FTC Warns Google And FB

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has promised that her organisation will come down hard on companies that do not meet requirements for handling personal data.

FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez gave a keynote speech at the Technology Policy Institute at the Aspen Forum. She said that the FTC has a responsibility to protect consumers and prevent them from falling victim to unfair commercial practices.

“In the FTC’s actions against Google, Facebook, Myspace and others, we alleged that each of these companies deceived consumers by breaching commitments to keep their data confidential. That isn’t okay, and it is the FTC’s responsibility to make sure that companies live up to their commitments,” she said.

“All told, the FTC has brought over 40 data security cases under our unfairness and deception authority, many against very large data companies, including Lexisnexis, Choicepoint and Twitter, for failing to provide reasonable security safeguards.”

Ramirez spoke about the importance of consumer privacy, saying that there is too much “shrouding” of what happens in that area. She said that under her leadership the FTC will not be afraid of suing companies when it sees fit.

“A recurring theme I have emphasized – and one that runs through the agency’s privacy work – is the need to move commercial data practices into the sunlight. For too long, the way personal information is collected and used has been at best an enigma enshrouded in considerable smog. We need to clear the air,” she said.

Ramirez compared the work of the FTC to the work carried out by lifeguards, saying that it too has to be vigilant.

“Lifeguards have to be mindful not just of the people swimming, surfing, and playing in the sand. They also have to be alert to approaching storms, tidal patterns, and shifts in the ocean’s current. With consumer privacy, the FTC is doing just that – we are alert to the risks but confident that those risks can be managed,” she added.

“The FTC recognizes that the effective use of big data has the potential to unleash a new wave of productivity and growth. Like the lifeguard at the beach, though, the FTC will remain vigilant to ensure that while innovation pushes forward, consumer privacy is not engulfed by that wave.”

It’s all just lip service, of course. Companies might be nominally bound by US privacy laws in online commerce, and that might be overseen by the FTC, but the US National Security Agency (NSA) collects all internet traffic anyway, and makes data available to other US government agencies and even some private companies.

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NOAA Super Computer Goes Live

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has rolled out two new supercomputers that are expected to improve weather forecasts and perhaps help better prepare us for hurricanes.

The two IBM systems, which are identical clones, will be used by NOAA’s National Weather Service to produce forecast data that’s used in the U.S. and around the world.

One of the supercomputers is in Reston, Va.; the other is in Orlando. The NWS can switch between the two in about six minutes.

Each is a 213-teraflop system running a Linux operating system on Intel processors. The federal government is paying about $20 million a year to operate the leased systems.

“These are the systems that are the origin of all the weather forecasts you see,” said Ben Kyger, director of central operations at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

NOAA had previously used identical four-year-old 74-teraflop IBM supercomputers that ran on IBM’s AIX operating system and Power 6 chips.

Before it could activate the new systems, the NWS had to ensure that they produced scientifically accurate results. It had been running the old and new systems in parallel for months, comparing their output.

The NWS has a new hurricane model, which is 15% more accurate in day five of a forecast for a storm’s track and intensity. That model is now operational and running on the new systems. That’s important, because the U.S. is expecting a busy hurricane season.

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The DoD May Share Airwaves

The U.S. Defense Department is proposing to share some of its radio airwaves with private industry, a nod to growing pressure from the wireless industry and the Obama administration that federal agencies ease their control of valuable spectrum.

In a letter released by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, the Department of Defense offers to share the airwaves it now dominates in the slice of frequencies from 1755 megahertz (MHz) to 1780 MHz with spectrum-hungry wireless and Internet companies.

The military would rearrange its systems within that slice of spectrum as well as the 2025-2110 MHz band and compress programs into the 1780-1850 MHz band that it would retain.

The Defense Department uses the airwaves for programs such as pilot training and drone systems and has faced criticism from some in the industry and in Congress for resisting efforts to open those airwaves for commercial use to satisfy growing demands posed by data-hungry gadgets and services.

The Pentagon had pointed to its own need for airwaves as its use of drones and other reliance on wireless technology grows. It also had estimated the process of moving its programs to new frequencies would cost more than $12 billion.

Under the new plan, the Defense Department drops the cost estimate to $3.5 billion by compromising on sharing slices of airwaves without completely clearing any of the spectrum bands.

In the letter, originally sent on July 17 to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which oversees federal airwaves, DOD Chief Information Officer Teresa Takai called the proposal “a workable balance to provide access to the 1755-1780 MHz band most desired by the commercial wireless industry while ensuring no loss of critical DoD capabilities.”

The NTIA, in its own letter to the FCC, said it had not had enough time to review the proposal and could not yet endorse it.

The FCC, with NTIA’s help, is preparing for several auctions of airwaves to take place in coming years, including one that would sell off chunks of federally controlled spectrum. They will be the first reshuffling of airwave ownership since 2008.

Congress has required the FCC to auction off the 2155-2180 MHz band by February 2015 and the industry has sought to pair up that slice of spectrum with the valuable 1755-1780 MHz band, arguing it would collect more money. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have introduced a bill to ensure such pairing.

The FCC has been drafting a notice of proposed rulemaking that would seek public comments on how the FCC should auction those federally owned or already cleared airwaves to the wireless companies and an FCC official said the agency’s notice will address the Pentagon’s new proposal.

President Barack Obama last month directed federal agencies to look for ways eventually to give up or share more of their airwaves with the private sector. This followed his June 2010 call to open up 500 MHz of federal spectrum for commercial use.

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Tech Hiring Up This Year

Hiring of technology professionals has been increasing since the first half of this year, with new IT hires accounting for about 10% of all the job growth in the U.S. in June, according to two independent assessments.

Total tech employment reached 4.47 million in June, an increase of 22,600 jobs from the prior month, or a .51% gain, according to TechServe Alliance, an IT services industry group which tracks employment data month-to-month. The total excludes tech manufacturing employment.

Similarly, Foote Partners, which researches IT employment trends, reported a gain of 18,200 new tech jobs last month.

These gains are coming at the same time that some tech employers are cutting jobs.

IBM has cut more than 3,000 workers over the past few weeks, struggling Hewlett-Packard is still eliminating jobs, and Symantec is seeing layoffs as well.

The U.S. economy added 195,000 jobs overall in June, according to the Labor Dept.

Foote said that IT employment in the first half of this year is averaging 13,500 new jobs per month.

“While the pace of job creation in the national labor force appears stuck at 7.6% unemployment and new jobs are heavily in part-time positions and low wage full-time segments, IT jobs have been on a sustained growth upswing and wages are holding steady if not growing slightly,” said David Foote, chief analyst, in a statement.

Reports on IT employment figures from analyst can differ widely depending on what U.S. labor department categories are use in the calculations.

Another firm that analyzes the labor market, Janco Associates, reported a gain of 9,900 jobs in June based on the categories it tracks.

Despite the increase in hiring, IT salaries remain flat, said Janco.

“Based on our interviews with over 96 CIOs in the last 30 days, we concluded that CIOs are not in a great hurry to hire new staff except to meet short term needs until they see a clear trend as to what is happening with the economy,” said Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis in a statement.

Janulaitis said that “67% of the CIOs we interviewed do not see any real push to expand staffing over the next 12 months.”

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Anonymous Attacks MIT

Anonymous goes after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website after its president called for an internal investigation into what role it played in the prosecution of web activist Aaron Swartz.

MIT president Rafael Reif revealed the investigation in an email to staff that he sent out after hearing the news about Swartz’s death.

“I want to express very clearly that I and all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy,” he wrote.

“I have asked Professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT’s involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.”

Hacktivists from Anonymous defaced two MIT webpages in the wake of the announcement and turned them into memorials for Swartz.

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ID Theft Projected To Cost $21B

A new audit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has discovered that the agency paid refunds to criminals who filed fraudalent tax returns, in some cases on behalf of people who had died, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which is part of the U.S. Treasury.

The IRS stands to lose as much as US$21 billion in revenue over the next five years due to identity theft, according to TIGTA’s audit, dated July 19 but publicized on Thursday.

TIGTA noted that the IRS did not agree with the $21 billion figure, but wrote that the figure does include estimated savings from new fraud control filters. Without new controls, TIGTA estimated losses of $26 billion.

Part of problem is that the IRS is not gathering enough data about fraud trends, such as how a return was filed, income information from W-2 forms, the amount of refunds and where those refunds were sent, TIGTA said.

“We found that $8.1 million in potentially fraudulent tax refunds involved tax returns filed from one of five addresses,” the audit said.

The IRS said it detected 938,664 fake tax returns during the 2011 processing year, which would have cost $6.5 billion. While TIGTA said the figure was “substantial,” it believes the IRS doesn’t know how many identity thieves are filing bogus returns and how much money is lost.

The IRS has implemented new fraud detection measures, but TIGTA found that institutional procedures were undermining those efforts. For example, taxpayers can begin filing returns in mid-January, but third parties that have information linked to those tax returns do not have to file until March 31.

The IRS is contacting some taxpayers to verify their identity. That simple measure stopped the issuance of $1.3 billion in potentially fraudulent tax returns as of April 19, TIGTA said.

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Are Medical Implants Vulnerable To Hackers?

Security experts have warned that many medical implants are vulnerable to cyber attacks that could endanger their users’ lives. While an increasing number of patients are being fitted with devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps to manage chronic conditions apparently the inventors did not think anyone would be evil enough to try and hack them.

For some reason they installed unprotected wireless links so that they could be updated easily. Therefore this means that hackers could gain remote control of such implants because they rely on unprotected wireless links to update them. After gaining access to the device, a cyber criminal could then switch it off or tell it to deliver a dangerous dose of medicine to the patient.

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Does LightSquared Interfere With GPS?

A second round of tests on LightSquared’s proposed land-based mobile data network again showed interference with a majority of GPS devices, except for cellphones, two U.S. federal departments stated Wednesday.

LightSquared wants to build a network of 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) base stations around the U.S. that would operate on frequencies close to those used by GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers. But the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will not approve the company’s plan unless potential interference with GPS has been resolved. Tests earlier this year showed the network could cripple many GPS devices.

The second round of tests was conducted last month and concentrated on LightSquared operating in a lower block of frequencies farther from those used by GPS.

“Preliminary analysis of the test findings found no significant interference with cellular phones,” the Department of Defense and Department of Transportation said in a statement on Wednesday. “However, the testing did show that LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to the majority of other tested general purpose GPS receivers. Separate analysis by the Federal Aviation Administration also found interference with a flight safety system designed to warn pilots of approaching terrain.”

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SEC Asks Companies To Disclose Attacks

U.S. securities regulators formally asked public companies for the first time to disclose cyber attacks against them, following a trend of high-profile cyber crimes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidelines on Thursday that laid out the kind of information companies should disclose, such as cyber events that could lead to financial losses.

Senator John Rockefeller had asked the SEC to issue guidelines amid concern that it was becoming hard for investors to assess security risks if companies failed to mention data breaches in their public filings.

“Intellectual property worth billions of dollars has been stolen by cyber criminals, and investors have been kept completely in the dark. This guidance changes everything,” Rockefeller said in a statement.

“It will allow the market to evaluate companies in part based on their ability to keep their networks secure. We want an informed market and informed consumers, and this is how we do it,” Rockefeller said in a statement.

There is a growing sense of urgency about cyber security following breaches at Google Inc, Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier, Citigroup, the International Monetary Fund and others.

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