The US House of Representatives approved the Moving Forward Act this week, a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that puts $100 billion toward bringing high-speed broadband to underserved areas. The ambitious bill also allocates funds toward transportation and clean energy initiatives, like $500 billion for rebuilding highways, bridges and rail, and $70 billion for promoting renewable energy.

The main objective of the broadband portion of the bill is to bring high-speed internet to “unserved and underserved rural, suburban, and urban communities,” as well as adequate support for it, according to a Moving Forward Act fact sheet from the Department of Transportation. It prioritizes remote learning for children by providing digital equipment and outfitting school buses and school libraries with Wi-Fi. The bill also provides broadband payment support for low-income households and the recently unemployed.

The full version of the Moving Forward Act isn’t likely to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate. However, the broadband-related amendments may still have a chance, said Matt Wood, President of Policy and General Counsel at Free Press Action, a media advocacy group. “People in cities and rural areas alike need better broadband at better prices, no matter their party or politics,” Wood said.
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The bill is just one of many recent efforts by the government to close the “digital divide.” In February 2019, President Donald Trump unveiled the American Broadband Initiative aimed at bringing broadband to rural America. Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission committed $20.4 billion to the same end.

The very first contact tracing app powered by Google and Apple's exposure notification APIs has gone live in Switzerland.

As announced on Twitter by EPFL yesterday, 'SwissCovid' is now undertaking a large scale pilot, with hopes that it will pave the way for public availability by mid-June.

As of today, employees at @EPFL, @ETH_en, @vbs_ddps, and some hospitals and cantonal administrations can download the digital proximity tracing application #SwissCovid. This large-scale pilot paves the way for public availability by mid-June. https://t.co/E9hl43g8Ca #COVID19 #DP3T

In an announcement the institute stated:

Several thousand people in Switzerland can now download "SwissCovid," the official application for tracing contacts at risk of transmission of COVID-19 if they wish. "This is the first time that the operating system updates from Google and Apple enable its deployment and testing on such a large scale," says Professor Edouard Bugnion, Vice-President for Information Systems at EPFL. He was at the heart of discussions with Google and Apple to have them adopt the "DP3T" protocol led by the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology. Alfredo Sanchez, project manager, notes that "this gives great responsibility to the Swiss testers, as many other countries intend to adopt the same protocol later on."

One important footnote is that while the pilot is ongoing, the Swiss parliament will deliberate revisions to the law on epidemics. MPs must debate and approve the scheme before it is offered to the public, however recent research has suggested that as many as 70% of Swiss residents support the program.

This is the first large-scale testing of an app that uses Apple and Google's exposure notification technology. As per the two companies' stipulations, the operation is also decentralized:
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SwissCovid operates in a "decentralized" way, which means that the operations that are essential from a privacy point of view are not carried out on a centralized server, but on each phone. The app uses Bluetooth to exchange and record the ephemeral proximity identifiers of other phones in the vicinity. These identifiers are kept on the phone unless a person is tested positive for COVID-19. In that case, their doctor will give them a single-use code that allows them to voluntarily share the ephemeral keys on their own phone that correspond to the days when the person was contagious. These keys are sent to a server managed by the Swiss administration.

Given the level of concern many users have had with Zoom’s security and privacy, the company has been hard at work during the first two weeks of April to bring better control to its video conferencing software. The first changes transformed the safety profile of using its service, albeit with additional overhead for hosts and people joining meetings. On April 8, Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan, told NPR, “When it comes to a conflict between usability and privacy and security, privacy and security [are] more important–even at the cost of multiple clicks.”

Here is a synopsis of the recent changes.

Passwords required. All free-tier accounts, free upgraded education accounts, and single-host paid accounts now need a password. It’s generated automatically and may be changed but cannot be removed. This blocks access by those who obtain the meeting ID but not the password, and it prevents access through bots trying to join randomly generated meeting IDs in the reasonable hope of connecting to a password-free session.

Meeting ID hidden. The meeting ID no longer appears in the title bar of Zoom apps to prevent it from appearing in screen captures posted on social media or elsewhere.

Waiting Room enabled. By default, the Waiting Room feature is now enabled for all accounts, even those that previously had the option turned off. The Waiting Room puts participants who attempt to join the meeting into a holding position. The host must admit them. It’s fussy, and if it’s unnecessary in your environment, you can override the default on a per-meeting or per-host basis.

Meeting locks. With a click of the new Security button, hosts can lock a meeting at any point to prevent new participants from being added to the Waiting Room or joining directly. Another click unlocks the meeting.

Name change prevention. Hosts can prevent participants from changing the name that appears when they join or request to join a meeting. Some people—both unwanted visitors and students who thought it was funny—were changing their names to derogatory or abusive forms during meetings.

Domain contacts visibility. Zoom no longer treats every user with the same domain in their email address as belonging to the same organization. Previously, anyone with a given address could view account information or add everyone to their contacts who had the same domain, excluding some significant ISPs and mail hosts, like Gmail and iCloud. That feature is now disabled for free tier and paid single-host accounts, and must be enabled on higher-tier paid accounts.
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Traffic routed through China. The paths that data travels is a political, regulatory, and business question, not just a technical one. Citizen Lab’s report revealed that Zoom was routing some traffic that didn’t involve any participants in China through servers in that country. Zoom explained that it was an error in load balancing, which seemed plausible given the quick scaling of operations it needed to have. The company said it made permanent changes to prevent data passing through Chinese servers from outside the country. A new feature for paid users starts April 18, and those users will be able to select which of several regions data may pass through. Free users are locked to data centers in the region from which they subscribed. Apart from concerns about China, some people outside the United States don’t trust the National Security Agency or other US intelligence groups.

A company that makes internet-connected thermometers has followed the flu more closely than the C.D.C. can. Now the devices may be turning up cases of COVID-19.

A company that uses internet-connected thermometers to predict the spread of the flu says it is tracking the coronavirus in real-time – something that had been impossible, given the lack of testing for the disease.

Kinsa Healthhas sold or given away more than a million smart thermometers to households in which two million people reside, and thus can record fevers almost as soon as consumers experience them.

For the last few years, Kinsa’s interactive maps have accurately predicted the spread of flu around the United States about two weeks before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s surveillance tool, the weekly FluView tracker.

The thermometer data “acts as an early warning system for illness spreading,” said Inder Singh, the company’s founder. The C.D.C.’s system lags because it relies on weekly reports from hundreds of doctors’ offices and hospital emergency rooms about what symptoms they are seeing in patients.

Company scientists are uniquely positioned to identify unusual clusters of fever because they have years of data for expected flu cases in each ZIP code. A sudden spike that far exceeds estimates for flu for a given date may well indicate the coronavirus has arrived.

Medical experts were enthusiastic about the possibility that smart thermometers could be used to track the virus in the United States. Having millions of data points allows Kinsa to produce daily maps showing which counties are seeing spiking fevers.

The most common symptoms of infection with the coronavirus is a fever – about 90% of patients suffer from it, according to the World Health Organization.

“This is very, very exciting,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University. “This is 21st-century disease surveillance, and we’ve been rooted in the mid-20th century with something very labor-intensive.”

Dr. Peter J. Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said: “If this tells you where there are new major clusters of fever, it tells you where to swoop in with your test kits.”

Kinsa’s latest map of fever spikes shows areas that are known to have many cases of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. But the data also point to spots in Florida, Michigan, Arizona, and eastern Texas, where not as many cases have been reported.

Just last Saturday, Kinsa’s data indicated an unusual rise in fevers in South Florida, even though it was not known to be a COVID-19 epicenter. Within days, testing showed that South Florida had indeed become an epicenter.

Dr. Nirav Shah, a former New York State health commissioner who is an adviser to Kinsa, said real-time fever data “could speed up public health the way Twitter sped up the news cycle.”

Demand for Kinsa’s smart thermometers has skyrocketed since the coronavirus pandemic began, Mr. Singh said, and the company is now selling 10,000 a day, which is creating production problems but also multiplying the amount of data coming in each day.

The thermometers connect to a cellphone app that instantly transmits their readings to the company. Users can also enter other symptoms they feel. The app then gives them general advice on when to seek medical attention.
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Because influenza usually produces higher, more protracted fevers than common colds do, the company’s software estimates which ZIP codes appear to be hit by flu rather than by other, milder cold viruses.

Apple’s new credit card has a curious security feature that will make it much more challenging to carry out credit card fraud.

The aptly-named Apple Card is a new credit card, built into your iPhone Wallet app, which the company says will help customers live a “healthier” financial lifestyle. The card is designed to replace your traditional credit card and give you perks, such as daily cash. Chief among the benefits is a range of security and privacy features, which Apple says – unlike traditional credit card providers – the company doesn’t know where a customer shopped, what they bought, or how much they paid.

But there’s one feature – a one-time unique dynamic security code – that will make it nearly impossible for anyone to use the credit card to make fraudulent purchases.

That three-digit card verification value – or a CVV – on the back of your credit card is usually your last line of defense if someone steals your credit card number, such as if your card is cloned or skimmed by a dodgy ATM or taken from a website through a phishing attack.

But rotating the security code will increase the difficulty for an attacker to use your card without your permission.

The idea of a dynamic credit card number first came about a few years ago with the Motion Code credit card concept, built by Oberthur Technologies, which included a randomly generating number built into a tiny display on the back of the card. The only downside is if someone steals your physical card.

Since then, other credit card makers – including Mastercard, the issuing payment provider for Apple Card – have worked to integrate biometric solutions instead. By enabling a fingerprint sensor on the card, powered by the card machine into which it is inserted, it was hoped that fraudulent purchases would be impossible. Other credit cards have worked to roll out biometric-powered credit cards. Again – a big letdown was online fraud, which still accounts for a vast proportion of fraud.

Apple Card seems to meld the two things: a virtual credit card with a rotating security code, protected by a biometric, like Touch ID or Face ID in newer devices. Better yet, the company’s debut physical titanium credit card won’t even have a credit card number.
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Now, if someone wants to commit fraud, they need to steal your phone and your face or fingerprint.
Like other sensitive data – such as health, financial, and biometric data – any banking and credit card data is stored on the device’s security chip, known as the secure enclave.

In the UK, all Internet of Things (IoT) and smart consumer devices will need to adhere to specific security requirements, under new government proposals.

The legislation aims is to help protect citizens and businesses from the threats posed by cybercriminals increasingly targeting Internet of Things devices.

By hacking IoT devices, cybercriminals can build an army of devices that can be used to conduct DDoS attacks to take down online services, while poorly secured IoT devices can also serve as an easy way for hackers to get into networks and other systems across a network.

The proposed measures from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have been developed in conjunction with the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and come following a consultation period with information security experts, product manufacturers and retailers and others.

"Our new law will hold firms manufacturing and selling internet-connected devices to account and stop hackers threatening people's privacy and safety," said Matt Warman, minister for digital and broadband at DCMS.

They also follow on from the previously suggested voluntary best practice requirements. Still, the legislation would require that IoT devices sold in the UK must follow three particular rules to be allowed to sell products in the UK. They are:

• All consumer internet-connected device passwords must be unique and not resettable to any universal factory setting.
• Manufacturers of consumer IoT devices must provide a public point of contact so anyone can report a vulnerability, and it will be acted on promptly.
• Manufacturers of consumer IoT devices must explicitly state the minimum length of time for which the device will receive security updates at the point of sale, either in-store or online.

It is currently unclear how these rules will be enforced under any future law. While the government has said that its "ambition" is to introduce legislation in this area, and said this would be done "as soon as possible," there is no detail on when this would take place. A DCMS spokesperson said that the department would be working with retailers and manufacturers as the proposals move forward.

Many connected devices are shipped with simple, default passwordswhich in many cases can't be changed. At the same time, some IoT product manufacturers often lack a means of being contacted to report vulnerabilities – especially if that device is produced on the other side of the world.

In addition to this, it's been known for IoT products to stop receiving support from manufacturers suddenly, and by providing an exact length of time that devices will be supported will allow users to think about how secure the product will be in the long-term.

If products don't follow these rules, the new law proposes that these devices could potentially be banned from sale in the UK.

"Whilst the UK Government has previously encouraged industry to adopt a voluntary approach, it is now clear that decisive action is needed to ensure that strong cybersecurity is built into these products by design," said Warman.

"Our new law will hold firms manufacturing and selling internet-connected devices to account and stop hackers from threatening people's privacy and safety. It will mean robust security standards are built-in from the design stage and not bolted on as an afterthought," he added.

"Smart technology is increasingly central to the way we live our lives, so the development of this legislation to ensure that we are better protected is hugely welcomed," said Nicola Hudson, Policy and Communications Director at the NCSC.

"It will give shoppers increased peace of mind that the technology they are bringing into their homes is safe, and that issues such as pre-set passwords and sudden discontinuation of security updates are a thing of the past."
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The UK isn't alone in attempting to secure the Internet of Things – ENISA, the European Union's cybersecurity agency, is also working towards legislation in this area. At the same time, the US government is also looking to regulate IoT to protect against cyber-attacks.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has officially launched the Contract for the Web, a set of principles designed to “fix” the internet and prevent us from sliding into a “digital dystopia,” The Guardian reports. The Contract lists nine core principles for governments, companies, and individuals to adhere to, including responsibilities to provide affordable, reliable internet access and to respect civil discourse and human dignity.

At launch, the initiative has received the backing of over 180 organizations, including tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, DuckDuckGo, and Facebook, and nonprofit groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Guardian initially reported that Amazon and Twitter were absent from the list of backers, however now Twitter’s logo appears on the Contract’s homepage. Twitter’s increasing role in political discourse was recently brought into sharp focus after it chose to ban political ads on its platform, citing the “challenges to civic discourse” that they create.

The contract’s launch comes as tech companies such as Facebook and Google have faced mounting pressure around both the amount of user data they collect and how they collect it. The Contract for the Web includes principles designed to prevent this, including a requirement for companies to respect people’s privacy and personal data. If companies do not show that they are working to support these aims, they risk being removed from the list of the project’s endorsers.

It’s not that we need a 10-year plan for the web, we need to turn the web around now,” Berners-Lee said. The Contract, which includes 72 clauses alongside its nine principles, offers a shared vision for the web that Berners-Lee’s Web Foundation wants to see built, as well as a roadmap for action. Finally, it also provides a tool to try and hold companies and governments to account.

The governments of Germany, France, and Ghana have also signed up to the Contract’s founding principles. The Contract calls on governments to ensure everyone can connect to the internet, and to keep the internet available all of the time. This latter point feels especially timely in light of the Iranian government’s recent decision to shut down the internet in an attempt to prevent protests from spreading.
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“The forces taking the web in the wrong direction have always been very strong,” Berners-Lee said, noting that it will be vital for citizens to hold governments and companies to account if the situation is to improve.

If you are planning any trips that are off the grid and yet still want access to phone and internet, then you need to become familiar with the Iridium satellite constellation. With satellites orbiting approximately 485 miles above the earth, this network offers global phone and data coverage, no cell towers or Wi-Fi hotspots required.

There are several kits that allow you access to the Iridium system, and one of the best is the Iridium GO! Package. The basic package comes with the Iridium GO! base station, carry case, and AC travel charger with international adapter and is suitable for those who have access to electricity. 

It's priced at $699 but remember that there are additional activation fees and a Iridium network subscription plan required (and this can be quite expensive).

The Iridium GO! Offers 15.5 hours of standby battery life, and up to 5.5 hours of talk time.

For those who genuinely want to go off-grid, there's also a special package that includes not only the Iridium GO! base station and AC travel charger with international adapter, but also comes with a solar charger, two batteries additional, and a desktop charger. This is priced at a heftier $1,095.

There are also marine and aviation equipment packages available.

Iridium GO! supports a full range of global communications using optimized apps:
                    •   Voice calls
                   •   Text messaging
                   •   Email access
                   •   Weather updates
                   •   Customized third-party apps
                   •   Emergency alerts (SOS)
                   •   Photo sharing
                   •   GPS tracking
                   •   Posting to Facebook/Twitter
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If you need to be in communication when off the grid, this is the perfect kit. Yes, it's expensive, and the subscriptions add a great deal more to the cost, but you are accessing a satellite network, not a router in the back of a café!

Microsoft and Oracle recently said they reached an agreement to make their two cloud computing services work together with high-speed links between their data centers, targeting significant business users and uniting against cloud computing leader Amazon Web Services. 

The two companies said the high-speed link between their data centers would start with facilities in the eastern United States and spread to other regions. They will also work together to let joint users login to services from either company with a single user name and get tech support from either company. 

The move comes as both Oracle and Microsoft are courting large businesses and government customers considering moving computing tasks currently handled in their own data centers to cloud providers. 

“With Oracle’s enterprise expertise, this alliance is a natural choice for us as we help our joint customers accelerate the migration of enterprise applications and databases to the public cloud,” Microsoft’s cloud chief Scott Guthrie said in a statement. 

AWS, the largest cloud computing provider, is encroaching on many of those customers, including in Oracle’s historical stronghold in the database market. 

“With this alliance, our joint customers can migrate their entire set of existing applications to the cloud without having to re-architect anything, preserving the large investments they have already made,” Don Johnson, executive vice president of Oracle’s cloud infrastructure unit, said in a statement. 

Microsoft has previously inked a deal with German software maker SAP SE and Adobe to make their services work better together. 

Ed Anderson, a Gartner research analyst, said the move was a clear “jab” at AWS, especially for Oracle. “It’s no secret that Oracle views AWS as a major competitor in the database market,” he said. 

Anderson also said there remained some unanswered questions about the deal, such as whether customers would face data transfer fees for moving large amounts of information back and forth between services. 

But overall, Anderson said the move would likely benefit Microsoft and Oracle by helping their pitch to large businesses already using services from both. 
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“It’s a great way for both companies to be able to hitch their cloud offerings together,” Anderson said.

Regulators in the US have taken a big step toward bringing antitrust suits against American tech giants, but they face a long road ahead.

Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook are facing unprecedented scrutiny in their own backyard. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Trade Commission are preparing antitrust investigations into the companies, and plan to divvy up the work. As the news emerged, the firm’s share prices were hammered, a clear signal that Wall Street believes the Feds mean business.

Congress also plans to put the companies under the microscope. The Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives said it's launching a wide-ranging investigation of the market power of the tech giants.

The obvious question is: why now? The European Union has been sounding the alarm about Big Tech’s super-sized influence for years – and imposing massive fines on Google in particular for anti-competitive behavior.

The most likely answer is American politics. Some prominent Democrats, including senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, have been calling loudly for tech giants to be broken up to stop them harming consumers’ interests. With a presidential election on the horizon, the Republicans likely want to be seen as tough on Big Tech, too. There’s also a widespread suspicion of Silicon Valley’s liberal tendencies. President Donald Trump has a history of trading barbs with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s boss, and regularly rails against what he sees as social media and search companies’ anti-conservative bias.

Politics aside, there’s plenty for antitrust watchdogs to sink their teeth into. Amazon is accused of using data from its online platform to gain an unfair advantage over other sellers. The EU has already punishedGoogle's manipulation of search results to favor its businesses. Apple’s fighting a private lawsuit which alleges its 30% take on apps sold in its apps store is an abuse of monopoly power. And Facebook dominates the digital ad market together with Google.

Critics such as Warren have used sporting analogies to justify calls for breaking up the tech giants. “You can get to be the umpire in a baseball game, or you can have a team in the game, but you don’t get to be the umpire and have a team in the game,’ she tweeted earlier this year.

If any of the tech giants are found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, they’re likely to be hit with Hefty fines and other sanctions. That may not be enough to satisfy people like Warren, but trying to force through a breakup of one or more of the companies will be tough to do because:

1.Big tech firms have generally made their services available for free. US antitrust law focuses primarily on whether a monopolist has harmed consumers by driving up prices and restricting investment in a market. While firms like Facebook and Google certainly aren’t paragons when it comes to things like privacy, they’ve provided a cornucopia of free stuff to consumers and invest heavily in R&D. That doesn’t mean they can’t be sanctioned for abusing their market power to, say, manipulate search results in ways that drive up prices. But it would be hard to prove they have harmed consumers broadly in the eyes of the law.

2.They aren’t “natural monopolies” like those found in, say, the utility industry, where the cost to enter a market is so vast other companies are dissuaded from doing so, allowing incumbents to drive up prices. The challenge would-be rivals face is to overcome the “network effects” that underpin the big tech companies’ success. A service like Amazon has a magnetic attraction for buyers because they know they will find plenty of the sellers on its platform. And as more buyers roll up, even more sellers will want to join. This will undoubtedly deter competition, but it’s not illegal.

3.Big tech firms dominate data gathering and use insights to provide even more free services. The vast number of customers using their products mean Big Tech firms benefit from what’s helpful to think of as a data snowball. The more customers they attract, the more data they can harvest from them. That information is then used to tailor new services that attract even more users. This cycle is even more powerful in the era of AI, which relies on crunching vast amounts of data for its efficacy.
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The Microsoft precedent: None of this may deter US regulators, who can draw on Microsoft’s experience in the 1990s for inspiration. The DoJ tried to split Microsoft up to stop it bundling its Internet Explorer web browser with its dominant Windows operating system. The effort failed, but the bruising court battles harmed the company’s reputation and curbed its anti-competitive instincts. History could be about to repeat itself in the internet era.