Half of Europeans subscribing to ultra-high-speed broadband by 2020, bringing an end to the phenomenon of ‘digital virgins’ and the creation of a European cyber-attack rapid response system – these are just some of the ambitious goals contained in the EU’s five-year plan for the online world, unveiled on Wednesday (19 May).

Anxious that the US, Japan and South Korea – still in parts classified as a developing country – are stealing a march on the old continent, where almost a third of people have still never accessed the worldwide web, the European Commission says it is time for a digital revolution.

While today, just one percent of Europeans are signed up to fast fibre-based internet, 12 percent of Japanese have such connections and 15 percent of South Koreans.

“Can you imagine that there are still some 30 percent of Europeans who have never used the internet? Digital virgins, so to say,” Dutch commissioner Neelie Kroes said in announcing the wide-ranging plans. “We want to ensure they all have the opportunity to discover the wonders of the digital world.”

By 2013, Brussels wants all Europeans to have basic broadband and by 2020, for everyone to have access high-speed broadband above 30Mbps, with 50 percent of Europeans able to subscribe to ultra-high-speed rates of above 100Mbps.

via Europe Sets Five-Year Internet Strategy – BusinessWeek.

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Posted by Victoria Espinel on May 20, 2010 at 10:10 AM EDT

Over the last few months, I have met with big technology companies that make sophisticated hardware and network systems as well as early stage companies that are just in the process of getting off the ground, all of which are hurt by IP infringement.

I met with a company that manufactures cement in innovative ways that will protect our environment, and with the heads of venture capital funds that are investing in green technologies, all of which face the risk of losing their new green technology (and the jobs that come with it) as a result of IP theft.

I sat down with book publishers, movie studios, music companies, and videogame companies, all of whom are faced with widespread problems resulting from internet piracy.  I heard concerns from many other sectors as well: our airplane industry, small manufacturers, automobile industry, steelworkers, textile manufacturers, and biotech, software, and telecommunication companies.

I also sat down with those who want strong defenses and exceptions to intellectual property liability, including academics across the country, or consumer rights organizations.  I met with Internet companies that organize information and help our citizens find out what they want to know about the world today and connect people around the globe, and Internet auction sites that allow consumers to buy what they want at the price they want, all of which are affected by our enforcement efforts.

Through this process, I have learned how many different types of businesses are affected and harmed by infringement of intellectual property.  I have been impressed by the level of knowledge and concern at the very top of some of our biggest and most innovative companies, responsible for millions of American jobs.  I had the opportunity to sit down with CEOs from Intel, eBay, Calera, Google, Warner Bros, and Pandora, among many others, representing nearly every innovation-intensive sector of our economy.

Perhaps most importantly, through these meetings and through the comments we received from the general public, we have received some excellent recommendations about how the United States government can improve our efforts to enforce our intellectual property, with some of the best ideas coming from the smallest companies.

via Hearing from America on Intellectual Property | The White House.

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The research puts a quantitative assessment on something that security gurus have known about for years, said Peter Eckersley, the EFF senior staff technologist who did the research. He found that configuration information — data on the type of browser, operating system, plugins, and even fonts installed can be compiled by Web sites to create a unique portrait of most visitors.

This means that most Internet users are a lot less anonymous than they believe, Eckersley said. “Even if you turn off cookies and you use a proxy to hide your IP address, you could still be tracked,” he said.

The data doesn’t actually identify the Web user, but it creates a unique browser “fingerprint,” that can be used to identify the user when he visits other Web sites.

Using JavaScript, Web sites are able to probe PCs and learn a lot. No single piece of data is enough to identify the visitor on its own, but when it’s all strung together — browser version, language, operating system, time zone details — a clearer picture emerges. Some things — what combination of plugins and fonts are installed, for example — can be a dead giveaway.

And using the private mode offered by some browser-makers does nothing to stop this analysis. “They provide you with some protection against other people who may be in your house or who have access to your computer, but they haven’t got to the point where they’ve provided protection against the companies that are profiling Web users,” Eckersley said.

In fact, there are already a handful of companies have already started offering this kind of cookie-less Web tracking to help e-commerce sites identify fraudsters. Companies such as 41st Parameter, ThreatMetrix, and Iovation are widely used in the banking, e-commerce and social Web sites.

via EFF: Forget cookies, your browser has fingerprints – Computerworld.

There’s good reason Arabic advertisements are appearing more and more on websites across the globe.

Online, the Arab language is flourishing as the English-language dominated internet slowly gives way to a new multilingual era, promising billions of new e-commerce dollars and a growing sense of electronic cultural self-identity in the Middle East.

“With more users in the MENA region connecting to the internet, businesses of all types and sizes are starting to realise the opportunity to express their brand values through the online marketing space,” said Joanne Kubba, Global Communications and Public Affairs Manager at Google, Middle East and North Africa.

“This is being driven by the growth in users coming online in recent years. Whilst Google does not reveal country specific data, we have seen an increased demand for Google AdWords,” Kubba said.

According to World Internet Statistics, latest recorded figures show that from 2000 to 2009, Arabic language on the web grew 2,297 per cent, easily ahead of Russia's 1,359 per cent.

Of the world’s total 1.8 billion web users, 60.2 million (3.3 per cent) are Arabic speaking.

The mushrooming of Arabic on the internet can be attributed in part to ambitious policies such as those advocated by the United Arab Emirates, which leads the Middle East region with 74.1 per cent internet penetration.

As many as 3.5 million of the 4.8 million residents in the UAE are online.

Since 2000, the UAE has witnessed a 384 per cent increase in internet user growth, during a financial and social renaissance that has propelled the Emirates onto the world stage.

via gulfnews : Worldwide web goes truly global with Arabic.

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The proposed amendment to the state secrets law, reported Tuesday by the state news media, defines a state secret broadly and loosely as information that, if disclosed, would damage China’s security or interests in political, economic, defense and other realms.

The amendment was submitted Monday to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, for a third reading, the final step before being signed into law. Few measures reach that point in China without being adopted.

The wording of the amendment, as cited by the state-controlled newspaper China Daily, suggested that Internet and telecommunications companies would have to take a more proactive stance in identifying leaks of state secrets and their sources. The paper said companies must detect, report and delete unauthorized disclosures.

But reports by the state-run news agency Xinhua seemed less definitive about whether the companies must independently scour online transmissions for forbidden information or simply cooperate with the authorities if they suspect transgressions.

via China Moves to Tighten Data Controls – NYTimes.com.

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Non-traditional communications devices such as smartphones and game consoles pose a particular problem to law enforcement agencies trying to milk them for forensic data that reveals criminal activity, attendees were told at the 2010 Computer Forensics Show in New York City.

“Forensic tools for cell phones are in their infancy,” says Stephen Riley, a forensic examiner with the FBI’s Computer Analysis and Response Team. “There’s lots of different carriers, different phones, different cables – just try to keep up.”Smartphones can communicate via SMS, MMS, mobile e-mail, mobile internet access, VoIP and traditional cellular voice networks, Riley says, making each machine a potential treasure trove of information but also a nightmare maze of possible proprietary technologies to unlock it.

Retrieving SMS messages can depend on the model of phone, the carrier, the time of day, even the country in which the phone is used. SIM cards removed from phones carry potentially useful forensic information, but unless it is associated with a particular phone’s PIN, it’s inaccessible. Perhaps the personal unlock feature controlled by phone manufacturers could release the data, but that requires knowing the make and model of the phone, he says.

The ready availability of cell phones is also a problem. Searches of suspects' residences can turn up drawers-full of cell phones that are no longer used but never thrown out. Yet they can demand valuable forensic time.

Game consoles pose a separate problem. They can be used to send e-mail and connect to the Internet but have very little internal memory so whatever is on the drive can be quickly over written and therefore gone forever, he says. “You can take a Wii onto the Internet and it doesn’t save sites or browser history,” he says. “If you type in a Web address and surf, 10 minutes later there’s no record of it.”

via FBI Struggles to Pull Criminal Data from Digital Devices – PCWorld.

“My objective is not to necessarily have Canada play a leading role in international online privacy, my responsibility is to deliver privacy protection as appropriately as possible to Canadians,” Ms. Stoddart said in an interview with the Financial Post. “But very early on in my stint as Privacy Commissioner, I came to the realization that particularly because of our very close trade and cultural links with the United States, that this job couldn’t be done just in Canada.” By mandating that even the largest U.S. online companies abide by Canada’s privacy laws when doing business in Canada or handling the personal information of Canadian users, Ms. Stoddart is, in effect, a sort of global Web cop, helping to improve privacy for billions of users across the borderless Internet. Last year, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was thrust into the international spotlight after an exhaustive 14-month investigation into Facebook prompted sweeping changes as to how the world’s largest social network – with more than 400 million users – handles the sensitive personal information of its users.

via Canada’s privacy boss setting rules for the world.

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But with Internet advertisers increasingly adept at targeting individuals based on the digital bread crumbs they leave as they click through the Web, “behavioral advertising” is also attracting greater scrutiny from government regulators, politicians and interest groups concerned about user privacy.

Internet companies say such targeting pays off for consumers and advertisers, because it is more likely to serve up ads people are actually interested in. Critics counter that most Americans do not want advertising tailored to their interests, particularly when it requires tracking their online movements.

“It’s kind of like the Wild West out there with behavioral advertising, where clearly the technology is miles ahead of our ability to regulate all the things that are going on,” said Conrad MacKerron of the San Francisco-based As You Sow Foundation, which advocates for corporate responsibility. The foundation will offer a shareholder proposal at Mountain View-based Google’s annual meeting May 13 asking for stronger privacy rules for personal data collected for behavioral ads.

via Google, Yahoo and others use online history to target advertising – San Jose Mercury News.

The emails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.

If the attachment is opened, it downloads several types of malicious software, including a program that steals passwords, McAfee said on Wednesday.

Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, sending them tainted messages via the social networking company’s own internal email system. With this new attack, they are using regular Internet email to spread their malicious software.

via New password-stealing virus targets Facebook | Reuters.

via FCC Offers Free Broadband Speed Test – PCWorld.