The toys your kids unwrap this Christmas could invite hackers into your home.

That Grinch-like warning comes from the FBI, which said earlier this year that toys connected to the internet could be a target for crooks who may listen in on conversations or use them to steal a child’s personal information.

The bureau did not name any specific toys or brands, but it said any internet-connected toys with microphones, cameras or location tracking might put a child’s privacy or safety at risk. That could be a talking doll or a tablet designed for kids. And because some of the toys are being rushed to be made and sold, the FBI said, security safeguards might be overlooked.

Security experts say the only way to prevent a hack is to not keep the toy. But if you decide to let a kid play with it, there are ways to reduce the risks:  

Do your research

Before opening a toy, search for it online and read reviews to see whether there are any complaints or past security problems. If there have been previous issues, you may want to rethink keeping it.

Reputable companies will also explain how information is collected from the toy or device, how the data are stored and who has access to the data. Usually that type of information is found on the company’s website, typically under its privacy policy. If you can’t find it, call the company. If there isn’t a policy, that’s a bad sign.

“You shouldn’t use it,” said Behnam Dayanim, a partner at the Paul Hastings law office in Washington and co-chair of its privacy and cybersecurity practice.

Companies can change their privacy policies, so read them again if you’re notified of a change. 

Use secure Wi-Fi

Make sure the Wi-Fi the toy will be connected to is secure and has a hard-to-guess password. Weak passwords make it easier for hackers to access devices that use the network. Never connect the toy to free Wi-Fi that’s open to the public. And if the toy itself allows you to create a password, do it. 

Power it off

When the toy is not being used, shut it off or unplug it so it stops collecting data. 

“They become less of an attractive target,” said Alan Brill, who is a cybersecurity and investigations managing director at consulting firm Kroll in Secaucus, New Jersey. 

If the item has a camera, face it toward a wall or cover it with a piece of tape when it’s not being used. Toys with microphones can be thrown in a chest or drawer where it’s harder to hear conversations, Brill said.

Register, but don’t give away info

A software update may fix security holes, and you don’t want to miss that fix, Brill said.

But when registering, be stingy with the information you hand over; all they need is contact information to let you know about the update. If they require other information, such as a child’s birthday, make one up. “You’re not under oath,” said Brill. “You can lie.”

Be vigilant

If the toy or device allows kids to chat with other people playing with the same toy or game, explain to children that they can’t give out personal information, said Liz Brown, a business law professor at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, who focuses on technology and privacy law.

Discussions are not enough; check the chat section to make sure children aren’t sending things they shouldn’t be, Brown said. People could be pretending to be kids to get personal information. “It can get creepy pretty fast,” said Brown.

Reputable companies that make toys with microphones will offer ways for parents to review and delete stored information. Take advantage of that.

Report breaches

If a toy was compromised by a hacker, the FBI recommends reporting it online through its internet crime complaint center at IC3.gov.
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If you are a driver you know how frustrating it feels when traffic lights seem to make traffic worse.  According to a recent study done at Texas A&M University, each year average Americans spend 38 hours sitting in traffic jams. But scientists who study traffic patterns say the situation can be improved with smart stop lights. VOA’s George Putic talked with one of them.
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For every person who just loves James Bond, it’s the perfect gift. A very nice, stylish pair of shoes, that just happen to be full of high-tech hidden compartments. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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The European Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that ride-hailing company Uber should be regulated like a taxi service instead of a technology firm, a decision that limits its business operations in Europe.

The decision was handed down in response to a complaint from a Barcelona taxi drivers association, which tried to prevent Uber from expanding into the Spanish city. The drivers maintained that Uber drivers should be subject to authorizations and license requirements and accused the company of engaging in unfair competition.

The San Francisco-based Uber contends it should be regulated as an information services provider because it is based on a mobile application that links passengers to drivers.

The European Union’s highest court said services provided by Uber and similar companies are “inherently linked to a transport service” and therefore must be classified as “a service in the field of transport” under EU law.

The decision will impact ride-hailing companies in the 28-nation EU, where national governments can now regulate them as transportation services.

Uber attempted to downplay the decision, saying it only affects its operations in four countries and that it will move forward with plans to expand in Europe. But the company was previously forced to abandon its peer-to-peer service in several EU countries that connect freelance drivers with riders.
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Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it would begin using facial recognition technology to tell people on the social network when others upload photos of

them, if they agree to let the company keep a facial template on file.

The company said in a statement it was making the feature optional to allow people to protect their privacy, but that it thought some people would want to be notified of pictures they might not otherwise know about.

The feature would not immediately be available in Canada and the European Union, Facebook said. Privacy laws are generally stricter in those jurisdictions, though the company said it was hopeful about implementing the feature there in the future.

Tech companies are putting in place a variety of functions using facial recognition technology, despite fears about how the facial data could be used. In September, Apple Inc revealed that users of its new iPhone X would be able to unlock the device using their face.

Facial recognition technology has been a part of Facebook since at least 2010, when the social network began offering suggestions for whom to tag in a photo. That feature also is optional.

For those who have opted in, Facebook creates what it calls a template of a person’s face by analyzing pixels from photos where the person is already tagged. It then compares newly uploaded images to the template.

Facebook deletes the template of anyone who then opts out, Rob Sherman, Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer, said in a statement.

Under the new feature, people who have opted in would get a notification from Facebook if a photo of them has been uploaded, although only if the photo is one they have access to.

The company plans to add an “on/off” switch to allow users to control all Facebook features related to facial recognition, Sherman said. “We thought it was important to have a really straightforward way of controlling facial recognition technology,” he said.

Facebook said it also plans to use facial recognition technology to notify users if someone else uploads a photo of them as their profile picture, which the company said may help reduce impersonations, as well as in software that describes photos in words for people who have vision loss, so that they

can tell who is in a photo.

Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Leslie Adler.
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CryptoKitties, an online game and marketplace featuring virtual kittens, has become an entry point for curious outsiders looking to dabble in cryptocurrencies – decentralized digital monies that rely on blockchain technology to enable peer-to-peer transactions.
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The United States is publicly blaming North Korea for unleashing a cyber attack that crippled hospitals, banks and other companies across the globe earlier this year.

In an op-ed piece posted on the Wall Street Journal website Monday night, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert said that North Korea was “directly responsible” for the WannaCry ransomware attack, and that Pyongyang will be held accountable for it.

“The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible,” Bossert writes. “North Korea has acted especially badly, largely unchecked, for more than a decade, and its malicious behavior is growing more egregious.”

Bossert says President Donald Trump’s administration will continue to use its “maximum pressure strategy to curb Pyongyang’s ability to mount attacks, cyber or otherwise.”

Pyongyang has previously denied being responsible for the attack.

But, the U.S. government has assessed with a “very high level of confidence” that a hacking entity known as Lazarus Group, which works on behalf of the North Korean government, carried out the WannaCry attack, senior officials told Reuters.
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Facebook announced Monday that it removed nearly 3 million posts, including videos, ads and other forms of content, from its services during the first half of 2017 following complaints of counterfeiting and copyright and trademark infringement.

The worldwide data on intellectual property-related takedowns is a new disclosure for Facebook as part of its biannual “Transparency Report,” Chris Sonderby, a deputy general counsel at the firm, said in a blog post.

“We believe that sharing information about (intellectual property) reports we receive from rights holders is an important step toward being more open and clear about how we protect the people and businesses that use our services,” Sonderby wrote.

Transparency report

The ninth Facebook transparency report also showed that government requests for information about users increased 21 percent worldwide compared with the second half of 2016, from 64,279 to 78,890.

For intellectual property disputes, Facebook offers monitoring tools that alert rights holders to suspected copies of their videos and songs on Facebook and use of their brand.

Rights holders can send takedown requests for unauthorized uses to a team of Facebook content analysts.

Entertainment and media industry groups have long expressed frustration with the process, contending that they bear too much of the internet policing burden and that online services should be more proactive about stemming infringement.

377,400 complaints

Facebook did not supply data about earlier periods or release individual requests, a level of detail that advertising rival Alphabet Inc provides for requests to remove Google search results.

Aggregate data shows Facebook received about 377,400 complaints from January through June, with many referencing multiple posts. About 60 percent of the reports related to suspected copyright violations on Facebook.

A “small fraction” of requests were excluded because they were not sent through an official form, Facebook said.

The company removed user uploads in response to 81 percent of filings for counterfeiting, 68 percent for copyrights and 47 percent for trademarks, according to its report. The percentages were roughly similar for Instagram.
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Twitter Inc said on Monday it would begin putting a warning in front of pictures that show Nazi swastikas and other items it determines are hateful imagery, as well as ban their use in any profile photos on the social media network.

The step is one of several that Twitter said it would take to crack down on white nationalists and other violent or hateful groups, which have become unwelcome on a service that once took an absolutist view of free speech.

It said it would also remove tweets that it determined celebrate violence or glorify people who commit violence.

Twitter, a San Francisco company founded in 2006, had called itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party” and tried to stay out of battles among users. But that has changed as persistent harassers have driven some women and minorities off Twitter, limiting their ability to express themselves.

A rise in white nationalism in the United States has also changed tech industry standards. In August, social media networks began removing white nationalists after hundreds gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of them was charged with murdering a 32-year-old woman by running her down in a car.

In October, Twitter vowed to toughen rules on online sexual harassment, bullying and other forms of misconduct.

It said it would also remove tweets that it determined celebrate violence or glorify people who commit violence.

Twitter, a San Francisco company founded in 2006, had called itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party” and tried to stay out of battles among users. But that has changed as persistent harassers have driven some women and minorities off Twitter, limiting their ability to express themselves.

A rise in white nationalism in the United States has also changed tech industry standards. In August, social media networks began removing white nationalists after hundreds gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of them was charged with murdering a 32-year-old woman by running her down in a car.

In October, Twitter vowed to toughen rules on online sexual harassment, bullying and other forms of misconduct.

 
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Google and Facebook will have to accept China’s censorship and tough online laws if they want access to its 751 million internet users, Chinese regulators told a conference in Geneva on Monday.

Google and Facebook are blocked in China, along with Twitter Inc and most major Western news outlets.

“That’s a question maybe in many people’s minds, why Google, why Facebook are not yet working and operating in China,” said Qi Xiaoxia, director general of the Bureau of International Cooperation at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). In Google’s case, it left China of its own accord in 2010.

“If they want to come back, we welcome,” Qi told the Internet Governance Forum at the U.N.’s European headquarters.

“The condition is that they have to abide by Chinese law and regulations. That is the bottom line. And also that they would not do any harm to Chinese national security and national consumers’ interests.”

China’s Communist Party has tightened cyber regulation in the past year, formalizing new rules that require firms to store data locally and censor tools that allow users to subvert the Great Firewall that blocks sites including Facebook and Google.

Their rival Apple operates subject to strict censorship, having removed dozens of popular messaging and virtual private network (VPN) apps from its China App Store this year to comply with government requests.

In June, China introduced a new national cybersecurity law that requires foreign firms to store data locally and submit to data surveillance measures.

“We are of the idea that cyberspace is not a space that is ungoverned. We need to administer, or supervise, or manage, the internet according to law,” Qi said.

“Can you guess the number of websites in China? We have five million websites. That means that the Chinese people’s rights of speech and rights of expression are fully ensured.”

It was not clear what her figure of five million was based on. According to the website internetlivestats.com, there are 1.3 billion websites on the World Wide Web, defining a website as a unique hostname which can be resolved, using a name server, into an IP address.

Reporting by Tom Miles, additional reporting by Cate Cadell in Beijing, Editing by William Maclean.
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It’s all fun and games until a family gets behind the wheel. That’s the whole idea behind Volvo’s Drive Me project. Automated vehicles are now being test driven by families as part of a multi-stage experiment that’s taking place in Norway. VOA’s Steve Redisch reports.
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With people coming from around the world to work in Silicon Valley, some struggle with the best ways to care for their aging parents.

Increasingly, the solution is an “affinity” retirement community, where older people from places like India and China can live near — but not with — their adult children. These communities break from traditional custom that parents and children live together.

“The children are so busy these days, they are all the time working, taking care of their kids, so we do not want to interfere in their lives,” said Asha RaoRane, an Indian national who wanted to move to the U.S. to be near her three daughters who had immigrated to San Francisco.

Her daughters started exploring the idea of a traditional senior retirement community, but were having trouble finding an American community they thought their mother would fit into.

In July, RaoRane, 70, moved into Priya Living, an affinity-living community, meaning it caters to people with similar interests, such as yoga and meditation.

Arun Paul founded Priya Living as a place for his parents to live. The couple moved from Los Angeles four years ago and are still in a ground floor apartment.

“In living here in America, as the son of immigrants, I’ve realized that there’s very unique needs that immigrants have,” said Paul, a real-estate developer.

“That old system was based on a different time when women were in the house, really taking care, in many cultures, of their husband’s parents,” Paul said. “Obviously the role of women in society has changed globally.”

New friends

For Bhagyashree RaoRane, 38, finding Priya Living for her mother has been a dream come true.

“We walked in and instantly it was like walking into an Indian community in India,” said RaoRane, a filmmaker. “Even the building is painted the same color as so many of the buildings in India are painted.”

This type of independent senior community came as a shock to Nagendra Prasad, 62, and Manjula Neelakantaiah, 53, who came to Priya on a two-month visit from Bangalore, India, to see their daughter, an intern at Google.

“Really, in the beginning we were surprised,” Neelakantaiah said. “In India the younger people, they definitely take care of the aged people.”

Not always a good fit

For a few residents, Priya is not the perfect fit. Dr. Byravan Viswanathan and his wife, Lakshmi, were born and raised in India but spent much of their adult lives in a small town in Pennsylvania.

“We had oodles and oodles of good friends and they were not Indians — regular Americans,” he said. “We had become so Westernized, we have to adapt to Indian living again. Look around. There are six different Indian languages spoken right now at this table, languages I have never spoken or haven’t spoken in decades.” Viswanathan’s daughter is looking into finding a more American community for them.

All are welcome

While the vast majority of residents are from India, Paul stressed that Priya Living welcomes people of all backgrounds. There are a few non-Indians who call Priya home.

Carlos McCann, an 89-year-old WW II veteran, has been living in the complex for almost 20 years, long before it was purchased and remodeled to become the primarily Indian community.

“Everything has sort of come together at this location it’s like it’s the center of the world,” he said.
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Young people come from around the world to work in Silicon Valley, California. As these workers build a life away from home, many struggle with how to bring their aging parents to their new community. But what happens to foreign parents entering their later years in a new country? VOA’s Deana Mitchell visits a unique community in Silicon Valley that caters to retirees from India.
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With nearly 2 billion users, Facebook’s survival depends on people continuing to use its service. 

That’s why observers were surprised by an unusual company blog post Friday that highlighted some of the potential harm of using the social media service. 

Titled Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?,

the company cited studies that suggested some of the possible downsides of using social media. 

In one study, people who passively read about others’ lives reported feeling worse about themselves. One possibility is “negative social comparison” when reading about others online, the company said, because “people’s posts are often more curated and flattering” than how they are in their real, offline lives. 

But there’s a potential solution, according to Facebook, which reported $10 billion in revenue — its highest ever — in the last quarter: Don’t be a bystander to others’ lives. Use Facebook more and with friends and family.

Facebook users who spend more time on Facebook — actually post and interact with close friends — experienced more positive effects, according to a company study conducted with Carnegie Mellon University.

“Simply broadcasting status updates wasn’t enough,” the post said. “People had to interact one-on-one with others in their network.”

New features

The Facebook post came as some former top executives have spoken about Facebook’s potential negative effects on society and individuals. Facebook exploits a “vulnerability in human psychology,” Sean Parker, Facebook’s founding president, said recently.

To aid in supporting people’s well-being while using its service, the company recently tweaked its News Feed — what people see when they sign on — to promote friendships and demote what the firm called “clickbait headlines.” 

Also, it launched a new feature called “Snooze” that lets a user hide a person, Facebook page or group for 30 days without having to “unfollow.” It gives a Facebook user more control of what he or she sees, the company said. 

Effects on kids

The company acknowledged that people are worried about the short- and long-term effects of Facebook use on young people. It pledged $1 million toward research to “better understand the relationship between media technologies, youth development and well-being.”

Observers praised the company for acknowledging that using social media may have unintended, negative consequences, but noted that it was unusual for a corporation, one that typically presents itself as a force for good, to point out some of the risks of using its service. 

One unanswered question is whether Facebook with new features and tweaks can offset potential negative effects. 

Or will people put a Snooze button on Facebook? 
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U.S. attorneys in Utah prosecuting a multimillion-dollar opioid drug-ring are moving quickly to sell seized bitcoin that’s exploded in value to about $8.5 million since the alleged ringleader’s arrest a year ago.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Utah cites the digital currency’s volatility in court documents pressing for the sale. The bitcoin cache was worth less than $500,000 when Aaron Shamo was arrested on drug charges, but the value of the digital currency has skyrocketed since then.

Bitcoin was created as a digital alternative to the traditional banking system, and is prone to swings in value based on what people believe its worth.

For federal prosecutors in Utah, sales of seized assets like cars are routine, but bitcoin is new territory, spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said Thursday.

Shamo is accused of selling pills containing the powerful opioid fentanyl on the dark web — an area of the internet often used for illegal activity — to thousands of people all over the U.S., at one point raking in $2.8 million in less than a year.

The 500,000-pill bust ranked among the largest of its kind in the country, and authorities also found $1 million of cash stuffed into trash bags.

Shamo has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges.

The proceeds of the bitcoin sale will be held until the case is resolved, and then decisions will be made about where the money goes, Rydalch said. Seized asset sale proceeds usually goes to the agency that investigated, like the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Defense attorney Greg Skordas is not contesting the sale of his client’s bitcoins.

Although there’s no global consensus over the status of bitcoin — debate rages whether the virtual money is an asset or a currency — that hasn’t stopped officials in the U.S. and elsewhere from cashing in on the digital hauls seized from cybercriminals.

In 2014 the U.S. Marshals Service announced the auction of nearly 30,000 bitcoins seized from notorious dark web drug marketplace Silk Road. Other seizures have since netted the American government millions of dollars in a series of sales.

Other governments — from Australia to South Korea — have set up similar auctions over the years.

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.
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The German government says it backs an “open and free internet” following the U.S. decision to repeal net neutrality rules.

A spokeswoman for the Economy Ministry said Friday that Germany had “taken note” of the U.S. move but declined to comment directly on it.

However, spokeswoman Beate Baron said the German government supports rules introduced across the European Union last year forbidding discriminatory access to the internet.

Baron told reporters in Berlin that “an open and free internet is indispensable for the successful development of a digital society that everyone wants to take part in.”

The Republican-controlled U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Thursday repealed Obama-era rules requiring all web traffic to be treated equally.
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Charged particles from the sun are responsible for the brilliant auroras at the earth’s poles. But there can be cases of too much of a good thing. When huge solar storms push massive waves of energized particles into Earth’s path, they can wreak havoc on our satellites and electric grid. That is why researchers are trying to figure out what causes solar storms. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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“Net neutrality” regulations, designed to prevent internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Charter from favoring some sites and apps over others, have been repealed. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted to dismantle Obama-era rules that have been in place since 2015, but will forbid states to put anything similar in place.

Here’s a look at what the developments mean for consumers and companies.

What is net neutrality?

Net neutrality is the principle that internet providers treat all web traffic equally, and it’s pretty much how the internet has worked since its creation. But regulators, consumer advocates and internet companies were concerned about what broadband companies could do with their power as the pathway to the internet — blocking or slowing down apps that rival their own services, for example.

What did the governments do about it?

The FCC in 2015 approved rules, on a party-line vote, that made sure cable and phone companies don’t manipulate traffic. With them in place, a provider such as Comcast can’t charge Netflix for a faster path to its customers, or block it or slow it down.

The net neutrality rules gave the FCC power to go after companies for business practices that weren’t explicitly banned as well. For example, the Obama FCC said that “zero rating” practices by AT&T violated net neutrality. The telecom giant exempted its own video app from cellphone data caps, which would save some consumers money, and said video rivals could pay for the same treatment. Pai’s FCC spiked the effort to go after AT&T, even before it began rolling out a plan to undo the net neutrality rules entirely.

A federal appeals court upheld the rules in 2016 after broadband providers sued.

The telcos

Big telecom companies hated net neutrality’s stricter regulation and have fought them fiercely in court. They said the regulations could undermine investment in broadband and introduced uncertainty about what were acceptable business practices. There were concerns about potential price regulation, even though the FCC had said it won’t set prices for consumer internet service.

Silicon Valley

Internet companies such as Google have strongly backed net neutrality, but many tech firms were more muted in their activism this year. Netflix, which had been vocal in support of the rules in 2015, said in January that weaker net neutrality wouldn’t hurt it because it’s now too popular with users for broadband providers to interfere.

What happens next

With the rules repealed, net-neutrality advocates say it will be harder for the government to crack down on internet providers who act against consumer interests and will harm innovation in the long-run. Those who criticize the rules say the repeal is good for investment in broadband networks.

But advocates aren’t sitting still. Some groups plan lawsuits to challenge the FCC’s move, and Democrats — energized by public protests in support of net neutrality — think it might be a winning political issue for them in 2018 congressional elections.
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There could soon be a major change in what Americans see on the internet after federal regulators voted Thursday to scrap traditional “net neutrality” rules. 

Thursday’s 3-2 vote by the Federal Communications Commission went along party lines, with Republican members voting to end the regulations and Democrats dissenting.

Individual states will also be barred from enacting their own rules governing the internet.

Net neutrality has been the norm since the internet was created more than 30 years ago. The FCC under former President Barack Obama formalized net neutrality rules in 2015.

The idea of net neutrality is for giant internet providers to treat all content equally. The Obama-era rules prevented them from giving preferential treatment to their own services and blocking and slowing down content from rivals.

Consumer groups and internet companies like net neutrality.

But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, said the internet needs what he calls a “light touch” instead of what he believes is unnecessary government regulation.

WATCH: What is ‘net neutrality’?

“Prior to 2015, before these regulations were imposed, we had a free and open internet,” Pai told NBC ahead of the vote. “That is the future as well under a light touch, market-based approach. Consumers benefit, entrepreneurs benefit. Everybody in the internet economy is better off with a market-based approach.”

But Democratic FCC member Mignon Clyburn said the FCC was “handing the keys to the internet” to a “handful of multibillion-dollar corporations.”

British engineer Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, said this week that getting rid of net neutrality rules meant internet service providers “will have the power to decide which websites you can access and at what speed each will load. In other words, they’ll be able to decide which companies succeed online, which voices are heard — and which are silenced.”

Officials in several states, including New York and Washington, said they would challenge the new rules in court.

Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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As the federal government prepares to unravel sweeping net-neutrality rules that guaranteed equal access to the internet, advocates of the regulations are bracing for a long fight.

The Thursday vote scheduled at the Federal Communications Commission could usher in big changes in how Americans use the internet, a radical departure from more than a decade of federal oversight. The proposal would not only roll back restrictions that keep broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T from blocking or collecting tolls from services they don’t like, it would bar states from imposing their own rules.

The broadband industry promises that the internet experience isn’t going to change, but its companies have lobbied hard to overturn these rules. Protests have erupted online and in the streets as everyday Americans worry that cable and phone companies will be able to control what they see and do online.

That growing public movement suggests that the FCC vote won’t be the end of the issue. Opponents of the move plan legal challenges, and some net-neutrality supporters hope to ride that wave of public opinion into the 2018 elections.

Concern about FCC plan

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says his plan eliminates unnecessary regulation that stood in the way of connecting more Americans to the internet. Under his proposal, the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world will be free to block rival apps, slow down competing service or offer faster speeds to companies who pay up. They just have to post their policies online or tell the FCC.

The change also axes consumer protections, bars state laws that contradict the FCC’s approach, and largely transfers oversight of internet service to another agency, the Federal Trade Commission.

After the FCC released its plan in late November, well-known telecom and media analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson wrote in a note to investors that the FCC plan dismantles “virtually all of the important tenets of net neutrality itself.”

That could result in phone and cable companies forcing people to pay more to do what they want online. The technology community, meanwhile, fears that additional online tolls could hurt startups who can’t afford to pay them — and, over the long term, diminish innovation.

“We’re a small company. We’re about 40 people. We don’t have the deep pockets of Google, Netflix, Amazon to just pay off ISPs to make sure consumers can access our service,” said Andrew McCollum, CEO of streaming-TV service Philo.

ISPs: Trust us

Broadband providers pooh-pooh what they characterize as misinformation and irrational fears. “I genuinely look forward to the weeks, months, years ahead when none of the fire and brimstone predictions comes to pass,” said Jonathan Spalter, head of the trade group USTelecom, on a call with reporters Wednesday.

But some of these companies have suggested they could charge some internet services more to reach customers, saying it could allow for better delivery of new services like telemedicine. Comcast said Wednesday it has no plans for such agreements.

Cable and mobile providers have also been less scrupulous in the past. In 2007, for example, the Associated Press found Comcast was blocking or throttling some file-sharing. AT&T blocked Skype and other internet calling services on the iPhone until 2009. They also aren’t backing away from subtler forms of discrimination that favor their own services.

There’s also a problem with the FCC’s plan to leave most complaints about deceptive behavior and privacy to the FTC. A pending court case could leave the FTC without the legal authority to oversee most big broadband providers. That could leave both agencies hamstrung if broadband companies hurt their customers or competitors.

Critics like Democratic FTC commissioner Terrell McSweeny argue that the FTC won’t be as effective in policing broadband companies as the FCC, which has expertise in the issue and has the ability to lay down hard-and-fast rules against certain practices.

Public outcry

Moffett and Nathanson, the analysts, said that they suspect the latest FCC rules to be short-lived. “These changes will likely be so immensely unpopular that it would be shocking if they are allowed to stand for long,” they wrote.

There have been hundreds of public protests against Pai’s plan and more than 1 million calls to Congress through a pro-net neutrality coalition’s site. Smaller tech websites such as Reddit, Kickstarter and Mozilla put dramatic overlays on their sites Tuesday in support of net neutrality. Twitter on Wednesday was promoting #NetNeutrality as a trending topic. Other big tech companies were more muted in their support.

Public-interest groups Free Press and Public Knowledge are already promising to go after Pai’s rules in the courts. There may also be attempts to legislate net neutrality rules, which the telecom industry supports. Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, on Tuesday called for “bipartisan legislation” on net neutrality that would “enshrine protections for consumers with the backing of law.”

But that will be tough going. Democrats criticized previous Republican attempts at legislation during the Obama administration for gutting the FCC’s enforcement abilities. Republicans would likely be interested in proposing even weaker legislation now, and Democrats are unlikely to support it if so.

Some Democrats prefer litigation and want to use Republican opposition to net neutrality as a campaign issue in 2018. “Down the road Congress could act to put in place new rules, but with Republicans in charge of the House, Senate, and White House the likelihood of strong enforceable rules are small,” Rep. Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, wrote on Reddit last week. “Maybe after the 2018 elections, we will be in a stronger position to get that done.”

A future FCC could also rewrite net-neutrality regulation to be tougher on the phone and cable industry. That could bring a whole new cycle of litigation by broadband companies.
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Microsoft on Wednesday rolled out new features on its Bing search engine powered by artificial intelligence, including one that summarizes the two opposing sides of contentious questions, and another that measures how many reputable sources are behind a given answer.

Tired of delivering misleading information when their algorithms are gamed by trolls and purveyors of fake news, Microsoft and its tech-company rivals have been going out of their way to show they can be purveyors of good information — either by using better algorithms or hiring more human moderators.  

Second-place search engine 

Microsoft is also trying to distinguish its 2nd-place search engine from long-dominant Google and position itself as an innovator in finding real-world applications for the latest advances in artificial intelligence.

“As a search engine we have a responsibility to provide answers that are comprehensive and objective,” said Jordi Ribas, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for AI products.

Bing’s new capabilities are designed to give users more confidence that an answer is correct and save them time so they don’t have to click through multiple links to validate it themselves. 

“You could be asking, ‘Is coffee good for you?’ We know that there are no good answers for that,” Ribas said. But the new search features side-by-side opposing perspectives. One source emphasizes coffee’s ability to increase metabolism and another shows it can raise blood pressure. Similar questions can also be asked on more sensitive topics, such as whether the death penalty is a good idea.

Digestible doses

On more complicated questions — is there a god? — Bing doesn’t have enough confidence to provide a pro-con perspective. But on questions that involve numbers, it boils information down into digestible doses. Iraq, for instance, is described as “about equal to the size of California.”

Search engines have evolved since Google took the lead at the turn of the 21st century, when rankings were based on “link analysis” that assigned credibility to sites based on how many other sites linked to them. As machines get better at reading and summarizing paragraphs, users expect not just a list of links but a quick and authoritative answer, said Harry Shum, who leads Microsoft’s 8,000-person research and AI division. To test its technology, the company has compared its machine-reading skills to the verbal score on the SAT.

“We are not at 800 yet, but we bypassed President Bush a long time ago,” Shum jokes.

Sophisticated searches

 The demand for more sophisticated searches has also grown as people have moved from typing questions to voicing them on the road or in their kitchen.

“If you use Bing or Google nowadays you recognize that more and more often you’ll see direct answers on the top of search result pages,” Shum said. “We’re getting to the point that for probably about 10 percent of those queries we’ll see answers.”

Shum is hesitant to over-promise Bing’s new features as an antidote to the misinformation flooding the internet. 

“At the end of the day, people have their own judgments,” he said.

The search engine features were announced along with updates to Microsoft’s voice assistant Cortana and a new search partnership with the popular online forum Reddit.
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The White House said Wednesday the U.S. government needs a major overhaul of information technology systems and should take steps to better protect data and accelerate efforts to use cloud-based technology.

“Difficulties in agency prioritization of resources in support of IT modernization, ability to procure services quickly, and technical issues have resulted in an unwieldy and out-of-date federal IT infrastructure,” the White House said in a report.

The report outlined a timeline over the next year for IT reforms and a detailed implementation plan. The report said one unnamed cloud-based email provider has agreed to assist in keeping track of government spending on cloud-based email migration.

President Donald Trump in April signed an executive order creating a new technology council to overhaul the U.S. government’s information technology systems.

The report said the federal government must eliminate barriers to using commercial cloud-based technology. “Federal agencies must consolidate their IT investments and place more trust in services and infrastructure operated by others,” the report found. Government agencies often pay dramatically different prices for the same IT item, the report said, sometimes three or four times as much.

Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Corp’s Google and Intel Corp are making big investments in the fast-growing cloud computing business.

A 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report estimated the U.S. government spends more than $80 billion on IT annually but said spending has fallen by $7.3 billion since 2010.

In 2015, there were at least 7,000 separate IT investments by the U.S. government. The $80 billion figure does not include Defense Department classified IT systems and 58 independent executive branch agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency.

The GAO report said U.S. government IT investments “are becoming increasingly obsolete: many use outdated software languages and hardware parts that are unsupported.”

The GAO report found some agencies are using systems that have components that are at least 50 years old.

Agencies typically buy their own IT systems independently, the White House said Wednesday. A “lack of common standards and lack of coordination drives costly redundancies and inefficiencies.”

The White House said in June that most of the government’s 6,100 data centers can be consolidated and moved to a cloud-based storage system.

Various U.S. government systems have been the target of hacking and data breaches in recent years. In September, the Securities and Exchange Commission, America’s chief stock market regulator, said cybercriminals may have used data stolen last year.
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A new report finds growing levels of E-waste pose significant risks to the environment and human health and result in huge economic losses for countries around the world.  Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from the launch of the International Telecommunication Union report in Geneva.

The global information society is racing ahead at top speed.  The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) reports nearly half of the world uses the internet and most people have access to mobile phones, laptops, televisions, refrigerators and other electronic devices.

But ITU E-waste Technical Expert, Vanessa Gray, said the ever-increasing expansion of technology is creating staggering amounts of electronic waste.

“In 2016, the world generated a total of 44.7 million metric tons of e-waste—that is, electronic and electrical equipment that is discarded,” Gray said. “So, that basically everything that runs on a plug or on a battery.  This is equivalent to about 4,500 Eiffel Towers for the year.” 

The report found Asia generates the greatest amounts of E-waste, followed by Europe and the Americas.  Africa and Oceania produce the least.

Gray warned improper and unsafe treatment and disposal of e-waste pose significant risks to the environment and human health.  She noted that low recycling rates also result in important economic losses, because high value materials – including gold, silver, copper – are not recovered. 

“We estimate that the value of recoverable material contained in the 2016 e-waste is no less than $55 billion US, which is actually more than the Gross Domestic Product in many of the world’s countries,” Gray said.

The report calls for the development of proper legislation to manage e-waste.  It says a growing number of countries are moving in that direction.  Currently, it says 66 percent of the world population, living in 67 countries, is covered by national e-waste management laws.
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Every year hundreds of the most famous names in high tech gather on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or M.I.T, for the EmTech Conference, an opportunity to discover future trends in technology that will drive the new global economy. This report by VOA Russsian Service reporter Evgeny Maslov is narrated by Bob Leverone.
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