The Consumer Product Safety Commission has posted its 2008 Performance and Accountability Report entitled, "Saving Lives and Keeping Families Safe." Highlights of the report are as follows:
Telcos are a “natural partner” for DirecTV since their video services “are unlikely” to be competitive with satellite and cable operators on a national basis, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said Wednesday at a UBS conference in New York. Maffei declined to comment on rumors that DirecTV and Liberty have had discussions with AT&T. But a DirecTV merger with a telecom operator would “seems very logical to me,” Maffei said. “I can’t tell you whether they are going to buy it, but there certainly have been enough rumors about it.”
The federal government should apply the model of weapons nonproliferation to a new overarching cybersecurity effort, the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency said in its final report, released Monday. The group, formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and chaired by House Homeland Cybersecurity Subcommittee leaders, advocated the creation of a White House National Office for Cyberspace. The commission previewed the report, which criticizes the Department of Homeland Security’s organization of cybersecurity duties, for the subcommittee in September (WID Sept 17 p1). “Cybersecurity can no longer be relegated to information technology offices and chief information officers,” nor to homeland security and counterterrorism officials, the report said.
Dip a toe in the water of cloud services and see how it feels, representatives of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce.com told the congressionally chartered Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board on Friday. The companies were trying to overcome the skepticism of board members and a crowd of agency officials at the meeting of the claim that security in the cloud -- any Internet-based platform for running software, applications or virtual machines -- was just as good, and probably better, than the agencies’ own network and data-at-rest security. Board members seemed especially interested in the experience of Amazon’s Stephen Schmidt, who led a transition to virtualization computing as the FBI’s chief technology officer.
The only way to calm the privacy worries of patients about their health information in an electronic environment is to ensure that they control the data, William Yasnoff, managing partner of NHII Advisors, said on a panel at the eHealth Initiative conference. Yasnoff co-presented with Katherine Ball, director of health sciences informatics at Johns Hopkins University. Yasnoff is the CEO and Ball the director of informatics of Patient Privacy Certified.
D&M will combine Denon and Boston Acoustics in the U.S. under a single team Dec. 15 to “seamlessly integrate the sales and marketing operations of both brands,” the company said Thursday. Though the reorganization augurs “some reduction” in the D&M work force through the elimination of “duplicate positions,” the company would have made the moves even if there hadn’t been the economic downturn, Bob Weissburg, president of D&M Sales and Marketing, North America, told Consumer Electronics Daily.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation has issued a notice announcing that the Board of Directors of the MCC will hold a closed meeting on December 11, 2008 in Washington, DC. (D/N MCC FR 09-03, FR Pub 12/01/08, available at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-28482.pdf)
Three automobile makers urged the FCC to reject a numbers-based system for Universal Service Fund contributions. In comments last week on three FCC proposals to revamp the fund (CD Dec 1 p2), Volvo, Toyota and General Motors subsidiary OnStar said separately that the FCC’s plan could hurt vehicle telematics companies and by extension public safety. Earlier last week, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association also warned the FCC about the issue (CD Nov 28 p1). The FCC proposals “ignore the special circumstances of telematics companies, assess contributions far greater than the telecommunications revenues associated with the service, and mistakenly treat telematics companies as telecommunications providers rather than end users,” OnStar said. Toyota agreed, “The drastic cost increases that would flow from the proposals … would threaten the very existence of life-saving telematics services.” OnStar suggested that the FCC instead “assess USF contributions on services that wireless carriers provide to telematics companies either on a per-minute of use basis, as the draft orders appropriately propose for prepaid wireless services, or based on a percentage of revenues.”
Adoption of numbers-based system as part of Universal Service Fund reform would have a negative effect on “important emergency communications services” if the fee is imposed on vehicle telematics services, such as OnStar or ATX, APCO and the National Emergency Number Association warned the FCC. Telematics companies were also at the FCC for recent meetings to ask the FCC not to impose the fee on their lines, a step proposed in all three rulemakings on USF reform now before commissioners.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin appears to be setting up for a vote at the Dec. 18 commission meeting an order that would ban the manufacture, import, sale or shipment of wireless microphones that use the 700 MHz band. But some details of the proposed order aren’t clear. Martin is to circulate Wednesday evening other orders, too, for what probably will be his last major meeting as chairman.