Consumers worried about the National Security Agency's ability to read even encrypted electronic data have few options, according to cybersecurity and privacy experts. And some experts said the NSA's reported actions to crack the sophisticated technology that masks data traveling over the Internet may have made that information more vulnerable, possibly exposing Web users to criminal hackers.
Verizon-FCC Court Fight Takes On Regulating Net
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Few people would dispute that one of the biggest contributors to the extraordinary success of the Internet has been the ability of just about anyone to use it to offer any product, service or type of information they want. How to maintain that success, however, is the subject of a momentous fight that resumes this week in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
‘PBS NewsHour’ Begins Its Overhaul
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
The 38-year-old “PBS NewsHour” began a new era, adding Saturday and Sunday newscasts for the first time and preparing for the debut on Sept 9 of Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff as the new weeknight anchor team and the first female co-anchors at any network.
Here’s how phone metadata can reveal your secrets
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
The National Security Agency’s surveillance program, now being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, only collects metadata about Americans’ phone calls—who they call, when, and how long the calls last. In defending the program, the government has cited a controversial 1979 Supreme Court decision that held that phone records are not protected by the Fourth Amendment because consumers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their calling records.
Aereo Wins Send Networks on Hunt to Stop Streaming TV
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Broadcasters stymied by court losses in New York are turning to judges in California and Massachusetts in their campaign to shut down the Aereo.
Facebook and Google Try Self Help
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
It turns out you need lots and lots of cement when building Internet super-highways. Now web heavyweights like Google and Facebook want to mix their own.
Inside Comcast’s $30 Billion TV Bet
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
In the two years since Comcast bought NBCUniversal, Steve Burke has shown a zeal for shaking things up with little sentimentality, weeding out some of the company's most well-known personalities in the process.
Netflix executive upends Hollywood
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
The man at the center of Netflix's transformation from DVD-by-mail service to Internet TV network, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, seems to take pleasure in upending industry conventions.
Democracy May Prove the Doom of WBAI
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
WBAI likes to call itself “radio for the 99 percent.” But most of the time the station — a listener-supported and proudly scrappy mainstay of the left since 1960 — is lucky to be heard by 0.1 percent of the New York radio audience. That disparity, and the teetering finances of the station and its owner, the nonprofit Pacifica Foundation, became apparent with a tearful on-air announcement by Summer Reese, Pacifica’s interim executive director, that the station was laying off 19 of its 29 employees just to cover basic expenses like the rent for its transmitter atop the Empire State Building.
Al Jazeera Sues AT&T for Dropping New US Channel
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Al Jazeera has sued AT&T for dropping the new U.S. channel on the eve of its launch.