The World Wide Web Consortium’s Do Not Track working group chairs expressed a desire to continue working during the group’s weekly conference call, according to comments posted to the W3C group’s public forum (http://bit.ly/173tALX). The call was the first time the group had discussed the results of last week’s divisive poll on how, or if, the group should continue (CD Oct 11 p12). Ahead of the call, co-Chairman Carl Cargill, standards principal at Adobe, said the chairs had recognized the desire of a sizable portion of working group members to disband the process, but thought “a considerable number” wanted to keep going. “The [working group] Chairs and W3C Management team feel that there is a desire to move forward, but we also feel” it’s “necessary to spend some effort both improving or changing the plan; and working with the WG to build confidence in the plan,” he wrote. Some group members thought the assumption the group would continue ahead of the conference call was disingenuous. The call is “just window dressing for a predetermined decision by the W3C to disregard the will of the Working Group participants,” wrote Mike Zaneis, general counsel for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Others were encouraged after the call. Information technology contracts lawyer Walter Van Holst had voted against continuing the working group, but after Wednesday’s call, he wrote: “I wished we had the kind of constructive debate we're having now on the tracking definition at least a year ago.” If that had been the case, he would not have voted to end the working group, he said. But Van Holst remained cautious. “How are we going to prevent ourselves from sliding back into that quagmire,” he wrote.

The Research Valley Technology Council issued a request for information to deploy a high-speed fiber network to the Bryan-College Station metropolitan area in Texas (http://bit.ly/19SqhaL). The council is part of a community-wide advisory committee to the Research Valley Partnership (RVP), a nonprofit economic development corporation. The council wants to attract a fiber network to stimulate the Research Valley’s economic growth and global competitiveness, drive job creation, foster innovation, enhance healthcare delivery and improve education, said Tuesday’s RFI. It said RVP wants to make gigabit speeds available to residents, businesses and institutions. The selected provider will have streamlined regulatory and permitting practices, tax enterprise zone incentives and access to publicly owned infrastructure on “attractive terms and conditions,” said RVP. Each of the Research Valley communities will reach its own agreement with the network provider for usage of infrastructure, access to public rights of way and community-specific matters, said the RFI. Communities are starting to recognize the importance of broadband networks, and technology and community support can change the economics of deployment, said Gig.U Executive Director Blair Levin in a statement. “Bryan and College Station are at the edge of these developments and as home to a world-class university, and one that understands the challenges of rural life in America, these communities are well-positioned to use unconstrained bandwidth for unlimited innovation.” RFI responses are due Nov. 15.

Former Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., was set to have spoke Wednesday at an Electronic Transactions Association event in Scottsdale, Ariz. Stupak was set to speak on the “importance of making the voice of the payments industry heard in Washington,” ETA said in a news release. Stupak is now a lobbyist at Venable, and his clients have included the Entertainment Software Association. ETA was also set to launch its Voice of Payments program as part of a larger increase in the mobile payments industry’s legislative outreach efforts. The group recently formed ETAPAC, its political action committee, doubled its government relations staff and registered a lobbyist to “increase their reach on Capitol Hill,” ETA said.

Covia Labs scored a rare security certification for its emergency communications technology after years of effort. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., now touts the Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 certification, which applies to software responsible for public safety interoperability, it said in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/GYvdOW). It described extensive review by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The certification covers Covia Connector Software Platform as well as proprietary and third-party apps, according to Covia. “The Covia Connector is a software platform that merges voice, data and other key Command and Control functionality found on multiple, diverse devices and equipment into one, fully integrated system,” the company said, noting the technology’s use by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and U.S. Marine Corps. “Regardless of hardware, operating system or platform, the Covia Connector is optimized as a secure fast and lightweight addition that is easily ported to any device or hardware, including servers, routers, PCs, tablets, smartphones, LMR radios, drones, cameras and even Bluetooth headsets.” In August, Covia Labs CEO David Kahn told us this technology should be part of discussion surrounding FirstNet and that Covia has met with FirstNet staff (CD Aug 22 p6). “Data security and interoperable systems are two of the most significant issues to tackle as FirstNet begins to lay the groundwork for the first ever national broadband communications network for public safety,” Kahn noted in a statement Wednesday.

Two cybersecurity studies released Wednesday highlight issues organizations face in implementing effective cybersecurity practices. About half of the organizations included in a TEKsystems Network Services survey said they “believe the lack of qualified security talent is approaching a state of critical mass where their organizations are vulnerable to serious risk exposure,” TEKsystems said. About half of respondents said it’s difficult to find workers with adequate cybersecurity skill sets, and 20 percent said they're “very confident” that their organizations have enough in-house cybersecurity resources, TEKsystems said. Part of the problem stems from perceptions that cybersecurity is too complex -- more than 60 percent of respondents said they believe the growing complexity of cybersecurity makes it difficult for their organizations to “effectively evaluate current security programs” and develop a comprehensive plan (http://bit.ly/16O6bvN). OpenDNS’s Umbrella Security Labs said in a separate survey that higher educational institutions’ networks are 300 percent more likely to contain malware than comparable government or enterprise networks. “Clearly colleges and universities must operate more open networks and support an endless number of access devices which puts them at higher risk,” said OpenDNS Chief Technology Officer Dan Hubbard in a news release. “However, by implementing some fundamental security best practices it is possible to significantly reduce and contain the current rate of infections on campuses.” The OpenDNS study analyzed the more than 50 million users on its network (http://bit.ly/17356lZ).

The Enterprise Wireless Alliance has been hard at work even with the government in shutdown mode, EWA said in an email to its members Wednesday. “EWA continues to process all applications and has them queued for electronic delivery to the FCC as soon as they reopen,” the group said. “EWA members are reminded that all FCC-related filing deadlines such as renewal applications, comments in rulemaking proceedings, petitions for reconsideration and responses to violation notices are on hold while the government remains closed for business. These core EWA activities continue as all license applications and related advocacy initiatives will be electronically submitted the day after the government reopens."

Astrium received three contracts from the European Space Agency, it said. One contract provides nearly $143 million for the continued development of the Ariane 5 Mid-life Evolution launcher, Astrium said in a news release (http://bit.ly/16bgnzT). A $375 million contract enables further development of elements of the Ariane 5 ME and Ariane 6 launchers, and another contract for about $40 million will go toward development studies for Ariane 6, it said. The Ariane 6 studies will attempt to “define the chosen concept and architecture of the Ariane 6 launcher and to specify its main characteristics before the start of its industrial development in 2014,” Astrium said.

The secretive phone tracking done as part of Hemisphere Project needs to be scrutinized in the broader context of government phone surveillance, said the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation in a Tuesday amicus brief filed in U.S. v. Diaz-Rivera in U.S. District Court in San Francisco (http://bit.ly/19QDCyl). The privacy advocates sought to “provide important context and to underscore the larger implications” in the case on what they call “highly intrusive and unconstitutional” call records tracking and sharing among government agencies, they said. The brief describes the broader bulk collections of data the National Security Agency engages in and the push for more transparency in that regard as well as in how the NSA shares this information with other agencies. It slams the Hemisphere Project, which was revealed in September by The New York Times and showcased how the government has tapped phone data for drug investigations (CD Sept 5 p16). “At minimum, Hemisphere raises similar constitutional concerns as the NSA mass call-tracking database,” the brief said. “This violates the Fourth and First Amendments.” There’s a hearing in the case at 9 a.m. Nov. 5. In the criminal prosecution for drug activities of the case, “the original indictment named 20 defendants,” said ACLU staff attorney Linda Lye in a blog post (http://bit.ly/GRqTAK). “The investigation relied heavily on cell phone surveillance. The government disclosed to defendants that it acquired records for almost 750,000 phone calls from 643 unique numbers. But the government has not explained how it acquired all of this cell phone data."

Arris and EchoStar’s Sling Media signed an agreement to make Arris the exclusive worldwide distributor of Sling technology to cable, telco and wireless service providers worldwide. Under the agreement, “Arris will be the sole provider of Sling technology for both video gateways and standalone devices intended for such service providers,” EchoStar said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1hWGgTZ). Arris plans to deliver Sling technology to providers through stand-alone devices, video gateways and multi-vendor devices that allow licensing of Sling technology to third-party manufacturers, EchoStar said.

Global average peak Web connection speeds rose 17 percent to 18.9 Mbps in Q2 from the year-ago quarter, said Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Report (http://bit.ly/19N20g5). Speeds rose for both global average peak connection speeds and average connection speeds, it said. Akamai also observed attack traffic across the Internet, with more than half of all attack traffic coming from Indonesia and China. For the first time in the company’s study of the Internet, more attack traffic came from Indonesia (38 percent) than China (33 percent). About 6.9 percent of attack traffic originated in the U.S., down from 8.3 percent in Q1. Also a first, port 445 wasn’t the most targeted port for attacks, it said of the port used for Microsoft functions. Port 443 was the target of 17 percent and 80 the target for 24 percent of attacks, while 445 was the target for 15 percent, it said. The report, which also studied mobile connectivity, said Android Webkit users accounted for about 38 percent of mobile requests to cell networks, compared with 34 percent from Apple Mobile Safari. Apple Mobile Safari accounted for about 54 percent of requests across all network types, while Android Webkit was responsible for 27.6 percent, said Akamai.