Under Code, Apps Would Disclose Collection of Data

A variety of groups, including app developers and consumer advocates, have agreed to test a voluntary code of conduct that would require participating app developers to offer short-form notices about whether their apps collect certain personal details from users — including health and social networking data — or share user-specific data with entities like advertising networks or consumer data resellers.

The idea is to allow people to compare the data collection practices of, say, flashlight apps and choose one that does not ingest unrelated material like their photos or contact lists. The determination that the notices are ready for testing is the outcome of yearlong negotiations — convened by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a division of the United States Commerce Department — to increase mobile app transparency for consumers. Participants included app developers, digital marketing, civil liberties, consumer and privacy groups.

On Thursday, many participants in the process voted to support a version of the code drafted by a diverse coalition including the Application Developers Alliance, an industry association, and advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the World Privacy Forum.

Although major mobile app developers like Apple and Google, which develops mobile apps for its Android platform, have not indicated whether they intend to sign on to the code of conduct, groups involved in drafting it say it is a significant advance in mobile privacy for consumers — and an unusual agreement among industry and consumer advocates.

“It’s a victory for common sense,” said Tim Sparapani, vice president for law, policy and government relations at the Application Developers Alliance, a group representing more than 100 companies and 20,000 individual developers.

But other participants in the negotiations said the notices would do little to give individual consumers more insight into or control over the vast piles of information about them that online entities collect and analyze. The notices would display only a limited list of data collection categories, they say, and would not allow consumers to opt out of data-mining or even see the records companies had amassed about them.

“A very modest slice of privacy was put forward,” for the groups to tackle, said Susan Grant, the director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, a research and advocacy organization representing about 300 consumer groups. “As time went on, that slice became more and more narrowed.”

She abstained from the vote Thursday on whether to support the code.

In the past, the app industry has been heavily criticized by some federal regulators and consumer advocates for collecting personal details from users without their knowledge or consent. A review last year by the Federal Trade Commission of 400 popular children’s apps available on Google and Apple platforms concluded that only 20 percent disclosed their data collection practices.

The code of conduct would require participating mobile app developers to show notices indicating whether their apps collected user-specific details in any of eight categories: biometrics, including fingerprints or facial recognition data; Web browsing history; logs of phone calls or texts made or received; contact list details like e-mail addresses or social network connections; financial information, like credit or banking data; health or medical data; precise location data; and stored text, video or photo files.

Signatories to the code would also have to list any of eight categories of entities with which their apps shared information; these include ad networks; mobile carriers; consumer data resellers; data analytics companies; government entities; operating systems; social networks; or other apps.

Companies that violated a promise to adhere to the code would be subject to enforcement action by the Federal Trade Commission. The code is the first step in a larger plan by the Obama administration to institute a wide-ranging consumer privacy bill of rights that would give consumers some rights to access, control and correct the personal details companies collected about them.

Last year, the White House issued a report proposing that Congress enact such a consumer privacy bill. The report said the bill would rely on codes of conduct, worked out in industry-advocacy group negotiations, to specify how different industries would adhere to those principles. The administration has yet to make public the proposed text for the legislation.

But some participants who helped develop the mobile app transparency notices said the modest gains that resulted for consumers indicated a need for stronger privacy legislation and regulation.

“If we want to move expeditiously through bigger issues, we are going to need some legislative action,” said Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy issues at the Washington office of the A.C.L.U. 

Bits Blog: Health Sites Under Scrutiny Over Mining of Data

Millions of people rely on Web sites like WebMD and Health.com for information about depression, sexually transmitted diseases, cancer and other sensitive personal health issues. But it can be difficult for consumers to understand how health sites may capture, analyze and share information about user searches and other activities — even the small minority of people who manage to slog all the way through the privacy policies.

Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois.
In an effort to increase industry transparency, Lisa Madigan, the attorney general of Illinois, has opened an inquiry into the data-mining practices of some popular health sites.

On Tuesday, she sent letters to officials at eight sites asking for detailed information about their companies’ data collection, data storage and data sharing practices. The sites included: about.com; drugs.com; health.com; mayoclinic.com; menshealth.com; mercola.com; WebMd.com; and weightwatchers.com.

In the letters to the sites’ executives, Ms. Madigan said she was concerned about the potential dissemination of information related to people’s private health concerns.

“Health-related information, which would be protected from disclosure when said in a doctor’s office, can be captured, shared, and sold when entered into a Web site,” she wrote. “These concerns are likely overlooked by consumers, as the disclosures about capturing and sharing their information are often buried in privacy policies not found on websites’ main pages.”

WebMD’s privacy policy, for example, says that the site does not make a user’s personal information – like a name or address — available to third parties for marketing purposes.

But third parties, the privacy policy says, may use non-personal data to target WebMD users with ads related to their interests. The policy added that WebMD may combine personal and nonpersonal information about users on the site, or may collate that data with information gathered from external sources.

Risa Fisher, a spokeswoman for WebMD, said that the company had just received Ms. Madigan’s letter of inquiry and planned to provide the information she requested about its user data practices.

“Privacy is very important to WebMD and our policies are designed to fully protect the personal health information of our users,” Ms. Fisher said.

The Illinois inquiry comes after the publication a few days ago of a research letter in a medical journal reporting that some popular health portals leaked information about users’ health searches to third parties, like social networks or ad networks, operating on their Web sites.

For his research, Marco D. Huesch, a health care policy researcher at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at University of Southern California searched for content related to depression, herpes and cancer on 20 popular health-related Web sites.

In the letter about his study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, he said that 13 of those sites used third-party tracking elements like cookies or social media plug-ins. Seven of the sites, he wrote, leaked his health searches to third-party trackers.

Although Mr. Huesch wrote that he could not determine whether the third parties misused the information, he found the leakage of the health searches worrisome in itself.

“The ramifications could span embarrassment, discrimination in the labor market,” Mr. Huesch wrote, “or the deliberate decision by marketers not to offer or advertise particular goods and services to an individual, based solely on the companies’ privately gathered knowledge.”

The online advertising industry is keenly aware of such concerns.

This year, the Network Advertising Initiative, an industry self-regulatory association for third-party digital ad companies, revised its code of conduct to require that its members obtain user permission before collecting information about certain specific health conditions.

The conditions that would require user permission include “all types of cancer, mental health related conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases,” the revised code said, but not acne, high blood pressure, heartburn, cold and flu, or cholesterol management.

The self-regulatory group has nearly 100 members, according to its site. The updated version of code of conduct is scheduled to take effect next year.

First Feature Film Completed Under Hungary Fund Bows at Karlovy Vary

KARLOVY VARY -- The first feature film completed with backing from Hungary’s new national film fund had its world premiere Wednesday at the Karlovy Vary international film festival.

Janos Szasz’s Le grand cahier (A nagy fuzet, also known in English as The Notebook) – a $4 million-budget Hungarian co-production with Germany, France and Austria that tells the harsh story of twin brothers put into the care of a cruel grandmother during World War II, received $780,000 (600,000 Euros) from the Hungarian National Film Fund (HNFF).

An adaptation of Agota Kristof’s international bestseller, the film’s three-year journey from script to a screening at one of Europe’s leading film events coincided with a major shake up in Hungarian public film funding.

STORY: Cannes Debut of 'The Notebook' Marks Hungary's Return to the Movie Business

A change of government and revelations of multi-million dollar debts – along with allegations of corruption at predecessor body the Hungarian Motion Picture Public Foundation (MMKA), lead to the establishment of the new film fund, backed by national lottery funding worth $26 million this year.

Budapest-born Hollywood producer Andy Vajna (Rambo, Terminator, Nixon) was brought in to oversee the reforms to fund commercially viable films destined for theatrical release.

At the time, the changes provoked dismay among many filmmakers who feared they would no longer win public funding for their projects.

While some famous Hungarian directors publicly denounced the new system – most notably art house director Bela Tarr, who announced his retirement from filmmaking, most chose to give it time to prove itself.

STORY: Bavaria Film Group Signs Partnership with Hungary's Origo Film Studios

Szasz, whose film initially won support from the MMKA before interim backing from a government department, completed the movie under Vajna’s new system.

It’s the first of six films slated for release this year and next -- including Kornel Mundruczo’s White God (Feher isten) and Karoly Ujj Meszaros’ Liza, the Fox-Fairy -- and is one of 27 movies that have been greenlit for production funds.

HNFF CEO, Agnes Havas, said strict rules governing revenue share, accountancy practices and, in some cases, granting the fund international sales rights for backed projects, had established financial transparency and revolving door funding for further movies.

“Hungarian films are back in the market,” Havas told The Hollywood Reporter shortly before Le grand cahier screened Wednesday.

"Under the old system, more money was spent than the foundation had. All that has changed now.”

Havas, who began her career in film in the 1980s and has worked with HBO among others, said the selection committee system of the new fund guaranteed that a genuinely wide range of projects win backing.

“We are backing existing talent and bringing forward new talent,” she said.

Szasz, who works in both film and theater, said despite the changes of funding bodies, the whole process had been "smooth."

"It was even easy; I cannot and won’t complain."

Bloomberg's legacy under fire for police tactics in NY City

NEW YORK - A growing chorus of critics has challenged Mayor Michael Bloomberg's approach to fighting crime, pushing back against policies that he credits for making New York the safest major city in America.

With a few months left in office, Bloomberg can say crime fell 34 percent over a decade during his tenure. For much of his first two terms, he also was heralded as a healer for the city's tense race relations.

But with Bloomberg's third and final four-year term ending on January 1, Democrats seeking to replace him have joined civil rights leaders and the heavily Democratic city council in hammering at a cornerstone of his legacy: The New York Police Department's crime-fighting tactic known as stop-and-frisk.

Critics say police randomly and unfairly stop young African American and Latino men, most of whom are never charged with crimes after being subjected to searches. But polls show that about half of New Yorkers support stop-and-frisk as a strategy that has helped reduce crime.

This week, the city council defied Bloomberg on the police power issue, approving a pair of measures on Thursday that he vigorously opposed. One creates an independent inspector general to monitor the NYPD, and the other expands the definition of racial profiling and allows people who believe they have been profiled to sue police in state court.

Both measures passed with at least the two-thirds majority needed to override his promised veto.

The defeat was unusual for Bloomberg, 71, a politically independent billionaire who rose to national prominence during more than 11 years in office. Through most of his tenure, Bloomberg has been feared and respected, enhancing his stature with a national coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns and flirting with a presidential run in 2008.

"For two terms, it didn't percolate so hot, this issue," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He said the public's fatigue with Bloomberg and an overall skepticism about police work helped give an opening to some of the more intense critiques of stop-and-frisk.

"It appears there may have been a shift in opinion about policing," O'Donnell said.

A Bloomberg spokesman noted that polling has showed strong public support for Kelly and the NYPD.

PUBLIC OPINION DIVIDED

In heavily Democratic New York City, the winner of the September 10 Democratic primary will be heavily favored against the Republican in the November 5 general election.

All five of the major Democratic candidates have called the number of stop-and-frisk incidents excessive. Only City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Bloomberg ally, has said she would keep Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who has described stop-and-frisk as an invaluable crime-fighting tool, though she said she would demand a drop in the number of stop-and-frisk incidents.

One turning point in the perception about Bloomberg may have come last May, when the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) released statistics showing police conducted more stops of black males between the ages of 14 and 24 than the total number of young black males living in New York City.

Police stops surged from 160,851 in 2003 to 685,724 in 2011, when 1.8 percent of searches of minority suspects that year resulted in weapons seizures.

At a news conference this week, Bloomberg invoked the high-crime days of the 1970s in a strong warning to council members not to pass the bill.

Bloomberg and Kelly have also irked advocates and members of the city council by invoking the names of al Qaeda and violent street gangs to make their case.

"What they're doing is preying on people's fears. Everyone wants to live in a safer city," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU.

On Friday, Bloomberg appeared to double down.

"And you know, everybody'll say, 'Oh, you're overstating it.' I don't know if you're overstating it or not, but I'm not willing to find out," Bloomberg told a radio program. "I don't know what you'd say at the eulogy if a cop got killed, and say, 'Well it turned out we weren't overstating it. Sorry."

The public's view of the debate is mixed.

A Marist poll released on Thursday found New Yorkers were happy with Kelly - more than half want him to continue in the next administration - and about half said the practice of stop-and-frisk should continue. But just 6 percent of voters thought crime should top the next mayor's agenda.

"It's been some time since crime has been at the top of minds," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

A Marist poll from the high-crime days of 1992 found that 33 percent of New Yorkers saw crime as the top issue.

Farmington residents to see cheaper disposal costs under new contract

FARMINGTON — Residents will save a bit of money on garbage disposal and recycling in the coming year, thanks to a new contract city leaders are finalizing with a local waste hauler.

The city council voted Tuesday to accept a new five-year contract with Robinson Waste of Layton, following a request for proposal earlier this year that generated four bids. The contract will lower the rate for the first garbage can from $3.98 a month for residents to $3.85, while the cost for a second can will remain at $1.75. The new contract will also lower the monthly cost for recycling from $2.72 per residence to $1.93 per residence.

Some of the language on the new pact is still being finalized, so final approval of the contract is expected to take place at an upcoming meeting, said City Manager Dave Millheim.

Robinson has been the city’s waste hauler for the past nine years, but city leaders felt it was important to generate a request for proposal to make sure their costs were in line with the market.

Mayor Scott Harbertson and Millheim both praised Robinson for attention to detail and service.

“We’re very happy Robinson came in on the bid. From a management perspective, we get almost no calls,” Millheim said.

Harbertson also noted the company pays attention to detail in dealing with curbside waste and customer concerns.

 

Mystery lurks in "Under the Dome&"; series based on Stephen King novel

Although we’re accustomed to broadcast networks using the summer as a dumping ground for programs they have lost faith in, that’s not always the case. “Under the Dome” (9 p.m. Mountain time Monday on KUTV channel 2) was commissioned specifically for a summer airing. Based on a Stephen King novel, this is a limited-run series (13 episodes) that, in success, could possibly return next summer. (Producers have sketched out a story beyond the first season.)
It’s also not the first time CBS has tried a story based on Kings’ work in the summer. In 1991 the network aired a seven-episode series, “Golden Years.”
‘‘Under the Dome” is vintage Stephen King: A large cast of characters grappling with a seemingly supernatural event when a dome descends on their town, Chester’s Mill, Maine.
Monday’s premiere offers an effective setup to the series, introducing more than a dozen characters and slowly peeling away how they are all related.
The pilot, written by Brian K. Vaughn (“Lost”) and directed by Niels Arden Oplev (the original, 2009 “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”), is filled with an array of creative dome encounters ­— a cow gets cut in half by the dome, an airplane smashes into the dome, etc. — but in the early going viewers learn little about the dome itself. Where did it come from? Can you dig under it? Presumably these are the questions “Under the Dome” will spend the next 13 weeks addressing.
The dome descends just after Dale “Barbie” Barbara (Mike Vogel, “Pan Am,” ‘‘Bates Motel”) finishes burying a body in the woods. He gets spooked driving down a road when he passes a sheriff (Jeff Fahey, “Lost”) and deputy (Natalie Martinez) driving in the opposite direction. Barbie accidently drives off the road onto a farm where he witnesses the dome descend before saving a kid (Colin Ford) from falling airplane parts.
Meanwhile, that kid’s sister, Angie (Britt Robertson), is having sex with her insecure boyfriend, Junior (Alexander Koch), who turns into a domestic-violence perpetrator, which happens kind of a lot in King’s stories.
Junior is the son of city councilman James “Big Jim” Rennie (Dean Norris, “Breaking Bad”), who seems to know something about extra propane shipments the town received just before the arrival of the dome, shipments that caught the eye of a nosey neighbor, prompting her to call local newspaper editor Julia (Rachelle Lefevre, “Twilight”) even as the neighbor admits, “I get my news online, sweetheart, like everybody else.”
That seems like a lot of characters already, but it’s really just the start. There are also characters at the local community radio station and a couple passing through town while taking their daughter to camp.
The premiere hints at some sort of conspiracy by the town fathers, but also an affliction that causes seizures in young people left under the dome. And at least one major character may be taken out by the dome pretty early on.
With Stephen King stories, it’s all about character development and plot execution. So far, the “Under the Dome” characters are just sketches and the plot is just getting started. It remains to be seen if either will merit watching for a full season, but the pilot does exactly what it should: It intrigues and makes the case for viewers to come back next week for more.

View the original article here

The Best Ultrabook Systems Under $800

If you’ve been eyeballing an Ultrabook™ but think your budget won’t accommodate one, fear not: There are plenty of ultra-thin, ultra-light, ultra-speedy systems that won’t break the bank. In fact, for $800 or less, you can replace your aging, under-powered laptop with one of these state-of-the-art machines. Why opt for an Ultrabook? They’re ideal for business travelers, offering not only slim, lightweight designs, but also lightning-fast boot speeds and enough battery life to survive a coast-to-coast flight. Here’s a look at four of the best models you can get for under $800.

A dual-personality Ultrabook: half laptop, half tablet

Lenovo ThinkPad Twist

Can’t decide between a laptop and a tablet? Who says you have to? True to its name, the business-friendly ThinkPad Twist can alternate between the two: The screen pivots and folds down atop the keyboard when you’re ready to stop typing and start tapping. In meeting parlance, that means you can sit at a conference table or stand on the factory floor and still have easy access to your documents. Plus, you get 500GB of storage along with extra gigabytes of solid-state space to improve performance. If there’s a downside here, it’s that the 12.5-inch touchscreen is a little smaller than ideal laptop size, while the entire system feels a little heavy when used as a tablet.

A midsize Ultrabook with a downsize price tag

Asus Vivobook

Want to use Windows 8 the way Microsoft intended? Choose an Ultrabook that has a touchscreen so you can tap, pinch, and swipe your way through apps and operations. The Asus VivoBook features a 14-inch multi-touch display and a 500GB hybrid drive: ample storage for your stuff, plus a 24GB solid-state drive to help Windows boot faster. However, if you use a lot of peripherals, you may be disappointed to learn that only one of the system’s three USB ports supports USB 3.0.

Style, speed, and portability in one streamlined package

Acer Aspire S5

Acer’s dazzling matte-black Aspire S5 is without a doubt one of the most travel-friendly Ultrabook systems in the group, weighing just 2.6 pounds and measuring a scant 0.6 inches thick. What’s more, it comes with a 128GB solid-state drive, meaning Windows 8 boots, runs, and shuts down even faster than laptops with hybrid drives. The 13.3-inch screen lacks touch capabilities, though, so you’ll have to rely on the roomy touchpad if you want gesture-powered interaction with Windows 8.

Big screen, fast storage, small price

Vizio CT15-A4

Ultrabook systems are designed for easy portability, but some users need a bigger workspace than the typical 13- or 14-inch screen affords. The Vizio CT15-A4 raises the bar to 15.6 inches, at the same time bumping screen resolution to 1,920 x 1,080—same as you’d get from a big desktop monitor. Translation: more words, windows, and spreadsheet cells on the screen at a time, and sharper-looking movies. The system also packs a 128GB SSD for blazing performance. Just keep in mind that at around five pounds, this outweighs some smaller systems. It might make your carry-on a little harder to carry on.