Cispa cyber bill passed by US House

19 April 2013 Last updated at 06:06 ET

The US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act.

Cispa is designed to help combat cyberthreats by making it easier for law enforcers to get at web data.

This is the second time Cispa has been passed by the House. Senators threw out the first draft, saying it did not do enough to protect privacy.

Cispa could fail again in the Senate after threats from President Obama to veto it over privacy concerns.

A substantial majority of politicians in the House backed the bill.

The law is passing through the US legislative system as American federal agencies warn that malicious hackers, motivated by money or acting on behalf of foreign governments, such as China, are one of the biggest threats facing the nation.

"If you want to take a shot across China's bow, this is the answer," said Mike Rogers, the Republican politician who co-wrote Cispa and chairs the House Intelligence Committee.

'Fatally flawed'

Cispa has also secured the backing of several technology firms, including the CTIA wireless industry group, as well as the TechNet computer industry lobby group, which has Google, Apple and Yahoo as members. By contrast, the social news website Reddit has been vocal in its opposition to the bill. In March, Facebook said it no longer supported Cispa.

The bill could fail again in the Senate after the Obama administration's threat to use its veto unless changes were made. The White House wants amendments so more is done to ensure the minimum amount of data is handed over in investigations.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also opposed Cispa, saying the bill was "fatally flawed". The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders and the American Library Association have all voiced similar worries.

Cispa's authors say existing amendments have addressed many of the criticisms and more oversight was being given to data before it was handed over.

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Sony hacker Recursion goes to jail

19 April 2013 Last updated at 06:35 ET

A 25-year-old man known online as Recursion has been sentenced to a year in jail for hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Cody Kretsinger pleaded guilty last April, and admitted being part of an infamous hacking group known as Lulzsec.

After his jail term, Kretsinger will be required to do 1,000 hours of community service, a Los Angeles judge ruled.

Sony said the hack caused more than $600,000 (£392,000) in damage.

Not to be confused with the attack on Sony's PlayStation Network, the Sony Pictures hack in July 2011 involved breaching the company's website and accessing a database of customers' names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

Around 50,000 of the names were later posted online.

Kretsinger pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy and unauthorised impairment of a protected computer.

Prosecutors declined to say if Kretsinger was also co-operating with authorities in exchange for leniency.

Lulzsec in the dock

It follows guilty pleas last week from other hackers involved with Lulzsec.

At Southwark Crown Court in London, 26-year-old Ryan Ackroyd, from South Yorkshire, admitted to being part of the group that targeted the NHS and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

He is to be sentenced next month with three others: Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, from Peckham, south London, Jake Davis, 20, from Lerwick, Shetland, and Ryan Cleary, 21, of Essex.

Kretsinger's guilty plea came a month after it was revealed that another prolific hacker, known as Sabu - real name Hector Xavier Monsegur - had been co-operating with US authorities to provide information on people suspected of being part of Lulzsec.

Murdoch and CIA targeted

The group emerged as a splinter group of the Anonymous hacking collective in May 2011.

The name stood for Lulz Security - in which "Lulz" is derived from the popular internet term "lol", meaning "laugh out loud".

Members employed techniques to flood websites with high traffic - known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks - in order to render them unusable.

Lulzsec claimed to have attacked the Sun newspaper's website, on which a false story was planted suggesting that Rupert Murdoch, CEO of its News Corporation parent company, had died.

In the US, the group was credited with attacking the website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Lulzsec had previously posted a story on American broadcaster PBS's website, suggesting that the dead rapper Tupac Shakur was alive.

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Blackstone pulls out of Dell bid

19 April 2013 Last updated at 10:03 ET

Blackstone has decided not to submit a bid for computer company Dell, citing falling sales and fears over the company's finances.

Blackstone said it was concerned by an "unprecedented" drop in PC sales.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn and a consortium led by Michael Dell, the company's founder, are still in the bidding race.

Blackstone said it continued to view Dell as "a leading global company with strong market positions".

But it also said that the two worrying conditions meant it was nevertheless withdrawing its interest in the company.

Since Blackstone submitted its bid, Dell had reduced its operating income projections for the current year to $3 bn (£1.95bn), down from $3.7bn.

Michael Dell, joined by private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners, has proposed a $24.4bn buyout of the company.

The bid has drawn opposition from some shareholders who believe the offer is too low.

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Amazon to pilot TV shows online

19 April 2013 Last updated at 11:11 ET By Helen Bushby BBC entertainment and arts reporter

Fourteen pilot shows - including Alpha House and Zombieland - are to be put to the public vote on Lovefilm and Amazon.com.

Viewers can submit feedback influencing which shows get made into full series.

The 14 shows are made by independent production companies and produced by Amazon Studios, the film and series production arm of Amazon.

"This is the first time Amazon Studios has done this," said Simon Morris, Lovefilm's chief marketing officer.

Eight adult comedies and six children's animation series will be put to the public vote.

The shows will be aired on Amazon's pay subscription services - Amazon Prime in the US, and Lovefilm in the UK - but Morris told the BBC they would be available to everyone and not just subscribers.

The adult pilot shows include Alpha House, about four senators who live together in a rented house in Washington DC and stars John Goodman, who was recently in Oscar-winning film Argo.

"Bill Murray has got a cameo in Alpha House, looking a bit older, a little bit more bedraggled, but definitely Bill Murray," Mr Morris added.

Onion News Empire is set behind the scenes of the Onion News Network, a satirical daily news service, and "shows just how far journalists will go to stay at the top of their game", according to Amazon Studios.

It stars Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor as the "egomaniacal lead anchor".

Musical comedy Browsers stars Cheers and Frasier actress Bebe Neuwirth as the "terrifying" boss of a news website in Manhattan.

Other pilot shows include Zombieland - based on the film of the same name - featuring four survivors attempting to outwit zombies, while animated comedy Dark Minions, written by Big Bang Theory's Kevin Sussman and John Ross Bowie, is about two "slackers" working on an intergalactic warship.

The children's shows include animations Sara Solves It, where Sara and Sam solve maths-based mysteries, and Creative Galaxy, an interactive art adventure series.

"This isn't X Factor for some new titles where you get to vote and they're fairly gimmicky," Mr Morris said. "It has a unique position in the world in that it has a platform that's a pay platform, it has an entertainment platform."

He said that the "world of digital has been growing, driven in large part by the BBC iPlayer, from about 2008" and that he saw this move as the next stage.

"Mass-market digital consumption and streaming have come of age in the last few years," he added.

'Promotional tool'

But Toby Syfret, TV analyst for Enders Analysis, was sceptical about the venture, describing it as a "gimmick" and said he did not think it would make much of a dent in the TV landscape.

"I think the success of this will have a huge amount to do with the publicity they can get for it."

Amazon and Lovefilm were able to put pilots to the public vote because "they are not TV channels with set budgets", he said, adding that "you cannot sustain a programming operation if you let viewers decide - you're losing control of the purse strings".

He also queried whether programme-makers would want the public vote to potentially leave them "committed to the most expensive thing which is least good".

"Programme makers may end up saying 'we'll go with it, but it's a bit expensive so we'll cut the budget' - and then you've done what the public's asked but it's been slashed by half," he added.

"Ultimately, this is a promotional tool - Amazon's thinking that Netflix has done it this way [by broadcasting Kevin Spacey's House of Cards drama series] so we'll come at it from another way."

Earlier this year, the streaming TV and movie service Netflix made and broadcast House of Cards, and revealed plans to make at least five new shows a year.

YouTube, owned by Google, also recently launched its original channels initiative with 20 new channels coming from the UK.

Mr Morris said that the key thing that marked his venture out was that "the platform is open".

"Not everyone has the opportunity to go and pitch an idea to HBO in New York, not everyone can get on a plane to Cannes and pitch a script," he said.

"But there is now a vehicle whereby people are in a place that independent writers - whether they've got a track record or not - can put content through and it can be evaluated and brought to market. And that's the exciting thing about this."

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Google boss defends UK tax record

22 April 2013 Last updated at 05:21 ET

Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has defended his company paying just £6m in UK corporation tax.

His comments came after a committee of MPs last year denounced multinationals - including Google - who pay little tax on their UK earnings, as "immoral".

In an interview to be broadcast on The World at One on BBC Radio 4, Mr Schmidt said his firm invested heavily in the UK and its services boost the economy.

He conceded that "Britain has been a very good market for us".

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"We empower literally billions of pounds of start-ups through our advertising network and so forth," he said.

"And we're a key part of the electronic commerce expansion of Britain, which is driving a lot of economic growth for the country."

He added that Google's behaviour reflected the way all big international companies manage their taxes.

"The same is true for British firms operating in the US, for example," he said.

"I think the most important thing to say about our taxes is that we fully comply with the law and we'll obviously, should the law change, we'll comply with that as well."

Chancellor George Osborne, along with leaders in France and Germany, have called for international action to tackle so-called "profit shifting" by multinational companies to avoid taxes.

North Korean trip

Mr Schmidt also spoke about his well publicised trip to North Korea in January, saying his aim had been to plant a "seed" in the minds of government officials that letting the internet into the reclusive state would be necessary to having a "proper country."

"North Korea is by far the most isolated country on earth," he said.

"There's essentially no internet access. There are roughly a million mobile phones, but they don't even have the basic capability of browsing.

"So the average North Korean person is completely cut off from any of the kinds of conversations or knowledge that's going on globally. It's by far the worst such [country]."

But Mr Schmidt could not gauge the North Koreans' response.

"One of the characteristics of the North Koreans is that you can't tell what they're going to do because they don't actually acknowledge what you say," said Mr Schmidt.

He said officials listened to his speech, but that "they don't really answer you".

"The fact of the matter is the North Korean government is particularly good at PR about themselves. And if you look at the PR and essentially the spin and the stuff they say, it's bizarre."

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Giant mantis 'spider' robot unveiled

22 April 2013 Last updated at 06:07 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

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Inventor Matt Denton shows off his robotic spider creation

A giant-mantis robot with hydraulic legs has been unveiled by a designer who spent four years creating it.

Matt Denton, from Hampshire, estimates his "very expensive toy" has cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds.

He says a mining company and a marine research organisation are now interested in his design and he hopes it might be used at science fairs.

During its development the machine had one outing, at a music festival, where Mr Denton says it was well received.

"It's an entertainment vehicle," he said. "But I hope it will inspire people."

The project was only initially intended to take 12 months, Mr Denton, who usually specialises in small-scale animatronics for the film industry, said.

"After 18 months we tried the model out. We had to completely strip out and rebuild the legs. They were too heavy and complicated.

"I'm a software and electronics engineer so this was out of my area - I had to learn fast."

The robot, driver-operated by joysticks within a cockpit, can only travel at 1.5km/h (1mph) and manage a distance of 5km on a 20-litre (4.5-gallon) tank of diesel.

"It's not about miles to the gallon, it's about gallons to the mile," he said.

"It wasn't built to be efficient and fast. It was built to look cool and insect-like and fun."

Mr Denton said he was inspired by science fiction to create the "walking" machine.

"But legs are very inefficient - the wheel was invented for a reason," he added.

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Japanese police target anonymous net

22 April 2013 Last updated at 08:00 ET

Japanese people who "abuse" the Tor anonymous browsing network could be blocked from using it.

The recommendation was made in a report drawn up for the National Police Agency (NPA) in Japan by a panel of technology experts.

The panel was formed to help decide how to tackle crimes committed with the aid of the Tor network.

For months, Japanese police attempts to catch a hacker known as "Demon Killer" were hampered by his use of Tor.

'The Onion Router'

Internet service providers (ISPs) would be asked to block the use of Tor if people were found to be abusing it, the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reports.

Tor (The Onion Router) is a way for people to use the web without surrendering the identifying data that websites typically gather. As its name suggests, it sends data traffic through a series of routers arranged in layers like in an onion to make it difficult to find out who is browsing a site or is behind any particular web activity.

Tor has vexed several Japanese police investigations into cybercrime. In particular it stifled attempts to find and arrest a hacker who used the "Demon Killer" alias.

Japanese police began investigating the hacker after he started threatening to bomb schools and nurseries via messages posted to chat forums and discussion boards. A reward of 3m yen (£20,000) was offered for information leading to the hacker's identification.

Police arrested four people for posting the threats but realised the hacker had compromised the computers of these innocent victims and was abusing their machines remotely via Tor.

Malicious program

The hacker continued to taunt police in emails that sent investigators all over the country looking for him. In a bizarre twist the hacker directed investigators to Enoshima, an island off Tokyo, and gave them information that led them to a cat wearing a collar on which was a memory card.

The card held details of the code and malicious program he used to gain remote control of victim's computers. Inadvertently, directing police to the cat helped them catch the suspected hacker, Yusuke Katayama, 30, who was seen on CCTV footage with the cat.

After Mr Katayama's arrest, the NPA sought guidance on how to handle similar cases. The industry report drawn up for the NPA recommended considering a ban on Tor and other anonymising networks as they had been found to be used in a wide variety of crimes.

Japanese ISPs have not welcomed the recommendation.

"Communication privacy is our lifeline. We won't be able to accept such a request," an industry insider told the Mainichi Shimbun.

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LED lighting sales boom at Philips

22 April 2013 Last updated at 08:06 ET

Philips, the world's biggest lighting maker, has reported a 38% jump in first quarter LED sales from a year earlier.

The pricey but long-life and energy-efficient bulbs now represent 23% of its lighting sales.

The Dutch healthcare and consumer appliances group said it made 162m euros ($211m; £139m) in the first three months of the year.

Appliances sales were up 10% from a year earlier, but other parts of the business were stagnant.

"What we have seen in the first quarter is a slow start to of the year, with 1% sales growth in the world," chief executive Frans van Houten said. "That, of course, is not very exciting."

Sales in the US and Europe remained tepid. "We can also see that China is in a slower growth situation than one or two years ago," he told BBC World Business Report.

Nonetheless, Philips said in its statement that the firm was still on course to meet its targets for the year as a whole.

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Philips' chief executive officer Frans Van Houten: "It's a combination of becoming a leaner company and making sure that our innovations are primed"

Healthcare sales fell at an underlying rate of 1% from a year earlier, while overall lighting sales were flat due to weak demand from the construction sector.

Mr van Houten said that hospital chief executives in the US are currently being very careful with capital spending due to regulatory reforms.

One of the parts of the business to do better was its home entertainment division, as losses on its TV sales declined, pushing the unit back into an 8m-euro profit. Philips agreed in January to sell that division to Japan's Funai Electric for 150m euros.

The company wants to focus on its healthcare, light bulbs and home appliances businesses as part of its "Accelerate!" restructuring plan.

"We see another opportunity for a billion-euro improvement... by making products that are more competitive," Mr van Houten told the BBC.

He said that the firm could do this by designing products that use fewer expensive raw materials.

The group's profit for the quarter somewhat beat market expectations, and represents a rebound from a sizeable loss in the previous three-month period.

However, income from its continuing operations - excluding its soon-to-be-divested home entertainment division - was down about a quarter from the same period a year earlier.

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The LED lighting revolution

Philips is looking to boost growth by increasing innovation. On Saturday, the firm announced a new partnership with Swedish medical group Elekta and the Netherlands Cancer Institute to develop new MRI scanners that can be used to guide targeted radiotherapy.

"We think that minimal invasive treatment is the future for surgery," said Mr van Houten.

Earlier this month, Philips' lighting division unveiled a prototype LED strip light that would be twice as energy efficient as existing fluorescent lighting used in offices.

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Mixed reviews for Facebook Home

22 April 2013 Last updated at 08:57 ET

Facebook's Home app for Android phones has been downloaded more than 500,000 times from the Google Play store since its release on 4 April.

But it has received mixed reviews from users, with an average rating of 2.2 out of five stars.

The free-to-download app effectively replaces the phone's home screen with a Facebook feed and chat options.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said it could "change the relationship" people have with their mobile devices.

Some of the 11,000 reviews left for the app on Google Play mention issues with battery life and there are complaints that once Facebook Home is installed, widgets - which can be used on Android phones to customise other applications - no longer work.

Just over half of those rating the app gave it just one star, while about 1,800 gave it a top score of five stars.

While many agree it is a "good start" for the social-network giant's new approach to its mobile presence, lots of reviewers also admit it is only likely to appeal to Facebook's most dedicated users.

"If you're someone who constantly wants to be in the loop with what's going on, then this is for you," wrote one user on the reviews page. She added that she was planning to uninstall it.

Another wrote that the app was "smooth and pretty fast", but agreed "good friends" were required to keep the constant access interesting.

App growth

Tech analysis firm Canalys said that overall the smartphone app market was showing "healthy growth".

It said revenue of $2.2bn (£1.4bn) was recorded in the first quarter of the year from the four main app stores - the Apple App Store, Google Play, the Windows Phone Store and Blackberry World.

"Apps have had a huge impact on the way consumers use mobile devices, what they value, and what they expect from smart phones and tablets," said Adam Daum, the firm's head of analytics.

"This is a multi-billion-dollar growth market, with more and more consumers around the world now comfortable and confident in finding apps, downloading them and making in-app purchases, on a growing addressable base of smart phones and tablets."

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Google fined over wi-fi data capture

22 April 2013 Last updated at 09:42 ET

Google has been fined 145,000 euros (£125,000) by German data regulators for illegally recording information from unsecured wi-fi networks.

The country's data chief called it "one of the biggest known data protection violations in history".

But the regulator admitted the amount was "totally inadequate" as a deterrent to the company.

The search giant said it unintentionally collected data including emails, passwords and photos.

Google has said it never intended to store the personal data, which had been captured in 2008-10, while the company gathered material for its Street View service.

The information has since been deleted, the data protection agency said.

'Not authorised'

Under European regulations, the maximum fine for an accidental violation is 150,000 euros - but data protection supervisor Johannes Caspar called for that amount to be increased in future.

In a statement, the regulators said: "Among the information gathered in the drive-bys were significant amounts of personal data of varying quality. For example, emails, passwords, photos and chat protocols were collected."

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told the BBC that the violation came from "the actions of a single individual that were not authorised by the executives".

"Google of course is not perfect. In that particular case we actually disclosed it immediately and there were in fact no privacy violations.

"But it shows how seriously we take privacy and how important privacy is to everybody."

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