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11 July 2012 | Reuters

Google to pay USD 22.5m to settle privacy charges: source

Google Inc is close to settling charges that it bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple Inc's Safari browser, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Google will pay USD 22.5m to settle the matter, said one of the sources, who spoke privately to protect relationships. The fine would be the largest penalty ever levied on a single company by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to the Wall Street Journal which reported the potential settlement late on Monday. The charges involve the use of special computer code, or "cookies," to trick Apple's Safari browser so Google could monitor users who had blocked such tracking. Google disabled the code after being contacted by the Journal. Google has said the tracking was inadvertent and that no personal information such as names, addresses or credit card data was collected. But the tracking was done despite assurances that Safari could be set to protect users' privacy and prompted an FTC probe into whether Google violated a consent decree signed last year. Google said then it would not misrepresent its privacy policies.

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11 July 2012 | Reuters

European ruling on Google privacy policy set for September

France's data protection watchdog said it will likely wrap up the inquiry of Google's new privacy policy, which it is conducting on behalf of European regulators, in September. France's Commission Nationale de l'Informatique (CNIL) had expected to decide in June whether Google's new approach to privacy that took effect in March conforms with European law, but the process has been slowed as the company provided more information to the regulator. The CNIL will then draw its conclusions and present them to the wider group of data protection regulators of the 27 European Union member states, known as the G29. Under its new approach, Google consolidated 60 privacy policies into one and completed its ability to pool the data collected on users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and its social network Google+. The Mountain View, California-based search giant says this allows it to better tailor search results and improve services for consumers. Users are not allowed to opt out. The CNIL review could lead to financial penalties of up to 300,000 euros or administrative sanctions for the U.S. search giant, but it is not clear whether they would be imposed collectively or if individual states would seek their own fines.

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11 July 2012 | V3.co.uk

Anonymous helped Wikileaks target Syrian government

Members of Anonymous are claiming to have helped Wikileaks harvest and leak some 2.5 million emails belonging to the Syrian Government. Four days after the release of Wikileak's Syrian Files, users claiming allegiance with the hacktivist movement said that they gave the files to Wikileaks after compromising Syrian government servers. "While the United Nations sat back and theorized on the situation in Syria, Anonymous took action," members wrote in a statement released to the media. "Assisting bloggers, protesters and activists in avoiding surveillance, disseminating media, interfering with regime communications and networks, monitoring the Syrian internet for disruptions or attempts at surveillance - and waging a relentless information and psychological campaign against Assad and his murderous and genocidal government." Members of Anonymous Syria, AntiSec, and the Peoples' Liberation Front allegedly began attempting to hijack data from Syrian servers in early February. The team worked day and night until eventually they gained access to a massive data dump that reportedly took weeks to download. By mid-March, Anonymous Syria is said to have combed through the data and discovered the personal emails of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his wife Asma. The group released those select emails to the media. Having still had millions of emails and no way of properly disrupting them, Anonymous contacted Wikileaks. The two organizations had previously worked together on the Stratfor emails leak earlier this year. Using Wikileaks resources Anonymous was able to leak the over 2.5 million Syrian files starting earlier this June.

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11 July 2012 | Gallup

US: Confidence in television news drops to new low

Americans' confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with 21 percent of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27 percent last year and from 46 percent when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993. The findings are from Gallup's annual update on confidence in U.S. institutions, conducted June 7-10 this year. Among 16 U.S. institutions tested, television news ranks 11th, following newspapers in 10th place. The 25 percent of adults who express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers is down slightly from 28 percent last year. Confidence in newspapers is now half of what it was at its peak of 51 percent in 1979. This year's updates mark a setback from last year for both television news and newspapers, when Americans appeared to be regaining some confidence in these institutions, though they are more in line with 2007-2010 readings. Liberals and moderates lost so much confidence in television news this year - 11 and 10 points, respectively - that their views are now more akin to conservatives' views. This marks a turnaround from the pattern seen since 2009, in which liberals expressed more confidence than conservatives. The decline since last year in confidence in television news among liberals did not coincide with a similar decline among Democrats. Democrats this year are the most confident in the television news media among key subgroups. Interestingly, postgraduates, who tend to be Democrats, are now the least confident. Many of the groups that lost confidence in television news also tended to lose confidence in newspapers, though to a lesser degree.

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11 July 2012 | Globe and Mail via The Guardian

Canadian publisher plans more cuts

One of Canada's leading, but ailing, newspaper publishing groups, Postmedia Network, has announced a new round of cutbacks. But the company has not revealed what those cuts will entail. However, during a conference call with journalists, Postmedia executives did refer to a range of initiatives, such as format changes, property sales, outsourcing and redundancies. In a three-year programme, the company is seeking to reduce its reliance on print advertising in preparation for a digital future. Chief executive Paul Godfrey said: "Going forward we'll be a smaller revenue company and a smaller expense company," adding that the publisher aims to lower its expenses by up to 20 percent, about CAD 120m. The news comes just months after the company - which publishes the National Post, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen and Vancouver Sun plus several other titles - announced job losses and a broad restructuring that centralised production. In late May, the company also said it would close its wire service and stop printing Sunday papers in some markets in a bid to save up to CAD 40m. Though Godfrey said six months ago that the industry's problems were mostly related to a weak economy, he conceded that the money isn't likely to come back. The company said it lost CAD 12.1m in the last quarter, compared with a loss of CAD 2.7m in the same quarter last year. Revenue slipped 6.9 percent to CAD 212m.

Original source

11 July 2012 | AP

French broadcast authority warning on terror tape

France's audiovisual watchdog has issued a warning to a leading TV channel for airing excerpts of a recording of conversations between police and a man accused of a deadly terrorist rampage. The High Broadcast Council, which distributes frequencies, warned TF1 on Tuesday against re-airing the leaked recordings of Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old suspected of killing three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers around Toulouse in March. Police recorded the negotiations while Merah was trapped in his apartment, and eventually killed. Merah is heard on the broadcast explaining why he won't surrender. Victims' families have said they were shocked to hear his voice. The Paris prosecutor's office is investigating the Sunday broadcast. Stations ignoring Council warnings may be forced to air an apology, risk a fine or be shut down.

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