The Senate confirmed James Comey as FBI director Monday by a 93-1 vote. Comey was nominated in June to succeed Robert Mueller, who said last month that he will step down in September (http://1.usa.gov/13WEnDm). Comey may take a different tack than his predecessor on the collection of communications content, he said in a confirmation hearing earlier this month. He said he disagrees with provisions in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that allow government agents to access the content of emails once they're older than 180 days. “I always thought of it all as content that I would need probable cause to get,” he said. Those who see this as appropriate for government “are going to be unhappy with me,” said Comey. He also said that he could see circumstances where government surveillance of Americans could go too far. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said the U.S. “faces a wide variety of threats, including ever-evolving terrorist and criminal threats to our national security, neighborhoods, and economy, as well as gang violence, crimes against children, and cyber crimes.” Comey is “well-positioned to meet these challenges,” said Goodlatte in a statement Tuesday. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., had blocked the vote on Comey until Monday, citing concerns about the FBI’s use of drones, he explained in a Monday statement (http://1.usa.gov/17RkGwJ).

High quality standards for closed captions are “critical” to making video accessible as mandated in the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA), said representatives of several consumer groups representing the deaf and hard of hearing in a meeting last week with FCC staff and industry representatives, according to an ex parte filing. “We urge the Commission to set minimum technical and non-technical standards for captions that include completeness, accuracy, readability, and synchronicity with the audio portion of the captioned program -- areas where problems remain widespread,” said the filing from Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the National Association of the Deaf and the Hearing Loss Association of America. The lack of quality standards for captions “incentivizes video programmers to seek out the cheapest possible captioning services without regard to quality,” said the consumer groups. This in turn hurts the market for well-trained captioners, the groups said. The commission should reexamine the exemptions to caption requirements it currently allows, and “ease the burden of the captioning complaint process for consumers,” the groups said. They also said the FCC should reexamine allowing Electronic Newsroom Technique, which the consumer groups said “often denies viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing access to critical information from unscripted breaking news, weather, and emergency reporting."

PC users in China are shifting toward mobile terminals, and mobile video has become the most popular application of the mobile Internet, said PPLive (PPTV), a Chinese online TV service provider, in a report released Tuesday (http://prn.to/18PE3Lh). The PP Index, a mobile video user analysis report, is based on PPTV’s massive mobile user data in association with Umeng, a Chinese mobile data analysis provider and developer service platform, said PPTV. PPTV’s mobile terminal has accumulated over 150 million installed users and 70 million monthly active users, said the company. The report found iPhone users are more flexible and fragmented in viewing relative to iPad users, and iPhone and iPad users also differed in terms of what they liked to watch on the TV Series channel in terms of TV series, highlights and previews. Through the database, Umeng is able to analyze the viewing habit of mobile video users and send the PP Index to over 10,000 advertisers as a basis for their consideration of mobile advertising on video sites.

Hughes achieved carrier data rates exceeding 1 Gbps on its Jupiter satellite system, it said. Jupiter’s high-throughput technology accelerated growth of the total HughesNet subscriber base in the U.S. to about 700,000 subscribers, said Hughes in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/16zTIIM). With Jupiter, HughesNet Gen4 customers “enjoy high speeds, from 10 to 15 Mbps, and a richer Internet experience, including the recently announced VoIP voice calling option,” it said. Hughes said it plans to expand the Jupiter system to international markets.

World Wide Web Consortium Do Not Track stakeholders will meet again via teleconference on Sept. 4, said W3C staff in an email to the DNT group’s members (http://bit.ly/16htRY4) after doing an online poll to determine when stakeholders would like to meet again. Working group “calls this week and throughout the month of August are cancelled,” W3C staffer Thomas Roessler told the online advertising representatives, browser makers and privacy advocates. The working group was scheduled to produce a “Last Call” document outlining a DNT mechanism by the end of this month. But during last week’s call, the group didn’t reach consensus on the draft and path forward laid out by the co-chairs earlier this month (CD July 25 p15).

Iridium signed an agreement with CalAmp, a wireless products company, to provide original equipment manufacturers with satellite machine-to-machine services. To offer the services, Iridium will use CalAmp’s Vanguard mobile wireless broadband routers and LMU-4520 rugged fleet management devices “utilizing the Iridium Core 9523 transceiver and Iridium 9602 modem,” Iridium said in a Monday news release (http://bit.ly/14gdI7t). The solution will allow companies in the agriculture, forestry and construction industries to have greater communications access across the globe, it said. The scheduled 2015 launch of Iridium’s next-generation constellation, Iridium NEXT, will enable CalAmp’s customers to take advantage of global coverage over the long term, Iridium said.

The U.K. is “not winning the war on online criminal activity,” said Parliament Home Affairs Committee Chairman Keith Vaz on Tuesday. The panel’s first report on e-crime criticized the government’s refusal to help fund Europol’s CyberCrime Center (C3) and other EU countries’ failure to prevent cyberattacks from inside their borders against the U.K. The U.K. is too complacent about Internet crime because the “victims are hidden in cyberspace,” Vaz said. “The threat of a cyber attack to the UK is so serious it is marked as a higher threat than a nuclear attack,” he said in a media statement. One key area of concern is international cooperation, the report said (http://xrl.us/bpjvu7). Law enforcement witnesses told the panel that most cybercriminals operate outside U.K. jurisdiction, hampering identification and prosecution, and that it’s difficult for police e-crime units to obtain evidence from countries with which Britain has no established relationship, the report said. Government plans for its cybersecurity program involve better cooperation between the U.K. and international law enforcement agencies, including more joint operations, it said. Another problem is acquiring digital evidence held outside the U.K. Obtaining the evidence though multilateral assistance treaties was described as “extremely slow” and resource-heavy, it said. Lawmakers said they're “alarmed” that retrieving data from sites based abroad is difficult. “We hope that such companies will adopt a more constructive attitude going forward and be willing to engage with public authorities,” the report said. Businesses that reap huge financial rewards from being entrusted with people’s data “should be willing to be open and accountable for the actions they take with it,” it said. It’s disturbing that the government intends to opt out of all or some EU police and criminal justice measures, the committee said. Some of the instruments the U.K. might reject could affect its ability to tackle e-crime, it said. The global scope of cybercrime provides a strong argument that the U.K. should focus on better cooperation among police forces in other nations, the report said. “We cannot understand why the UK has refused to support funding for the new Europol CyberCrime Centre C3 which facilitates vital cross-Europe information sharing.” Members of Parliament also said they're “deeply concerned” that EU partner countries aren’t doing enough to prevent cyberattacks from criminals in their borders on the U.K. Other recommendations included: (1) Allocating more funds and resources to law enforcement agencies to fight e-crime. (2) Improving the way e-crime is reported. (3) Making online services “secure by design” by having new account settings set by default to private. (4) Requiring providers of Web services to explain to users when they set up accounts how to keep their data secure. (5) Requiring the government to draw up a mandatory code of conduct requiring Internet companies to take down material that breaches acceptable behavioral standards. “We welcome the creation of Europol’s C3 cyber crime centre but believe it should be funded from the existing Europol budget,” said a Home Office spokesman by email. “Crime is at record low levels and this government is taking action to tackle the cyber threat” by investing in the development of cutting-edge capabilities, he said. The National Crime Agency will have a new, elite cybercrime unit to target the most serious offenders, he said. “But we know we need to keep pace with criminals as they target the web and so we continue to consider ways to ensure the police and security services have access to communications data.”

The FCC granted a limited waiver of CableCARD rules for cable operators that use set-top boxes refurbished by Adams Cable Equipment, said the Media Bureau in an order Friday. The waiver applies only to ACE’s existing inventory of 50,000 set-tops and the company must offer the boxes for sale directly to subscribers, and the cable operators that use them must let their customers know about that option, activate and provide support for the devices. The waiver “would not materially affect common reliance” on CableCARDs because of the small number of boxes affected, “which is a relatively small number when compared to the 8 million compliant set-top boxes that the cable industry has deployed every year” said the order. The waiver is based on a similar waiver granted to Baja Cable because of “extraordinary financial hardship,” it said. “The conditions we place on the waiver will ensure that the public interest benefit on which we grant this waiver -- i.e., providing consumers with the option to purchase low-cost equipment -- will be realized.”

Not everything that’s technically possible should be done, said Internet Society Chairwoman Lynn St. Amour at a news conference on the opening day of the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Berlin on Monday. She was reflecting on the revelations of state surveillance programs in the U.S. and other countries. “There is a tension between what was technically possible and the rule of law,” she said. The mass surveillance programs were “heavily discussed by engineers in the hallways” of the conference, said Chairman Russ Housley of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), who is sponsored by the National Security Agency in his IETF and IAB work. The IETF, Housley said, years ago during its Denver meeting decided to develop “strong cryptography, not weak cryptography.” IETF Chair Jari Arkko said strong end-to-end security of communication on the Internet is a core commitment of the organization. Days before the Berlin IETF meeting, a new request for comment on “privacy considerations for Internet protocols” was officially published. Security and privacy were essential in the IETF work, said Housley.

The FCC should not make “abrupt changes in policy” to prison calling services “that could make existing public contracts uneconomic,” CenturyLink told agency officials Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/12Yujqa). CenturyLink “has made very large investments in long-term public contracts” and it’s important the service providers be given “a fair and reasonable transition time to any newly ordered rate structure,” especially since they can’t “readily renegotiate publicly-awarded contracts,” CenturyLink said. Any commission order on inmate calling services should limit new rules to new or extended contracts, or defer the issue of existing contracts to an FNPRM, the telco said. The commission said Monday it will consider a report and order on inmate calling at its Aug. 8 meeting.