that lets "safe" files be installed automatically.

Skype hit by global service crash

26 May 2011 Last updated at 11:24 ET

Skype has moved quickly to fix problems that hit users around the world.

Many people started to report that they had problems making calls via the net-based phone system earlier today.

The problem did not seem confined to one group, with users on machines running Windows, OS X and Linux all reporting trouble.

Skype issued advice about how to get its service going, while it worked on a permanent fix.

Messages about problems getting Skype to start up began to be posted on social networking sites such as Twitter soon after it sent out a software update.

The update made it impossible for many people to sign in and make calls.

Skype posted an update about the outage to its blog, saying a "small number" of people have had problems and detailing how to get the service running again.

Skype said the problem predominantly affected Windows users, but it also posted advice for OS X and Linux users. All the solutions revolved around the deletion of a file called "shared.xml".

It also said it had identified the problem and would issue a fix "in the next few hours".

The large number of people turning to the Skype.com website for advice and information also briefly knocked that offline.

The outage comes two weeks after Microsoft confirmed that it was paying $8.5bn (�5.2bn) for the firm.

The swift response stands in contrast to the speed with which problems that plagued Skype in December 2010 were solved. That led to the service being offline for almost two days.

An investigation showed that a software bug and overloaded servers were responsible for that incident.

O2 comes top in broadband study

26 May 2011 Last updated at 02:47 ET

Mobile broadband provided by O2 loads webpages quicker than any other UK network, research by Ofcom has found.

The regulator carried out 4.2 million speed tests across the country.

It found the average download speed across all networks was 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps), rising to 2.1Mbps in better coverage areas.

The report said speed varied greatly depending on location, and that consumers should check coverage before signing up to tariffs.

Orange fared worst in the research with its average download speeds slower than any other network.

T-Mobile also came out slower than Vodafone, 3 and O2.

O2's chief technology officer Derek McManus said: "Our customers are seeing the benefit from the huge investment we have made in our network. We always aim to deliver the best network experience for our customers and these results are another indicator that we are doing just that."

Everything Everywhere - the name given to the partnership between T-Mobile and Orange - declined to comment on Ofcom's findings.

The report, carried out in conjunction with monitoring specialists Epitiro, ran from September to December last year and dealt with datacards and dongles, but not smartphones.

Ofcom said it hopes to run tests on smartphones soon.

As well as achieving success in the download speed tests, O2 also recorded a lower average latency than 3, Orange and Vodafone.

Latency is calculated by the time it takes for a data packet to travel from a user's PC to a third-party server and back again.

Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards said: "This research gives consumers a clearer picture of the performance of mobile broadband dongle and datacards as consumers use these services to complement fixed-line services or sometimes as their principal means of accessing online services."

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It's clear from the research that mobile broadband is a good service"

End Quote Hamish Macleod Mobile Broadband Group

Usage rise

Consumer research showed that 17% of UK homes are now using mobile broadband to access the internet.

Of these, 7% use it as their only means of getting online - a 4% rise since 2009.

The research discovered the average download speed for consumers was 1.5 Mbps, which produced an average load time of 8.5 seconds for a "basic" webpage.

This compared to an average of 6.2 Mbit/s for fixed line broadband, Ofcom found.

However, in areas with good 3G coverage, Ofcom found the average mobile speed rose to 2.1Mbps, dropping to 1.7Mbps at the peak times of between 8-9pm.

On the whole, urban areas performed better than rural areas due to better 3G availability.

The report noted that coverage in cities was highly variable "with no guarantee of good performance" in city centre locations.

Hamish Macleod, chairman of the Mobile Broadband Group, told the BBC that he feels the report paints an unfair picture of mobile broadband by comparing it to fixed rate speeds.

"We recognise this is a useful exercise for Ofcom to do.

"Where I am at issue with Ofcom is the way they have made headline comparisons between fixed broadband and mobile broadband just by using averages.

"It's clear from the research that mobile broadband is a good service, that individual customers can either use it as a complement to fixed broadband or alternatively as a relaible stand alone service."

Mobile broadband speeds will remain well below that of fixed broadband speeds until the next generation of mobile coverage - 4G - is rolled out across the UK- a process is expected to begin in 2013.

Everything Everywhere will start the first public trial of 4G in September this year.

Consultation has begun into how the 4G network will be allocated to operators, with an auction due to open early next year.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Web pioneers warn on regulation

25 May 2011 Last updated at 17:36 ET

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google boss Eric Schmidt have warned governments worldwide not to over-regulate the internet.

Mr Zuckerberg said governments cannot cherry pick which aspects of the web to control and which not to.

The two are leading a group of internet pioneers to the G8 summit in France.

The delegation will deliver recommendations thrashed out at the first e-G8 gathering in Paris this week.

Although e-G8 had the blessing of President Sarkozy, world leaders are under no obligation to listen to its findings.

The comments by Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Schmidt reflect growing concerns in the industry about government censorship.

"People tell me on the one hand 'It's great you played such a big role in the Arab spring [uprisings], but it's also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people'," said Facebook's founder.

"But it's hard to have one without the other. You can't isolate some things you like about the internet and control other things that you don't."

Mr Schmidt echoed his sentiments: "Technology will move faster than governments, so don't legislate before you understand the consequences".

'Public good'

One of the most hotly-debated subjects at the e-G8 was protection of intellectual property on the internet.

In sometimes heated discussions, senior figures from the music, TV and film industries faced criticism from proponents of internet freedom.

Critics claimed that the event was designed to promote the views of rights holders, seeking to lobby governments for tougher copyright laws.

Professor Lawrence Lessing of Harvard Law School warned delegates: "We should say to modern democratic governments, you need to be aware of incumbents bearing policy fix-its.

"Their job is profit for them. Your job is the public good."

Echoing the views of many participants, Professor Lessing suggested that governments should exercise light touch regulation or risk damaging the still-young internet.

Others made the case that if politicians remained hands-off in the belief that it would help innovation, then existing industries such as music and film would suffer.

James Gianopulos of Fox Filmed Entertainment said governments needed latitude to legislate, as in the case of the French three-strikes law designed to target illegal file sharing.

"The political process is imperfect," Mr Gianopulos told the BBC.

"Private entities, individuals and industries are more likely to come to an agreement if they know that the next step is the litigation or legislation process."

Cookie law deferred for one year

25 May 2011 Last updated at 08:20 ET

UK websites are being given one year to comply with EU cookie laws, the Information Commissioner's Office has said.

The UK government also sought to reassure the industry that there would be "no overnight changes".

The EU's Privacy and Communications Directive comes into force on 26 May.

It requires user's consent before using cookies - the text files that help organise and store browsing information.

Technically all firm must comply with the law but the UK has said that it needs more time to find a workable solution.

The government said that it was looking for a "business-friendly" solution and believed in light-touch regulation.

"We recognise that some website users have real concerns around online privacy but also recognise that cookies play a key role in the smooth running of the internet," said communications minister Ed Vaizey.

"But it will take some time for workable technical solutions to be developed, evaluated and rolled out so we have decided that a phased in approach is right," he added.

Do Not Track

The government has formed a working group with browser manufacturers to see if a browser-based solution to the issue can be found.

Microsoft's IE9 browser already offers a setting to protect users from services which collect and harvest browser data and both Mozilla's Firefox browser and Google's Chrome are working at integrating so-called 'Do Not Track' technologies into their offerings.

A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport admitted that there may be "other technical solutions" but that the browser solution was the only one it was currently pursuing.

Grégory Roekens, chief technology officer for marketing firm Wunderman, agreed that in-browser functionality would work best for consumers and website owners.

"It would be less intrusive that a free-for-all that lets website owners come up with their own solution," he said.

Cookies can be used for a variety of purposes. They can be used by third-parties to analyse consumer browsing habits but they can also be useful to users, remembering payment details when buying products online, for example.

Privacy groups, which pushed for greater regulation on cookies, want to see users able to give consent to every cookie presented to them.

Challenging

Such multiple consent forms would have a disruptive effect on the browsing experience, argue online firms.

"We need to think about the end users," continued Mr Roekens. "We need to make sure we don't have pop-ups appearing everywhere."

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has been charged with enforcing the new rules, when they are drawn up.

Information Commissioner Christopher Graham admitted he is torn between the needs of industry and the rights of consumers.

He said that the new rules on cookies were "challenging".

"It would obviously ruin some users' browsing experience if they needed to negotiate endless pop-ups - and I am not saying that businesses have to go down that road," he said.

"Equally I have to remember that this law has been brought in to give consumers more choice about what companies know about them," he added.

Mr Graham said that the one year's grace he was offering to UK online firms "did not let everyone off the hook", hinting that he would take a dim view of firms which had done nothing by this time next year.

He also said that the ICO website was taking the lead by introducing a header bar giving users information about the cookies it uses and offering choices about how to manage them.

"I am not saying that other websites should necessarily do the same. Every website is different and prescriptive and universal 'to do' lists would only hinder rather than help businesses to find a solution that works best for them and their customers," he said.

Google to show off mobile wallet

25 May 2011 Last updated at 05:16 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

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Watch: Rory Cellan-Jones demonstrates how it can work

Google is set to introduce a mobile payments platform that will turn its Android smartphones into a digital wallet.

At an event in New York on Thursday, the tech giant is expected to show off the technology called near field communication or NFC.

The technology allows devices to 'talk' to one another wirelessly.

Consumers wave their phones in front of a reader at a checkout to pay for a purchase or to receive special offers.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the programme will initially be launched in New York and San Francisco before being extended more widely across the US.

Retailers who are said to be taking part include deparment store Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway fast-food chain.

While Google has made no comment on the reports, it has sent out invites to the press asking them to attend an event at its New York offices where it will show off its "latest innovations".

Mobile network operator Sprint is also expected to take part.

In January Google chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in a guest edition of the Harvard Business Review that mobile money is a key part of Google's strategy for 2011.

"Phones, as we know, are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world�and modern technology means that their use as financial tools can go much further than that," said Mr Schmidt.

Demand

Research firm Forrester has said it expects 40-50 million NFC equipped phones to be sold in 2011.

Apple is reportedly planning to include the technology in its upcoming iPhone 5 which is expected to be unveiled at its developer conference next month.

Microsoft is also said to be making plans to incorporate NFC in future Windows phones as is BlackBerry maker RIM.

Samsung and Visa have said they will facilitate mobile payments via NFC on smartphones during the summer Olympics in London next year.

"Google's Nexus S device that it recently announced is the first Android powered device supporting NFC and we expect NFC is going to increasingly become a default feature of every smartphone that is sold over the next couple of years," Charles Govlin, principal analysts at Forrester told BBC News.

Market researcher Gartner said with the total value of mobile transactions reaching $245 billion in 2014, demand for mobile wallet services will be huge.

But not everyone is convinced that contactless payments using a phone will replace cash.

"In my view, while I think it is clear that potentially these phone-based transactions will be widespread, it will happen slowly. One reason being that consumer behaviour changes very slowly," said Mr Govlin.

"The big beneficiary here will be Google, a company that is all about information. The metadata involved in such transactions could allow Google to serve ads and make you a more valuable target for advertisers," he added.

Last week the first NFC service was announced in the United Kingdom involving Orange and Barclaycard.

Mobile wallet services have been available in Japan for a number of years.

World News | Latest News

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Council takes Twitter to US court

Friday, May 27, 2011

UK rural broadband plans move on

WWII code-breaker will run again

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Rural areas get faster broadband

Apple fights fake security makers

Skype hit by global service crash

O2 comes top in broadband study

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Web pioneers warn on regulation

Cookie law deferred for one year

Google to show off mobile wallet

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