The White House and the Department of Homeland Security highlighted their efforts to advance efforts to improve cybersecurity Wednesday. The U.S. is “light-years ahead of where we were 18 months ago” in advancing the national conversation on cybersecurity, said White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel at a Bloomberg Government event. The White House has been working with federal agencies since February to implement President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity executive order. As part of that implementation effort, the National Institute of Standards and Technology released a preliminary version of the Cybersecurity Framework last week (CD Oct 23 p1). Daniel lauded the framework Wednesday as a “remarkable example of true public-private partnership.” Agencies’ budgets also show the degree to which the White House is making cybersecurity a big priority, he said, noting that the administration’s cyber efforts are as well protected as its other priorities given the strains of sequestration. The White House is also continuing to encourage Congress to pass information-sharing legislation that would improve the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, Daniel said. The order will “help bring clarity to the specific kinds of information-sharing that we need,” said Suzanne Spaulding, DHS deputy undersecretary-National Protection and Programs Directorate. DHS is the primary department responsible for implementing the order. DHS is doing “everything we can to help public and private sector make wise risk management decisions,” she said.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., will join FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a former staffer of his, in Morgantown, W.Va., on Monday at a broadband summit. Rockefeller, “in conjunction with Discover the Real West Virginia Foundation, will gather a group of stakeholders to celebrate the successes in connecting key sectors of the West Virginia economy to the Internet,” said a Senate Commerce spokesman. Google Vice President Mohammad Gawdat will also attend, and the event will include panels on electronic medical record technology, the E-rate program and the public safety implications of the FirstNet broadband network. Rockefeller helped enact the legislation that created E-rate and FirstNet. The event will be at the Morgantown Events Center, and Rockefeller is expected to speak at 1 p.m.
The USA Freedom Act, HR-3361, now has 80 co-sponsors in the House, said a Wednesday news release (http://1.usa.gov/HsySoJ) from co-sponsor Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill. The surveillance overhaul had 70 co-sponsors Tuesday when introduced (CD Oct 30 p4). “Unlike previous efforts that merely cut off NSA funding, the USA FREEDOM Act makes substantive and responsible changes to the law that will protect our privacy rights and increase transparency,” said Quigley, a co-founder of the Congressional Transparency Caucus, in a statement.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge Computer Lab are trying a new Internet architecture they say will replace today’s system with a model similar to peer-to-peer file-sharing “but on a massive scale,” the university said Wednesday. The prototype, developed as part of an EU-funded project called “Pursuit,” will overhaul the existing structure of the Net’s Internet Protocol (IP) layer, through which isolated networks are connected, it said. That could enable “a more socially-minded and intelligent system” that lets users obtain information without needing direct access to servers where content is initially stored, it said, and could make the Internet faster, more efficient and more able to withstand rapidly escalating levels of global user demand. The new architecture has implications for net neutrality, said Dirk Trossen, senior researcher at the Computer Lab and Pursuit’s technical manager, in an interview. In addition, because it will likely replace the Internet Protocol, it will do away with the need for IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, he said. On today’s Internet, communications are directed to a particular IP address atop which various activities and applications ride, Trossen said. Pursuit focuses on the “stuff” users want to have or do, which would have labels much like IP addresses, he said. Someone who wants to view a particular video, for example, would ask the network to find the video, not to take her to a specific location, he said. Someone seeking a video on YouTube doesn’t care if it comes from a company server in Oregon or from the laptop of someone in the next room who’s watching it, he said. Individual computers would be able to copy and republish content on receipt, providing other users with the option to access data, or fragments of data, from a range of locations rather than the source itself, the university said. “Essentially, the model would enable all online content to be shared in a manner emulating the ‘peer-to-peer’ approach taken by some file-sharing sites, but on an unprecedented, internet-wide scale,” it said in a news release. This would be similar to BitTorrent in how applications operate, but with some differences, Trossen said. In today’s system, many content providers use BitTorrent to distribute legal content, he said. Similarly, a criminal who gets hold of decrypted content can also republish it there, he said. But with Pursuit, a criminal who republishes legal content won’t see any gain from it because the content will have been protected by its owner, he said. This issue is more about encryption than the Pursuit network, because the architecture doesn’t deal with content protection, he said. Pursuit would make it harder to block traffic, changing the concept of net neutrality, Trossen said. Net neutrality today is a regulatory issue and an “arms race” by ISPs to determine what users are doing with the “shredded” bits and pieces of information crossing their networks, he said. In the Pursuit architecture, because every piece of information can be explicitly labeled and located, ISPs could differentiate prices, service quality and other aspects at a very fine-grained level, he said. They could set prices for certain classes of information, but in a more transparent way, he said. It’s “difficult to say who might oppose Pursuit, Trossen said. That data won’t go back to servers means Tier 1 service providers, who provide connectivity to large networks, and some other economic players might not be happy, he said. Operators understand that the networks need renewal, but to enable Pursuit they will have to give customers new broadband routers and other equipment, he said. That will help device manufacturers sell new products, he said. Pursuit holds advantages for Google and other search engines, Trossen said. It won’t make searches passé because the search function runs at a different level, but search engines often give users stale or broken links because the Internet is based on the idea of having to go to a location, he said. If the server for that location has moved, the search will return an error message, which is bad for search engines, he said. The Internet Engineering Task Force’s research arm has set up a working group to identify elements of Pursuit that can be standardized, Trossen said. He predicted the shift to the new architecture will be driven not by core network providers but by information-rich industries sitting on massive amounts of data they have trouble communicating. For the retail sector, for instance, to have a network that allows it to uniquely identify each information item and send it is “extremely appealing,” he said. Moreover, the industry is powerful, and as customers of network operators, retailers can create requirements for solutions that look like Pursuit, he said. Pursuit is distinct from the Internet of Things in its focus on information rather than objects, he said.
"It is really showtime” for low-power FM (LPFM) radio, said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel Tuesday at the Future of Music Summit (http://fcc.us/1dNWlOx). The FCC is accepting LPFM applications until Nov. 14. “This window is really important,” Rosenworcel said. “Because it is the first time in the history of LPFM when third-adjacent channel restrictions do not limit the number of available frequencies.” Before 2010, if a full-power FM station was at 100.1, any LPFM had to be farther away than 99.5, Rosenworcel said. The 2010 Local Community Radio Act changed that, Rosenworcel said. Now the FCC is hoping to drive more revenue to local artists by giving “credit to applicants that pledge to provide at least eight hours a day of locally originated programming,” said Rosenworcel, acknowledging changing methods of musical distribution and their corresponding copyright laws have created “transitional times without many across-the-board, easy answers.” LPFM, she said, “could be a boon to local music, local voices and local audiences."
More Minnesota businesses are using technology to maximize revenue opportunities in the state, said a Connect Minnesota report released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/HuKwP5). Twenty-four percent of Minnesota businesses, or more than 34,000 businesses, don’t use a broadband service, down from 27 percent in 2011, said the report. Online sales account for $38 billion in business revenue annually in the state, and 38 percent of businesses earn revenue from online sales, said the report. Thirty percent of all Minnesota businesses allow employees to telework, said Connect Minnesota. The report is based on a phone survey of 801 businesses across the state. Connect Minnesota will host a summit on broadband access, adoption and use on Dec. 4 in Roseville, Minn.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is looking into the state’s E-911 network performance in flood- and fire-related disasters over the summer, said the PUC in a decision Monday (http://bit.ly/1f3YqUq). The PUC contracted with CenturyLink to receive 911 calls from telecom providers and route them with calling number and address information to the appropriate public safety answering point (PSAP). Many Colorado residents faced the “possibility and reality” of not being able to call 911 in areas affected by severe flooding and major fires earlier this year, said the PUC. The agency said it will do PSAP site visits to see the effects and discuss the impact of the disasters. The PUC said it will host workshops for stakeholders to identify or clarify issues related to 911 and draft a report compiling that information. Resiliency, reliability and continuity will be discussed at the workshops and included in the report, said the PUC. Stakeholders can comment in docket 13I-1147T on what happened during and after the disasters and what can be done to better address 911 issues.
The FCC adopted new accessibility rules for user interfaces, program guides and other functions on set-top boxes and devices that receive or play back digital video, such as TVs, tablets and smartphones, the commission said in a news release Tuesday. The rules implement sections 204 and 205 of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, the commission said. Although the specific text of the order hasn’t been released, an FCC official said Section 205, which requires on-screen text menus and guides that are audibly accessible, will apply to all navigation devices, not just ones issued by multichannel video program distributors. Section 204 will apply to all other digital apparatus, the official said. NCTA, American Council of the Blind, American Foundation for the Blind and CEA had reached a consensus that Section 205 should only apply to MVPD provided equipment. The dividing line for what is covered under each section is determined by whether a device has “conditional access” to content, the FCC official said. Devices with CableCARDs -- such as TiVo boxes -- or that require a cable or DBS connection to show content are navigation devices; a DVD player or a TV without a CableCARD will fall under Section 204, the official said. Devices under 204 that include any of the 11 “essential functions” -- from a list created by the FCC Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee -- will have to make those they include accessible, the FCC official said. The list included on/off, volume control and similar basic functions. The order will also require all devices to have “a mechanism that is comparable to a button, key or icon for activating certain accessibility features, such as closed captioning” the release said. The FCC official said the rule will have an implementation deadline of three years, as requested by CEA, with a five-year extended deadline for small cable operators as requested by the American Cable Association. “This action represents the final major step in the FCC’s implementation of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA), enacted in 2010 to bring people with disabilities access to the modern and innovative communications technologies of the twenty-first century,” said the release.
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation criticized a study on broadband pricing for giving an “inaccurate picture” of telecom performance. Americans in major cities are paying higher prices for slower Internet, the New America Foundation concluded in a study released Monday (CD Oct 29 p13) (http://bit.ly/1bzOSO7). Eight cities around the world now offer speeds of 1 gigabit per second, compared with just two cities last year, said the study. NAF’s studies have “continuously cherry picked data and compared ‘apples to oranges,'” ITIF said. The new study “wrongly compares rates charged by boutique ISPs with under 1,000 customers in urban areas to those charged by companies that serve millions of people in suburban and rural areas,” ITIF said. It fails to take into account the “significant government subsidies many nations implement to keep broadband prices artificially low,” said ITIF, with board members who work for Apple, Cisco, Qualcomm and others. America has made great strides in improving average connection speeds over the last five years, ITIF said, citing an Akamai report that places the U.S. eighth in the world in average connection speed. “Instead of focusing on problems we don’t have, broadband advocates should be advocating for programs to improve broadband and computer adoption, where the U.S. continues to lag behind."
The FCC ordered an $8,000 forfeiture for Hispanic Target Media for KUKY(FM) Wellton, Ariz., for not maintaining and making available the station’s public inspection file at its main studio, said an Enforcement Bureau order (http://bit.ly/1is34ex). The amount was reduced from $10,000 because the station had been maintaining a public inspection file, but keeping it at the local public library. When bureau officials asked for the file at the station, they weren’t directed to the library because of a language barrier, the order said. The bureau also ordered an $8,000 fine over a public inspection file for HK Media, in connection with KFOX(FM) Torrance, Calif. KFOX’s inspection file was destroyed by water damage and not replaced until after bureau inspectors asked for it four months later, the order said (http://bit.ly/17v6Q5J). It also fined J.M.J. Radio $1,500 for its WQOR(AM) Olyphant, Pa., for failing to maintain a management presence at its main studio, an order said (http://bit.ly/1gagvTQ). It said bureau officials on two separate inspections found the station’s main studio locked with no staff present, and were told that the studio doesn’t have any designated personnel. Originally set at $10,000, the fine was reduced because of J.M.J’s inability to pay, the order said.