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The US government admits that more needs to be done in order to protect the country and its citzens from cyber attacks.
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(Source BBC Technology)
Posts Tagged “government”
Mar
04
2010
 
No phone, no net: why rural children are leavingPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Government commission says more needs to be done to help young people stay in rural areas The lack of mobile phone reception and broadband coverage in rural areas has become the No 1 issue in dissuading young people from staying on in the countryside, the chair of the Commission for Rural Communities has said. In a report to the prime minister, Stuart Burgess, the government’s rural advocate, said that the long-term future of the countryside is in jeopardy because so many young people are being forced out of rural areas to find homes, jobs and support. In what was described as a “snapshot” of the state of the countryside, Burgess found that almost 60% of urban areas are able to receive a cable-based broadband service, while in villages and hamlets this drops to 1.5%. The report said that lack of internet access was a major issue for children who live in rural areas. “With social networking such a feature of youth culture, lack of access can lead to frustration and exclusion.” The issue was one for both parents and children. In an interview with the Guardian, Burgess said that “the No 1 issue is broadband access and mobile phone networks for young people thinking of buying houses in rural areas. For children there’s an expectation that they will be able to use the internet for homework. Yet we have seen schools’ internet network close down at 4pm in rural areas and there’s no internet at home.” He called on the government to introduce a scheme nationally modelled on a successful pilot in remote Cumbria, which now has the highest penetration of broadband in any rural area in England. Burgess said that for adults phone reception was becoming essential and that he wanted mobile phone companies to treat the countryside as a foreign country allowing customers to “roam for a network to connect to. When you go abroad mobile phones roam for a network to connect to. Yet in rural areas, where you may only have one provider, if your phone is from another company you cannot access the signal.” The recession had thrown into sharp relief the historic advantages of towns in Britain. At the end of June 2009, 40% of 16- 24-year-olds in rural areas were unemployed or economically inactive, but the report pointed out that of the 573 Job Centre Plus outlets in England, only 23 are in more rural areas. “Government-approved training schemes, accessed largely through Job Centre Plus, are not a viable option in rural areas.” The report says that even recent government initiatives have been unequally distributed. Of the 3,000 Sure Start Children’s Centres in England only 80 are in villages and hamlets and on average these each have to provide for 2,500 children, more than double the average for urban centres.
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Mar
03
2010
FSB urges government to rethink copyright measuresPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The Digital Economy Bill should be amended so small businesses are not penalised for customers’s unlawful file sharing, the trade group has said
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Feb
26
2010
Phone hackers’ soft targets | Brendan MontaguePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The most damning indictment of phone hacking is that it was almost always used to get gossip rather than expose wrong The fact investigators working for the News of the World hacked into my mobile phone to cut me out of a potential £30,000 celebrity scoop is not surprising. If you swim with sharks you expect the odd puncture wound. The fact this process is so simple, swift and apparently routine is shocking. I called the Sunday tabloid one bright afternoon with the name of a celebrity chef and tales of famous London nightclubs, glamorous hotels and sexual impropriety. The reporter I spoke to was Clive Goodman. He promised me the Screws would pay the most – but something about his conspiratorial tones turned me towards a more gregarious Sunday Mirror news editor. The News of the World was not going to let this apparent front page get away. A rapid succession of calls to my mobile followed. These allowed the caller to access my voicemail – I had not set a password. My personal greeting gave them my real name and my place of work while the messages revealed the identity of my then girlfriend, who was the source of the story. Goodman called me on my work mobile and aggressively demanded the name of the chef’s female acquaintance. I refused. It was after that that my mobile phone records were hacked. T-Mobile confirmed a bizarre call where someone pretending to be me failed the most basic security question – my date of birth. Despite this, the caller was able to try again just 15 minutes later and, this time being successful, he was given a full rundown of my recent calls. He then tried to hack my partner’s phone records. Phone hacking in this way was astonishingly easy. A few years ago, it seemed to be the default method of some News of the World reporters to use information gained in this way. While other hacks were busy knocking on neighbours’ doors or visiting relatives found through birth and marriage records, journalists from the Screws instantly had a direct line to make their offers of “a life-changing amount of money”. The true scandal here is not just the use of such illegal methods. The most damning indictment of this chequebook journalism is the fact it was only very rarely used to find real wrongdoing by the rich and powerful. Blagging your way into someone’s phone records would be morally defendable if there was a genuine and compelling public interest. Journalists rightly enjoy more latitude under the data protection act and human rights laws – if there is a real reason for subterfuge. The Press Complaints Commission code states: “Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge, including by agents or intermediaries, can generally be justified only in the public interest.” Muckraking has served the public good: by rummaging through the bins of solicitors Benjamin Pell discovered documents showing the then Tory minister Jonathan Aitken had been involved in Saudi arms deals. But how many of the 100 people targeted by the News of the World’s phone hacking will turn out to be rogue arms dealers, corrupt politicians and corporate killers? And how many will be minor celebrities? The full armoury of investigative reporting – GPS tracking systems and hidden cameras, “lilly-whites” and “honey traps” – was unleashed against footballers, Big Brother contestants and It girls. And now public figures of means can turn to Max Clifford as a form of defence and use “pay as you go” mobiles. So the tabloid hacks turn on less wealthy, less protected victims. This is an abuse of power by newspapers owned by one of the most powerful media tycoons in the world, Rupert Murdoch. Moreover, the man in charge of the News of the World when this abuse of power was taking place was Andy Coulson. Coulson, we know, jumped ship as the Screws hit the Goodman phone-hacking iceberg and is now captain of spin for the Conservative party as it sails towards power. This has serious implications. If the Tories win the general election, as predicted, Coulson will be at the very heart of government with an army of civil servants working for him. Yet, by his own admission, when managing a small team of reporters, he was incapable of detecting flagrant criminality on a huge scale.
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Feb
26
2010
Thaksin Shinawatra: from phone billionaire to fugitive ex-prime ministerPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Leader accused by military of corruption but popular with rural poor Born to a silk-trading family in Chiang Mai, Thaksin Shinawatra began his working life as a policeman. After several failed business ventures, in 1989 he established Shinawatra Datacom, a mobile phone network business that was to become the biggest phone operator in Thailand, and make him a multibillionaire. He entered politics in 1994, becoming foreign minister that same year. He was elected prime minister in the general election of 2001, and became hugely popular, particularly in the north and north-east of the country, enfranchising the rural poor, and offering them healthcare for 30 baht (60p) and low-cost loans. He won a second election in 2005 but was swept from power in a bloodless coup in 2006 by a military leadership that argued he was corrupt, but was increasingly fearful of his growing popularity and power. In 2008 he was convicted of a conflict of interest over a land deal involving his wife. He was sentenced to two years’ jail, but had fled the country before the verdict was delivered. A fugitive, he now lives in Dubai and serves, to the fury of the Thai government, as an economic adviser to neighbouring Cambodia. He is best-known in Britain for his short-lived ownership of Manchester City football club.
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Adam Elgar hopes a mobile broadband dongle will do for his daughter, who is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access. My daughter is moving into a house with no fixed line internet access, and she’s sceptical about going down the dongle route with her laptop. Her mobile phone signal will be adequate, but not great. How could she best achieve the bandwith needed for (for example) watching TV online? Your 8 October 2009 answer — Can 3G replace a landline? — suggests that only a landline will do. But are there now other solutions that you’d recommend? I would love to be able to recommend WiMax (IEEE 802.16), which is much like a long-range version of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11), but it’s very unlikely that your daughter is living in an area where it’s available. Given the UK government’s/Ofcom’s lack of interest in WiMax, I don’t see that changing. I would also love to be able to recommend LTE (Long Term Evolution), which is the 4G service of choice among phone network suppliers, but it is probably still a couple of years from common use. Since I can’t do either, I’d suggest your daughter either looks into the cost of a landline or tries to find a friendly neighbour who will share an existing Wi-Fi network. Or, particularly in a rural area, considers two-way satellite services like Astra2Connect. While I wasn’t very keen on mobile 3G dongles last October, I’m even less keen on them today. I had been using my 3 dongle inside the M25 for email and Twitter but I’ve stopped because it’s often not worth the effort — and 3’s HSPDA seemed to me to be the best service! Even with a dongle, you’re not connected the whole time, so it’s not really “mobile broadband”: it’s more like “mobile dial-up”. And because of line drops/tunnels/tall buildings/whatever, you can spend more time connecting and disconnecting (and downloading 3’s pointless home page) than you do tweeting. I wouldn’t usually try to watch a YouTube video or iPlayer programme via 3G, though it might be possible. The actual throughput your daughter will get will depend on exactly where she lives: results can vary on the same street, or even inside the same house. However, I’d be a touch surprised if she got much more than 2.2 Mbps, regardless of the “headline speed”. I wouldn’t be shocked if she got 1 Mbps, or even less. By contrast, a fixed phone line or cable connection should normally be able to deliver 3 Mbps to 7 Mbps for a lower cost. (You would also have to include the cost of installing and renting the phone line, but sometimes this can be shared between four or five people.) You can perhaps get some idea of the likely performance and the deals on offer by entering your daughter’s post code in the “Speed in my area” page at Broadband Speedchecker. This takes users’ speed test results from the past six months and plots them on a Google map. There are a few pins for mobile broadband services, though it could do with more. In the end, I’d guess that mobile broadband is now worse than it used to be because many more people are using it. The market has grown with the arrival of better smartphones (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android etc) and the cheaper deals for dongles and bandwidth taken up by mobile netbook and notebook users, me included. Are the network providers going to expand capacity (which costs money) faster than required by the number of new users? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bank on it.
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Feb
23
2010
UK government won’t be keeping mobile databasePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Leave that to the network operatorsThe Home Office has responded to a petition against plans for state registration of mobile phones, by pointing out that the state has no such plans.…
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The Government’s plans for a 50p-a-month tax on households to fund super-fast broadband across the country have been condemned by an influential group of MPs. Read Full Story…
Feb
23
2010
Govt 50p Broadband Tax Plans ‘Penalise Poor’Posted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Government plans for a 50p-a-month tax on households to fund super-fast broadband across the country have fallen foul of an influential group of MPs. Read Full Story…
Feb
22
2010
Workers at Chinese mobile phone supplier poisoned by cleaning chemicalPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Several staff require continued care after 47 were treated last year for effects of n-hexane at factory that supplies Nokia Workers at a Chinese factory that makes parts for mobile phone companies including Nokia have been in hospital for months after being poisoned by a chemical used in production. The owner of the plant says it stopped using the screen-cleaner n-hexane in August last year after 47 workers were taken ill. But the lingering effects of the chemical have left several requiring continued medical care. Taiwanese firm Wintek is known for its touch-screen panels for mobiles and owns several factories in mainland China. It is reported to make the iPhone’s touch-screen panels and has been widely touted as a potential supplier of iPad components for Apple. Nokia said the n-hexane was not used on its production lines but that it had ensured measures were taken to protect workers’ safety at the plant in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. It is not clear why Wintek started using n-hexane to clean screens instead of alcohol, nor when it did so, although the health problems appear to have surfaced in July. The issue gained attention when 2,000 workers from the factory went on strike last month over a pay dispute and cited lingering anger about the chemical incident. Deng Yulong, a 19-year-old worker, told Chinese Central Television she became sick soon after starting work at the plant. She suffered from weakness and severe headaches and fainted twice in the factory. Repeated exposure to the chemical at high concentration can cause nerve damage and muscle weakness, with symptoms in severe cases lasting for as long as two years. A spokesman for Wintek said that “almost all” of the affected workers were back at work but that some remained in hospital. He could not say how many had recovered. He said that n-hexane was commonly used in the industry, adding that the problems arose because no prior evaluation of the plant was carried out. Because some areas were not ventilated, the concentration of the chemical built up and poisoned the workers. The spokesman added that the company had paid the workers’ medical bills and regular wages, topped up with food and nutrition supplements amounting to more than their usual wage. In a statement, Nokia confirmed the Suzhou factory provided parts for its handsets, but said n-hexane was not used in manufacturing its products or their components. It said: “We became aware of the allegations regarding the use of n-hexane in July 2009 and started our investigation immediately. Although it was confirmed that the n-hexane was not used on our production lines at the supplier … we agreed on a development plan for health and safety management at Wintek’s Suzhou factory and a series of corrective measures have been taken since then.” The company added: “Nokia firmly believes that all employees have the right to ethical and legal treatment. The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees are vital to the success of our business.” It said it expected suppliers to take a similar approach and demonstrate their progress in these areas, working with them to go beyond legal compliance to meet the company’s standards. A spokesperson for Apple confirmed that the company had received the Guardian’s email queries, but no response was forthcoming despite repeated phone calls. Wintek says it cannot identify its clients and Apple does not normally comment on suppliers. Chinese media have reported workers’ claims that colleagues died from exposure to the substance, naming one possible fatality, but the local government and Wintek says that no one died of n-hexane poisoning.
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Feb
22
2010
Government rules out file-sharer disconnectionsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
In response to an e-petition, the prime minister’s office has said disconnecting people for unlawful P2P activity would be disproportionate
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The annual showcase of the latest games, marketing wheezes and software updates for the mobile telecoms industry is opening in Barcelona From tiny start-ups looking to get their games and gizmos in front of Google, Vodafone and Microsoft to veterans of the telecoms industry who will be glad-handing old contacts, this week’s Mobile World Congress will host a clutch of British technology firms hoping to turn back the tide sweeping in from the US and far east. UK Trade & Investment, the government body that supports British firms overseas, is helping out 120 companies at the show and part-funding the attendance of 50. The Cambridge-based Hypertag is typical of the firms being taken there. It has developed pioneering technology that makes it easy for advertisers to connect with consumers through poster sites that use short-range Bluetooth technology. Advertisers can use the technology to offer people anything from free music and game downloads to money-off vouchers direct to a phone. After being funded by the Technology Strategy Board, set up by the government three years ago to invest in innovative technologies, Hypertag has worked for 18 months with the billboard firm JC Decaux and PSI, the airport advertising part of Aegis. Having tested its technology in Luton airport, Hypertag is looking for partners in Barcelona. “We’ve got technology which we know companies want to use and now it’s all about sales,” said director Jonathan Morgan. UKTI is also helping Movirtu, which is targeting the billion people in developing countries who live on less than $2 a day and cannot afford a mobile phone but may spend 30% of their income on phone calls. Its MX Share service, already tested in Africa, allows people to make and receive calls and texts on someone else’s handset, without them needing their own expensive sim card, handsets or additional software. At the show, Movirtu will launch a new service that will give users easy access to information on healthcare, education or even agriculture through mobiles. It is also looking for network partners in developing countries, said the chief executive, Nigel Waller. “We would like to move forward with a number of operator agreements to give us scale.” Also eyeing the developing market is Synchronica, which will showcase two new low-cost MessagePhone handsets that offer all the functions of a BlackBerry, such as emails and texting, but at under $100. Other UK-listed firms include Intec, which specialises in billing systems for mobile networks, the Bluetooth-chip designer CSR, mobile marketing specialists 2ergo and mobile banking experts Monitise. But it’s not all about gadgets. Also plying their wares will be Foof Productions, the Gateshead-based mobile phone game creators, and the Middlesbrough-based developer, Fluid Pixel. They are the creative parents of Animentals, a mobile game that takes a twisted take on the virtual pets craze spawned by Tamagotchi in the 1990s. Already available on Nokia’s Ovi store and with an iPhone version due out soon, Animentals takes place in the hospital of Dr Foof, who must nurse a collection of crazed pets back to full mental health, partly through a series of challenges. The Animentals range from the depressed Goth penguin Pingoth to the highly unstable Furball. “What Dr Foof is offering is rehab for damaged digital pets,” says the game’s producer Andy Banks. After four days in the hothouse of the congress, it’s a need many of the attendees will recognise only too well.
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The government calls on the mobile phone industry to do more to protect handset owners against theft and other crimes. Read Full Story…
Feb
09
2010
130,000 laptops ordered through Home Access SchemePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
More than 130,000 families have applied for free laptops and broadband Read Full Story…
An influential group of MPs and peers says the government’s plans to illegal file-sharing could breach the rights of net users. Read Full Story…
Feb
05
2010
File-sharing crackdown criticised for ‘lack of detail’Posted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Parliamentarians and lords want the government to better explain why it is necessary to disconnect unlawful file-sharers, and how the process would work
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Feb
04
2010
Scotland strikes deal with BT to upgrade exchangesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The Scottish government has struck a deal with BT to upgrade eight rural Read Full Story…
Feb
03
2010
Orange/T-Mobile merger threatened with UK inquiryPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
• Orange and T-Mobile hoped to escape UK scrutiny The Office of Fair Trading is calling for the proposed merger of Orange and T-Mobile to be investigated by the regulatory authorities in Britain rather than merely subjected to scrutiny in Brussels. The news, expected to be announced on Wednesday, will be warmly welcomed by consumer groups that have campaigned hard for OFT scrutiny of the deal. There are fears the merger, which will create the UK’s largest mobile phone network, could hamper competition and force up prices for consumers. It is a blow for Orange and T-Mobile, currently the third and fourth placed networks in Britain, as it means a further delay to a deal originally announced in September. They had hoped scrutiny of the merger would be confined to regulators in Brussels, with clearance possibly granted as early as mid-February. Orange and T-Mobile have been lobbying the OFT, the telecoms watchdog, Ofcom, and Brussels regulators in recent weeks to try to assuage competition concerns. But the OFT will inform the European commission that it remains worried about certain aspects of the merger and wants to subject it to further scrutiny, dragging out the process for weeks, possibly months. The OFT is understood to be particularly concerned about the effect on the UK’s smallest mobile phone network, 3, and the merged group possibly having a stranglehold on the country’s mobile phone spectrum. The OFT’s decision raises the possibility the deal could be referred to the Competition Commission, whose investigations can run for six months or more. The OFT is not, however, believed to be planning to call for an immediate Competition Commission inquiry. Instead it hopes to use the threat of one to wrest a number of undertakings from Orange and T-Mobile. The deal would give Orange and T-Mobile more than twice the mobile phone spectrum owned by market leader O2 or second-placed Vodafone, and more than five times the amount held by 3. The government is hoping to auction more wireless spectrum over the next few years, including the slice of the airwaves freed up by the switch to digital TV. But before it can start the sell-off, the regulator needs to deal with the capacity the companies already own. Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile all want to upgrade the spectrum they were given in the 1980s and 1990s to carry so-called 2G voice services, making it capable of running 3G mobile broadband. But they all own different parts of the spectrum and 3 has no legacy network capacity at all. As part of the government’s Digital Britain process, its independent spectrum broker Kip Meek suggested a wholesale restructuring of the airwaves, capping the amount of spectrum any operator could hold in return for freeing up existing spectrum for 3G. The Orange and T-Mobile merger was announced towards the end of his negotiations. He was able to take it into account but the whole deal has been thrown into confusion by objections from BT, which is threatening to take the government to court. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills extended the consultation deadline on the plan by a month in an effort to appease BT. But the new deadline, this Friday, might not leave time to enact the necessary secondary legislation before a general election. The OFT is concerned the T-Mobile and Orange deal might go ahead with no workable spectrum plan in place and it wants to ensure the merged group does not rule the airwaves. The merger with Orange could also jeopardise T-Mobile’s network sharing deal with 3. The operator has helped cut mobile prices in the UK and chief executive Kevin Russell said yesterday its two-year-old network-sharing joint venture with T-Mobile – called MBNL – is an important part of its future. The OFT is concerned the introduction of Orange could unsettle the venture, hampering 3’s ability to compete. “MBNL for us is a fundamental strategic platform,” Russell said yesterday in a presentation to analysts about his network. “It is a fundamental piece of our strategy, any exposure, however remote, to that not being supported by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile is a risk for us we believe needs to be closed off.” Delays and trade-offsThe OFT has no power to force companies to change the way mergers or acquisitions are structured, but it can threaten to bring in the Competition Commission to run a full-scale inquiry. Many companies would rather reach a deal than go through that lengthy process. Last year the OFT struck a deal with the Co-op: the supermarket agreed to sell 133 stores across the country in return for having its merger with Somerfield passed without a competition inquiry. The stores were snapped up by rivals such as Morrisons and Sainsbury’s. In the spring, the OFT accepted undertakings from Global Radio that it would sell a clutch of radio station in the Midlands – including Beacon, Mercia and Wyvern – to avoid a Competition Commission inquiry into its £375m acquisition of GCap Media, after raising concerns that the deal could harm the region’s advertising market. More recently, the Co-op proposed selling some of its funeral parlours in the south west to gain clearance for its acquisition of Plymouth & South West Co-operative Society, an independent co-operative which as well as being a food retailer is also a provider of funeral services.
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A Conservative government would use part the BBC licence fee to fund the Read Full Story… |
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