Americans' privacy worries, DHS: it's not 2003 anymore, spies in the sky [Government IT News]

Summary: This week, we've got news of Anonymous and the KKK, spies in the sky, congressional finger-pointing, AT&T being AT&T, and so much more. It's ZDNet's Government IT Week and you would believe what the world's govs are up to this week!

By David Gewirtz for ZDNet Government

ZDNet's worldwide team provides global 24/7 technology news and analysis. In addition to my own coverage analysis here in the ZDNet Government column and on ZDNet's DIY-IT, every week I'll bring you a selection of the best government-related articles posted by our intrepid reporters and analysts. Here are some of the most interesting from the last week.

Top stories this week

Americans leery of online privacy in post-Snowden era: PewAccording to a study by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans believe their privacy is being challenged and that they are losing the ability to secure their personal information.

AT&T halts fiber investment until net neutrality argument settledAT&T is delaying plans to install fiber networks in 100 cities within the United States.

Dirttrails not chemtrails: US spies on mobile phones from the skyUS justice officials are scooping up mobile phone data from unwitting Americans as part of a sophisticated airborne surveillance program designed to catch criminals, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Homeland Security alerts on end of Windows Server 2003 supportUS-CERT, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is warning that the end of support for Windows Server 2003 is coming.

Other government coverage around ZDNet

Anonymous seizes Ku Klux Klan Twitter account over Ferguson threats
After racial hate group Ku Klux Klan said it would use 'lethal force' on Ferguson protesters, a skirmish with Anonymous erupted: Anonymous has now seized the 'KKK USA' Twitter account. UPDATED.

Wynyard Group taps GCHQ veteran
Investigations and forensics software developer is extending its offerings into cyber defence.

Data-retention Bill an 'intrusion of privacy': Human rights committeeThe government's move to force telcos and ISPs to retain customer metadata for two years has been branded 'intrusive of privacy' by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, in a new report calling for the government to define the types of data to be retained and review the two-year retention period.

Dirttrails not chemtrails: US spies on mobile phones from the sky
US justice officials are scooping up mobile phone data from unwitting Americans as part of a sophisticated airborne surveillance program designed to catch criminals, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Indo-US trade wars Part 1: The great outsourcing debate
Is all the American hysteria surrounding the H-1B foreign worker mired in unsubstantiated, inaccurate economics? An overwhelming amount of evidence from American academics seems to suggest so.

We must not allow the internet to be an ungoverned space: UK PM
United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron has told a joint sitting of the Australian parliament that businesses have a social responsibility to clamp down on extremist content on the internet.

Postal Workers Union files complaint against USPS in wake of hack

Union president says they were kept in dark, claims unfair labor practices in complaint to National Labor Relations Board.

Feds 'covered up' Chinese hack on US weather systems
The finger has been pointed at China for the hack, and a congressman has accused the controlling federal agency of a cover-up.

Google urges US to let Europeans sue over information disclosures
As Google combats Europe' take on privacy, it wants the Europeans to enjoy the benefits of US privacy laws.

Estonia forges ahead with its plan to let anyone become an Estonian digitally
An ambitious plan to enable people around the globe to receive e-residency in Estonia has got the go-ahead.

The Mystery of 12,000 Missing Teslas: Overseas Boom or Waning U.S. Demand? (BusinessWeek)

By Kyle Stock  November 17, 2014

Tesla Motors (TSLA) is slowly ramping up production. Demand for its electric sedans allegedly remains high. Yet far fewer of the vehicles are making their way onto U.S. roads this year.

In the first nine months of 2014, the number of U.S. registrations of Tesla vehicles fell by one-third to 9,331, according to an analysis of public records by Hedges & Co., an Ohio-based market-research firm. In the same period, however, Tesla said it delivered 21,821 cars—a 40 percent increase from a year earlier. What happened to the other 12,490 cars?

One possible explanation is that Tesla is shipping more cars abroad. Here’s how the dynamic pans out: Tesla sells its cars directly and basically makes them to order, so there should be little lag between delivery, sale, and registration of any given Model S. All those Teslas without U.S. registrations—almost 60 percent of deliveries so far this year—could have been shipped abroad.

VIDEO: Driving Tesla With Musk: Zero to 60 and Testing Autopilot

Tesla now has about 40 sales centers in Europe and began shipping cars to Japan in September and China early this year, although it still doesn’t have a network of chargers in the latter country. But the overseas-sales thesis doesn’t entirely sync with what Tesla has said. In its latest financial update, on Nov. 5, the company said “the majority” of its deliveries in the third quarter were in North America. It predicted slightly less than half of its vehicles next year would be routed abroad—far fewer cars than the registration slump would suggest.

Tesla hasn’t been keen to elaborate. When asked about the decline in registrations, it simply referred to its recent earnings report.

Another possibility is that U.S. buyers are cooling on the car and deliveries aren’t translating to sales nearly as quickly as the carmaker would have us believe. On this front, Tesla traffic in the U.S. is interesting. The number of new registrations has decreased in Washington, where Teslas have been most popular since they first rolled off of assembly lines. Registrations in California, by far Tesla’s No. 1 territory in terms of overall sales, fell 43 percent in the first nine months of the year.

STORY: The Boring Brilliance of VW's New Electric Golf

But registrations are climbing in places like Indiana and Ohio, where Tesla sales have been scant thus far. This year saw Georgia pass Oregon, Connecticut, and Colorado in the number of new Teslas going on file at the Department of Motor Vehicles. In other words, at this point in Tesla’s journey—roughly as the fledgling car company shifts into second gear—it may be transitioning from the early-adopter crowd to the everyman. (Or at least the everyman that has $70,000 to spend on a luxury car.)

If demand really isn’t waning—and Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk insists as much—it does seem to be shifting. A Tesla on the streets of San Francisco is old news at this point, no more notable than a small-batch Porsche (VOW3:GR). A Tesla in Savannah, Ga., meanwhile, is still turning heads. If demand is cooling in green-oriented states—and the U.S. at large—Musk probably wouldn’t want to crow about it, at least not until he has a new model to sell.

STORY: The Tesla Rorschach Test: Figuring Out Which Numbers Matter

Stock is an associate editor for Businessweek.com. Twitter: @kylestock

Toyota Fuel-Cell Car Expected Next Fall (PCMagazine)

• BY STEPHANIE MLOT
• NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Toyota and Honda are the latest car makers to reveal fuel-cell vehicles: the Toyota Mirai (pictured) and Honda Concept.

The Toyota Mirai is a four-door, mid-size sedan that is powered by hydrogen, can re-fuel in about five minutes, and travels up to 300 miles on a full tank. It's expected to launch in California next fall and expand as hydrogen refueling stations are installed.

Fuel-cell cars do not plug in and charge up like a traditional electric vehicle. Instead, the hydrogen helps generate electricity, which powers the vehicle. There are zero greenhouse-gas emissions, as the car emits only water vapor, Hyundai said.

Toyota first tipped a fuel-cell car for the U.S. in June, and formally unveiled the Mirai on Monday in Newport Beach, California.

Despite its powerful output of 3.1 kW/L, the Mirai's fuel cell stack fits under the front driver and passenger seats, providing the car with a maximum output of 153 horsepower. It also accelerates from zero to 60 in just nine seconds.

"The Mirai offers performance options that go well beyond a traditional automobile," the car maker said.

Case in point: The vehicle will come with an optional power take off (PTO) device, which enables it to serve as a mobile generator in an emergency, powering home essentials in an average house for up to a week—all the while emitting only water.

It will, of course, also come with some standard safety technologies, including vehicle pre-collision, blind spot monitor, lane departure alert, drive start control, and automatic high beams.

"This is a car that lets you have it all with no compromises," Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda said in the video above.

When Toyota's Mirai hits California lots next year, customers can purchase the vehicle for $57,500, or opt for a 36-month lease at $499 per month, with $3,649 due at signing. State and federal incentives—which total $13,000—could drop the price below $45,000 for many buyers.

Mirai, which means "future" in Japanese, represents an opportunity to make a difference, Toyota said. Take a closer look in the video above.

In June, Hyundai debuted its first hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle in the United States. Those who lease a Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell CUV will get free hydrogen refueling, much like Tesla provides free charging for its Model S electric cars.

On that front, Honda said it will make an announcement at the 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show - which kicks off Friday - "about its commitment to help expand and accelerate California's public hydrogen refueling station network."

Honda launched a fuel-cell vehicle, the FCX Clarity, in July 2008. Its next outing, the Honda FCV Concept, will launch in Japan by March 2016, followed by the U.S. and Europe. Honda also promised a 300-mile range and a re-fueling timeframe of three to five minutes.

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland.

Royal Caribbean's Newest Ship Was Built to Lure People Who Hate Cruising (BusinessWeek)

By Justin Bachman November 14, 2014

Quantum of the Seas berthed at Southampton Docks, U.K.

Step aboard the newest ship in Royal Caribbean Cruises’ (RCL) fleet and you’ll find muted earth tone carpets, glass elevator doors, dark woods. Remove the gangways—and the need for a passport—and this area on Quantum of the Seas could easily be a tony residential tower in Frankfurt or Manhattan.

“We decided early on that it would have a different look … we created a more sophisticated design,” says Richard Fain, Royal Caribbean’s chairman and chief executive officer.

The subdued design is just one element the cruise line has deployed on the new ship, which carries 4,180 passengers and 1,500 crew members. Quantum of the Seas is, in many respects, the first cruise ship designed for people who hate cruising. After a two-year period marked by intense media focus on cruise fires, fatal groundings, and virus outbreaks, the cruise industry is keen to mount a full-scale assault on the stereotypes that keep millions of people from considering a vacation at sea.

STORY: Royal Caribbean to Cruisers: Stop Expecting Last-Minute Discounts

Royal Caribbean has two more Quantum-class ships on order for its fleet, with Anthem of the Seas arriving next fall, and a third, dubbed Ovation, in late 2016. All three are much smaller than the line’s two Oasis-class behemoths, which each carry more than 6,000 people per sailing. Quantum of the Seas will spend the winter sailing from New Jersey before relocating in the spring to Shanghai, the first brand new ship from a U.S. line to enter the market in China.

STORY: Carnival Wants to Make Onboard Wi-Fi Worth the High Price

The Quantum employs some technologies that are relatively new to the industry, such as bag tagging that lets passengers use smartphones to track the location of luggage from drop-off at the pier until it reaches their cabins. Reservations for dinner and further activities are made on tablets around the ship, and waiters are expected to record a diner’s preferences via that technology so that other dining venues will know how you take your coffee or whether you prefer red or white wine, Fain says. The satellite-based Wi-Fi onboard is fairly speedy for sea-based system.

There also are activities aimed at younger cruisers, who often might prefer a land vacation where they can hike, surf, or golf. At the rear of Quantum‘s  Deck 16, 11 decks above that chic boarding area, an attraction using high-speed jets of water allows passengers to surf or water board. Cruisers can “skydive” in a vertical wind tunnel that simulates the sensation of free falling. And a glass capsule extends 300 feet into the air, allowing 360-degree views. A rock climbing wall—beside a 30-foot pink bear—is right around the aft corner, one deck below. Also on Deck 15 are some other Royal Caribbean trademark activities, including the bumper car arcade, the full-sized basketball court, the roller skating rink, and the circus school.

Photograph by Simon Dawson/BloombergRobots preparing drinks for guests at the Bionic Bar on the Quantum of the Seas

Pretending to jump from an airplane while cruising the Caribbean “conveys in a very dramatic way, and it’s something that busts old stereotypes about what a cruise is,” Fain, a 35-year company veteran, said on Wednesday afternoon while slurping a vanilla milkshake from Johnny Rockets, the fast-food diner found in 30 states and on a dozen RCL ships. “Obviously, this isn’t a sedentary vacation. It helps to raise that awareness, particularly in non-cruisers.”

STORY: Ahoy, Investor: Royal Caribbean Sees Cash Ahead

The prospect of a sedentary vacation at sea, surrounded by all-you-can-eat food, overpriced drinks, smoky casinos, and crowded pools repels millions of people the industry calls “cruise resisters.” This image of the typical cruise has been shaped over years among many people in North America and Europe. Recruiting that category represents the largest single opportunity for industry growth.

With its many physically active on-board pursuits aimed at a younger crowd—some have described the Quantum-class ships as a bid for millennials—Quantum of the Seas was designed to overcome the negative perceptions.

Ditching the traditional dining room is an additional tactic: A variety of 18 restaurants, booked by iPad (AAPL) or in one’s stateroom, serve different foods at night, furthering the notion that cruisers will try most of them over a seven or 10-night cruise.

STORY: Carnival's Recovery: Selling Lots of Drinks and More Cheap Cruises

Royal Caribbean has also redesigned its traditional buffet area, where most cruisers congregate for breakfast and lunch. The Quantum‘s buffet, on Deck 14, is called the Windjammer Marketplace; the offerings assigned to various stations are sorted by cuisine, such as pan-Asian, antipasti, American favorites, and sandwiches. The food stations are all well-lighted and gleaming, the sort of islands familiar in upscale grocery stores and urban food markets. It’s an all-you-can-eat proposition, to be sure, but it’s also a place where the dishes are presented in discrete sections and portions, with nary a huge serving tub in sight.

“It’s clear to me that as an industry we have not done a good enough job effectively communicating … to those who don’t know what cruising is,” Carnival (CCL) CEO Arnold Donald told reporters in May. “It’s not just 3,000 people at a buffet line and super crowding.”

That’s a message that the entire industry is hoping Royal’s newest ship will convey.

STORY: Carnival Foresees an End to the Era of Cheap Caribbean Cruises

Bachman is an associate editor for Businessweek.com.

OPEC's Colluders Are in a No-Win Situation (BusinessWeek)

By Peter Coy  November 12, 2014


 

Economists will tell you that cartels are hard to keep alive. They work when everyone in the cartel holds down production to keep the price artificially high (and punish customers). But there’s a huge incentive to exceed one’s quota.

What’s happening to OPEC right now is even worse than typical quota cheating. The overproduction is coming from outside of the cartel, mostly in the U.S. That puts the colluders in a no-win situation: Cut their own production even more in a desperate attempt to prop up the price, thus yielding market share to the Americans. Or allow the price to fall, which essentially means giving up.

This chart shows what OPEC is up against.

STORY: Do We Still Need to Ban U.S. Oil Exports?

The price of Brent crude oil dropped to a four-year low on Tuesday, with futures falling more than 2 percent in London. United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Shail Al Mazrouei stated the obvious: The oil market is oversupplied, partly because of rising U.S. output.

An analysis of the oil market in Bloomberg News quotes Mike Wittner, Societe Generale’s head of oil market research in New York: “We’ve not seen a turning point like this in decades,” he says. “Is OPEC going to abdicate its role in the market? If the Saudis do exactly what they’re signaling, and just let the market take care of the overproduction, then it could certainly become irrelevant.”

Saudi Arabia, the hub of the oil cartel, seems to be betting on letting prices slide. It has lower production costs than countries like Iran and Venezuela, so it’s less harmed by the price drop and has a strong interest in maintaining market share. The Saudis may be betting that lower prices will force some American producers of shale oil out of the market.

STORY: A Cleaner, Cheaper Way to Exploit Utah's Oil Sands

If so, the market is in for a long period of low prices that will devastate some OPEC nations. As Bloomberg’s Grant Smith and Maher Chmaytelli write:

STORY: John Sfakianakis on Falling Oil Prices' Impact on the Middle East

Preserving market share by letting oil fall to a level that undermines U.S. shale production isn’t a practical option for many OPEC members, Harry Tchilinguirian, head of commodity markets strategy at BNP Paribas SA, said by phone from London on Nov. 6. The strategy would require a Brent price of $70 a barrel for a prolonged period, a level too low for most members to cover government spending, Tchilinguirian said.

Coy is Bloomberg Businessweek's economics editor. His Twitter handle is @petercoy.

Best Business Schools 2014: Duke Tops Full-Time MBA List, Harvard Slips (BusinessWeek)

By Natalie Kitroeff  November 11, 2014

There is a new top dog in American business education: Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. The Durham (N.C.)-based school has claimed the No. 1 spot in Bloomberg Businessweek‘s 14th biennial ranking of full-time MBA programs, part of a shakeup that dethroned University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and also knocked elite rival Harvard Business School out of the top five for the first time in the history of the ranking.

Fuqua, which was ranked No. 6 in the most recentBusinessweek ranking, rose to the top spot, thanks in large part to employers’ esteem for its graduates.Bloomberg Businessweek ranks schools on three measures: how company recruiters rate MBA hires in a survey that accounts for 45 percent of each school’s score; how graduating MBAs judge their program in a separate survey that makes up an additional 45 percent; and a tally of faculty research published in esteemed journals, which constitutes the remaining 10 percent. We changed our employer survey from the last ranking cycle to better reflect the breadth of the recruiting landscape and to collect more data on how well MBAs do in the workplace. Some 1,300 recruiters were surveyed, up from 206 in 2012, and they were asked to rate schools on how well their graduates performed in the areas most important to employers.

Fuqua students got high marks from recruiters, particularly those from companies that hire large numbers of MBAs, and these were given additional weight in the ranking. In our survey, recruiters noted that Fuqua students are exceptionally good at working collaboratively. “To be a great leader, you need to be great in a team setting, and I think that’s where we get credit from employers,” says Fuqua’s dean, Bill Boulding. Students echoed the theme: The word “team” and its variants appeared 73 times in the 200 survey responses we received from Duke students, including one that read “Learning how to effectively work in a team has been priceless.” Duke also benefited from a productive faculty—Fuqua’s ranked No. 2 in intellectual capital. (Its No. 22 ranking in the student opinion survey was unchanged from 2012.)

Harvard fell six places, to No. 8, largely on the opinions of its own students. In our last ranking, HBS ranked No. 12 in the student survey; this year, it was No. 25. While improvements in other schools’ student scores were a factor in the decline, the perception that the school caters to elites while neglecting women and minorities also played a role.

GRAPHIC: Best Business Schools 2014: By the Numbers

On Bloomberg Businessweek‘s survey, HBS scored lowest among the top 10 business schools on its atmosphere for women and racial and religious minorities. “Diversity to HBS means playing around with grades and other measures of success until the numbers look right, rather than tackling the underlying issues,” wrote one student. And when asked to rate the “climate for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds,” HBS students ranked their school second to last out of 112 schools on the list. “There is a disparity of incomes among the students, which can cause pressure on those students who do not come from wealth to be able to participate in the extracurricular events,” one student complained.

HBS declined to comment for this story, although in January, HBS Dean Nitin Nohria formally apologized to HBS women at a San Francisco event honoring female graduates, saying “the school owed you better, and I promise it will be better,” according to a report on Fortune Magazine’s website. At the event, Nohria announced plans to boost the number of female-led case studies—curriculum aids used in business schools across the world—from 9 percent to 20 percent, and to take further steps to support women, including facilitating mentorships of female students by female alumni.

Students still flock to HBS, one of the country’s oldest and best-known business schools. Some 9,543 people applied for 936 spots in 2014, the school reported on its website. The Harvard brand is still popular among recruiters, who ranked HBS seventh overall this year, and the school has a long history of finishing among the top MBA programs ranked by Businessweek. Name recognition and powerful alumni connections matter in an environment in which networking opportunities are valued on a par with—if not higher than—a degree.

The rankings brought other precipitous leaps and falls. The Yale School of

Management climbed to No. 6, up from No. 21 in 2012 because both students and employers rated it higher than in the past. Columbia Business School also ascended into the top ten, notching a fifth place finish this year, up from its thirteenth place showing last cycle. The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, which dropped ten slots to No. 20 largely because it did worse on the student survey, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, which lost its top-ten status, slipping to No. 14 from No. 9 this year.

GRAPHIC: What Business School Does for Your Career

Kitroeff is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York, covering business education.

Putin Is Losing Out to China in Central Asia's Latest 'Great Game' (BusinessWeek)

By Carol Matlack  November 06, 2014

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon meet on the sidelines of an informal summit of the regional security group in 2013

As President Vladimir Putin strains to keep Ukraine within Russia’s grasp, he may be losing his grip on another part of his would-be empire: the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, which are increasingly turning toward China for investment and trade.

In the latest sign of its growing economic ties with the region, China is planning a $16.3 billion fund to finance railways, roads, and pipelines across Central Asia, reviving the centuries-old Silk Road trade route between China and Europe. President Xi Jinping first proposed the idea last year during a visit to Kazakhstan, the region’s wealthiest country.

Beijing has plenty of reasons to spend big in Central Asia. Improved infrastructure would help link China to European markets and give China increased access to the region’s rich natural resources. Kazakhstan is a major oil producer, while neighboring Kyrgyzstan has large mineral deposits and Turkmenistan produces natural gas.

STORY: Jagdish Bhagwati on Global Trade, Russia, and India

At the same time, the planned construction would give an economic boost to adjoining areas of western China where Beijing is trying to quell a separatist insurgency, says Sarah Lain, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London. As it has in Africa, China is likely to bring Chinese workers into Central Asia to do much of the construction.

During much of the 19th century, the Russian and British empires vied for control of Central Asia, a rivalry dubbed the “Great Game.” But the predominantly Muslim region, which also includes the countries of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, was annexed by the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik revolution and has remained close to Moscow in the post-Soviet era.

Putin has sought to maintain those ties—for example, by inviting Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to join a customs union with Moscow. But with the Russian economy in a deep slump, he can’t match the big money that China is offering. Indeed, Russia’s economic malaise is clobbering some Central Asian economies, spurring them to seek help from China.

STORY: Putin's Latest Target: More Than 200 Russian McDonald's

Take Tajikistan, one of the region’s poorest nations, where an estimated 52 percent of the economy comes from money sent home by migrant Tajik workers, most of them in Russia. Those remittances are now declining sharply, dragging down economic growth and increasing Tajikistan’s “vulnerability to shocks,” the World Bank said in a report last month.

Jamoliddin Nuraliev, the country’s deputy finance minister, told the Financial Times recently that China was prepared to invest $6 billion in Tajikistan. The figure hasn’t been confirmed by Beijing; if accurate, it would represent two-thirds of Tajikistan’s gross domestic product. Russia also is offering help to Tajikistan, but the sums are much smaller. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported this week that Moscow would give $6.7 million to aid rural areas of Tajikistan.

China has already built substantial economic ties with some Central Asian nations, including major investments in Kazakhstan’s oil industry and large purchases of gas from Turkmenistan.

STORY: China Embraces a Russia Cut off From Western Capital

Russia’s incursion into Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine has spooked some Central Asian countries, especially Kazakhstan, which has a large Russian-speaking minority. “There’s a degree of mistrust now with Russia,” Lain says. Although the region won’t turn its back on Russia, she says, “Right now China seems to be a more reliable partner.”

Matlack is a Paris correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek.