Tag Archives: ECPA

Weekly output: Amy Webb, unlimited data, connected-car privacy, commercial geoint, U2F adoption, ECPA reform

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The next few days will be a little crazy–starting with a 6 a.m. flight tomorrow to Orlando. I’m returning to Central Florida for the first time since 2011 to cover SpaceX’s attempt Tuesday to launch the Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle the U.S. has seen since the Saturn V. Assuming no scrubs, then I’m flying up to New York Tuesday night so I can cover Yahoo Finance’s cryptocurrency-focused All Markets Summit Wednesday, after which I will be delighted to sleep in my own bed once again.

1/29/2018: Fireside Chat with Futurist Amy Webb, State of the Net

I interviewed Amy at this tech-policy conference. She started with some harsh words about Washington’s ability to forecast future tech trends (her stock in trade), which probably didn’t go over very well in the room even if many policymakers around here need to realize the limits of their vision.

1/31/2018: Unlimited wireless data is here to stay; so is the need to check your options, USA Today

A new study by OpenSignal finding that download speeds at AT&T and Verizon have rebounded after a slump the research firm blamed on their shift to selling unlimited-data plans provided a news peg for this column reminding readers that they may be able to save money by opting for a limited-data plan–as unfashionable as that may be.

1/31/2018: Why a car can’t protect your privacy as well as a smartphone, Yahoo Finance

Watching a few panels at the Washington Auto Show’s public-policy day last week got me thinking about how Google Maps and connected cars each treat your location history–only one lets you inspect, edit, export and delete that information, and it’s not the one that requires an oil change.

1/31/2018: The Vanguard of Commercial GEOINT, Trajectory Magazine

This is the cover story for the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s quarterly magazine that holds up reasonably well for the first three-fourths or so–after which comes a bit on Strava that now looks problematic.

2/1/2018:  The authentication solution government has been slow to adopt, Fifth Domain

I’ve been meaning to write something about what’s held up the usage of “U2F” security keys–the cryptographically-signed USB fobs that can protect your Gmail or Facebook account from both phishing and the loss of either your phone number or your phone. This new government-cybersecurity site gave me that opportunity.

2/2/2018: The email privacy hole Congress won’t fix, Yahoo Finance

A couple of years ago, I started thinking that whenever Congress finally passed reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, it would be fun to write a post recapping how long that took. Well, that hasn’t happened, so I decided to use Groundhog Day to instead write a post recapping how long Congress has failed to fix this obsolete law.

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Weekly output: ECPA reform, Facebook video, iOS 10, Outlook’s “J”

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My fourth Online News Association conference wrapped up last night. This event stands as an outlier in my travel schedule: I pay for my conference badge in addition to my travel costs. (That’s also true of XOXO, but I’ve only gone to that twice.) I think it’s a justifiable expense in light of the things I learn and the connections I make. Plus, ONA allows a rare chance for a work-from-home writer like me to hang out with a large group of non-tech journalists, much as I once did in the Post’s newsroom.

9/14/2016: Congress could blow an opportunity to fix a major email privacy issue, Yahoo Finance

This story about the prospects for reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is one I could have written at any point in the last few years–my 2012 Disruptive Competition Project post linked to in the piece, sadly enough, still holds up.

yahoo-finance-facebook-at-ona-post9/15/2016: Facebook outlines its plan to insert ads into Live videos, Yahoo Finance

The onstage interview of a Facebook executive that opened ONA yielded some news about the social network’s intentions for live video–but did not offer much practical help for journalists trying to avoid invisibility on Facebook.

9/16/2016: Pros and cons of iOS 10, WTOP

I did this interview via Skype from my Airbnb lodging at 7:10 a.m. in Denver, which may explain why my voice sounded a little scratchy. Note that while I answered the host’s question about downgrading from iOS 10 to iOS 9 by saying that’s not worth it, you can do this for a limited time. But I still don’t recommend taking that step.

9/18/2016: If a sentence in an email ends in ‘J,’ it’s OK, USA Today

For years, I’ve been wondering why sentences in e-mails that looked like they were supposed be funny ended with a “J” instead of the obvious “:)” emoticon. The answer was a long-lived Microsoft Outlook bug that–maybe!–the company will fix now that it’s gotten a little more exposure.

Weekly output: e-mail privacy, 3-D printing, TV antennas, smartphone competition, sports networks, bargaining over TV bills

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It’s not a total coincidence that I wrote as much about TV as I did in the week running up to one of the biggest televised events of the year.

1/28/2013: Why Can’t Web Services Compete To Protect My Data From The Feds?, Disruptive Competition Project

Reporting this one made me feel a little dumb when I realized that I could have had a nice little scoop weeks or months earlier if I’d just asked Google, Microsoft and Yahoo what they require before turning over a user’s e-mail data to the government. It turns out that all three go beyond the strict requirements of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in requiring a warrant–but that none seemed to think this was something worth bragging about.

1/29/2013: Hold Your Fire Before Freaking Out Over 3-D Printed Guns, Disruptive Competition Project

I started writing this post in December, then decided I didn’t like the last third of it and set it aside. I finally picked it up again after CES. Somewhat to my surprise, it only got one “you want to ban all guns” reply.

Discovery TV antennas review1/30/2013: Two Flat, Stick-On Antennas Tune In Free TV, Discovery News

I revisited the subject of over-the-air TV for the first time in over a year to review a couple of flat, lightweight antennas. Somewhat to my surprise, they worked better than the old set of rabbit ears I had plugged into the set downstairs (and unlike that antenna, I could put each one high enough on the wall to avoid becoming a plaything for our toddler). So I bought one of these models, the Mohu, and am now trying to figure out exactly where on the wall it will get the best reception of the three trickier network affiliates: ABC’s WJLA, CBS’s WUSA and PBS’s WETA.

2/1/2013: Will A Two-Party System Adequately Represent Smartphone Users?, Disruptive Competition Project

BlackBerry has a new operating system, but will it do any better than Microsoft’s Windows Phone? (I’ve been testing Windows Phone 8 on an HTC 8X; there are things I like about it, but the app selection really holds it back.) In this post, I express the possibly-futile hope that either BlackBerry or Microsoft can become a viable alternative to the increasingly entrenched duo of Apple and Google.

2/3/2013: How sports networks inflate your TV bill, USA Today

One of the people on my neighborhood’s mailing list asked about a new fee that Verizon was going to put on her bill to cover regional sports networks. I told her I’d see what else I could find out. The column also includes a reminder that TV rate hikes can, at least sometimes, be negotiable if your service thinks you’ll leave.

Sulia highlights this week included two more rants about the TV business–one on Verizon’s extortionate CableCard rate hike and another about the stupidity of making some Hulu content “Web-only”–and a post noting that the “Apple tax” is real when you look at what it costs to get more storage on an iPad.

Weekly output: ECPA, WCIT, The Daily, search hijacking, router firmware

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As that abbreviation-dense title might indicate, I wrote about policy issues more than usual this week.

12/3/2012: ECPA And The High Cost of Tech Short-Sightedness, Disruptive Competition Project

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act basically strips your e-mail of the usual protections against government snooping once it spends more than 180 days on the server. Now that Congress is finally moving to fix that flaw, some 26 years after passing ECPA, I thought it a good time to recap an issue I neglected at the Post–and to put it in the context of the trouble Congress has had future-proofing legislation about technology.

12/4/2012: A World Government For The Internet? Not So Fast, Discovery News

The International Telecommunications Union is having a 193-nation summit in Dubai this month, called the World Conference on International Telecommunications, and some of its participants want to see the ITU get a larger hand in running the Internet. I don’t think that will happen, but other mischief could happen over WCIT’s remaining week.

The Daily DisCo post12/4/2012: The Daily’s Demise: Another Secret Sauce For The News Business Dries Up, Disruptive Competition Project

I’m still irked at how the Post obsessed over the launch of News Corporation’s iPad publication, so of course I was going to write about The Daily shutting down less than two years into the experiment. A lot of other journalists had the same idea, but I hope I took it a little further by comparing the way publishers latched onto the hope of tablet apps with the news business’s other exercises in wishful thinking.

12/9/2012: Tip: If your search goes awry, it might not be your PC, USA Today

The post I cranked out here about my search-hijacking experience got enough attention (thanks for the link, Loop Insight) that I decided to write a less technically-inclined version for USA Today. I threw in a tip gained from my debugging attempts about updating firmware on a WiFi router; I had neglected that chore until I logged into its admin page to look for weird DNS settings and saw it had an update waiting.