The National Security Administration (NSA) looked at the Internet activity of nearly 90,000 individuals, groups, individuals, or organizations in 2013, said a transparency report released Friday from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (http://bit.ly/TE8H3W). The report is part of ODNI’s ongoing efforts to declassify more information, at the direction of President Barack Obama last summer, ODNI said. But it’s just the first step of many the government must take, said several lawmakers. ODNI should release the total number of people whose information is collected under these authorities, said Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. Franken’s Surveillance Transparency Act (S-1452) would mandate such reporting from intelligence agencies, he said. “The administration’s report is a far cry from the kind of transparency that the American people demand and deserve,” said Franken in a statement. “It still leaves Americans in the dark.” The report also showed the FBI issued almost 20,000 national security letters in 2013, but did not disclose the number of targets of those letters because Congress does not require the FBI to track that number, ODNI said. “When the FBI says it conducts a substantial number of searches and it has no idea of what the number is, it shows how flawed this system is and the consequences of inadequate oversight,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a statement. “This huge gap in oversight is a problem now, and will only grow as global communications systems become more interconnected.”

A survey commissioned by Ipswitch said U.S. workers using streaming media to watch the World Cup presents a “serious wireless network bandwidth drain and network management challenge,” with a potentially negative effect on overall productivity. Ipswitch polled more than 200 information technology professionals in the U.S. (http://bit.ly/1lsmq9c). Seventy percent said streaming of matches “is having an adverse effect on employee productivity, network and application performance and overall business operations.”

The Obama administration will work with Congress to pass legislation that would allow European Union citizens to sue in U.S. courts over misuse of their personal data, said a Department of Justice news release Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1pOVxNH). Under the hypothetical bill, an EU citizen whose personal data is intentionally disclosed after it’s shared with U.S. authorities for law enforcement actions would have the same rights granted in the Privacy Act as American citizens currently have, said DOJ. The announcement came as part of the negotiations on the EU-U.S. Data Protection and Privacy Agreement, said DOJ. “In a world of globalized crime and terrorism, we can protect our citizens only if we work together internationally, including through sharing law enforcement information with and by EU Member States and other close allies,” said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. “At the same time, we must ensure that we continue our long tradition of protecting privacy in the law enforcement context. The step we are announcing today will help advance both goals."

A GAO report released Wednesday said the FTC “has complied with all” information security requirements it examined, said a response the FTC sent the GAO (http://1.usa.gov/1mqUq5U). The FTC was one of six federal agencies whose information security practices GAO investigated, including a review of the agencies’ compliance with the Privacy Act, the E-Government Act and the Federal Information Security Management Act. Because of the sensitive nature of information protected by federal agency security measures, the report discussed the agencies only generally. The FTC’s response, however, provides more insight. “While the GAO found that the FTC has written policies in place for the required elements of its information security program, it noted several areas where we could improve the documentation of our procedures,” said the response, which is an appendix issued with the GAO report, noting the FTC will complete all improvements by the end of June. “For example, although we continually conduct risk assessments -- both formal and informal -- on our systems, by the end of this month we will have standardized the formats of these assessments to align with guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.” The response also noted the FTC would improve the tracking of annual training it provides for “individuals with specific security responsibilities."

IEEE formed a study group to explore market opportunities and needs for a 100 Mbps ethernet speed in automotive networking. The IEEE 802.3 Single Twisted Pair 100 Mb/s Ethernet group option would allow “a more rapid adoption of driver assist and other vehicle safety systems into low to mid-range vehicles,” IEEE said. It said that many vehicle makers and their suppliers want IEEE 802.3 standards-based interoperable solutions to enable and extend “a multi-vendor ecosystem” for the automotive industry. A growing number of automotive subsystems will require a 1 Gbps ethernet connection, but “stringent economic constraints of the volume vehicle environment” are largely limited to a 100 Mbps ethernet connection, IEEE said.

GM’s program to offer 4G LTE data plans across a broad swath of vehicles -- with data plans starting at $5 per month -- is part of a strategy to reach the millennial car buyer who demands a connected environment, said Tim Nixon, chief technology officer, Global Connected Consumer. “A lot of our competitors decided to make [connectivity] a luxury item,” Nixon told us Tuesday at an off-site roundtable during CE Week, “but we don’t see data that way because it has broad appeal.” GM is targeting an eclectic group of drivers including small-business owners, soccer moms and millennials with plans available in a range of packages in vehicles ranging from the $12,000 Chevy Spark to the $66,000 Escalade ESV. The 4G LTE vehicles have begun rolling out, led by the 2015 Chevy Malibu, with plans calling for 4G LTE in 30 Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC models in 2014, Nixon said. Nixon wouldn’t nail down a date by which GM hopes to have most of its fleet connected, but he said the determining factor for embedding a 4G LTE hotspot is a vehicle’s model refresh cycle and not wanting to add engineering costs to existing models before their transition year. Despite the service’s name, OnStar with 4G LTE, consumers don’t have to buy into OnStar to get data service, which non-Onstar subscribers can buy on a per-day rate of $5 for 250 MB of data or a monthly starting rate of $10 (200 MB). AT&T Wireless customers can add a vehicle to an existing data plan for $10 a month. GM chose AT&T as its 4G LTE partner for the service, which supports up to seven devices in a vehicle, because it’s a “compelling, capable network,” Nixon said. The earlier generation of OnStar service used the Verizon network, he noted. Nixon mused on several ways wireless connectivity in a vehicle could change the consumer driving experience in the future. Rather than paying a motel’s Wi-Fi fee, a consumer whose car were parked close enough to the motel room could theoretically use the vehicle for data in accessory mode, and could use a vehicle’s connectivity in a blackout assuming cell towers were working, he noted.

If the FCC wants to solve the “net neutrality dilemma,” while keeping regulation light, the agency should consider the functional separation of the Internet, said Web and technology-company lawyer Henry Goldberg of Goldberg Godles, in a blog post Monday in The Hill. “Public utility-type regulation may be perfect for the pipe, but all wrong for the content,” Goldberg wrote (http://bit.ly/UBE8g2). “The FCC should take a functional approach by requiring the separation of the transmission pipe and the content, applying regulatory oversight of access to the pipe and completely steering clear of regulation of content."

The U.S. Agriculture Department should assess any Rural Utilities Service loans for risk of “rescission or default,” the GAO said in a report released Monday. It should also “align the goals in its [Annual Performance Report], to the loan program’s purpose, to the extent feasible,” GAO recommended. USDA told GAO it will try to “fully implement” these recommendations. “RUS loans can help promote limited broadband deployment and economic development, but USDA’s performance goals do not fully align with the loan program’s purpose,” GAO said in the 60-page report (http://1.usa.gov/1jJRH2P). “According to GAO analysis of National Broadband Map deployment data as of June 2013, areas with RUS loans generally have the same number of broadband providers as areas without a loan. However, the RUS loan program can enhance the quality and reach of broadband networks in rural areas, according to stakeholders.”

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday against financial software firm Alice, saying that “the mere recitation of a generic computer cannot transform a patent-ineligible abstract idea into a patent eligible invention” (http://1.usa.gov/1lChQWR). The court affirmed a ruling at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that Alice couldn’t assert four of its patents on financial software against CLS Bank International because they were abstract. The case drew amicus briefs from multiple industry giants -- including Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix, Verizon and Twitter -- that mostly favored CLS Bank. The ruling, long expected to favor CLS Bank (CD April 1 p14), does not offer a clear delineation of what constitutes an abstract idea, experts told us. The Alice ruling does not constitute a wholesale rejection of abstract ideas’ patentability, but that the simple use of a computer to perform an abstract idea would “add nothing of substance to the underlying abstract idea,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court’s opinion. Had the court ruled otherwise, “an applicant could claim any principle of the physical or social sciences by reciting a computer system configured to implement the relevant concept,” the opinion said. “We tread carefully in construing this exclusionary principle lest it swallow all of patent law.” Inventions that involve transforming abstract ideas “’to a new and useful end'” remain patentable, the court said. Microsoft, which had favored a narrow Supreme Court ruling, praised the court in a statement for having “distinguished the Alice patent from software inventions.” The Supreme Court “went the right way” in its ruling, and “that they went unanimously the right way is a great sign,” said Matt Levy, Computer & Communications Industry Association patent counsel. CCIA also filed an amicus brief siding with CLS Bank. The court’s ruling reaffirms its previous precedent in Mayo v. Prometheus that abstract ideas aren’t patentable and extends that into the software sector, he said. “It might have been nice if they were able to give a more detailed test, but I understand why they didn’t,” Levy said. “As with any Supreme Court decision, the devil is going to be in the implementation details by the district courts and the Federal Circuit.” Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor issued a short concurring opinion that appears to advocate for invalidating all business method patents, he said. The Alice ruling will likely eventually invalidate “the majority of all software patents in force today,” said Durie Tangri patent lawyer Mark Lemley. “You can patent particular improvements in computers, but you can’t patent using a computer or the Internet to implement your idea.” Lemley filed an amicus brief in Alice on behalf of a group of companies that included LinkedIn, Netflix, Rackspace, Twitter and Yelp (http://bit.ly/SWERXO), but noted he was not speaking to us on behalf of those companies. The ruling is likely to have the greatest impact on the Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board, where it had already “become much easier” to challenge patent eligibility with the implementation of the America Invents Act, said Miles & Stockbridge patent lawyer James Carmichael, former administrative patent judge at PTAB. “This is going to be a great sword in the quiver of patent challengers wanting to cancel patents at PTAB.”

The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group said BITAG’s next technical review will focus on interconnection. The report, jointly suggested by CenturyLink and the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), will focus on interconnection issues on which there is “little public information,” BITAG said Wednesday in an announcement. It said BITAG’s Technical Working Group will examine topics like interconnection’s history, interconnection management and evolving Internet data traffic patterns. Time Warner Cable Principal Engineer Standards and Policy Jason Weil and CDT Chief Technologist Joseph Lorenzo Hall will be the lead editors for the report, while BITAG Executive Director Douglas Sicker will chair the review, BITAG said. The report is set for release in November.