Tomorrow's Newspapers Online 11-15-2013 | Sc

Microsoft Corp's expanded Digital Crimes Unit inside the 16,800-square foot, high-security facility combines a wide array of tactics that have worked the best: massive data gathering and analysis, gumshoe detective work, high-level diplomacy and creative lawyering.

The new approach, to be launched on Thursday, is the latest attempt to close the gap created in the past decade as criminal hackers innovated in technology and business methods to stay ahead of adversaries mired in the slow-moving world of international law enforcement.

Already, many of the biggest victories against organized online criminals have come when private companies have worked together to seize control of the networks of hacked computers, called botnets, that carry out criminal operations. Though it is at times derided for the security shortfalls in its own products, Microsoft has led more of those seizures than any other company.

"Cybercrime is getting worse," Digital Crimes Unit chief David Finn told Reuters during an exclusive visit to the Redmond, Washington, campus building this week. But Finn hopes that by mixing specialists from various professional arenas, Microsoft can get better.

The center features a lab for dissecting malicious software samples that is accessible only with fingerprint authorization. In another room, a monitor tracks the countries and Internet service providers with the greatest number of machines belonging to some of the worst botnets.

Next to a situation room with a wall-sized, touch-screen monitor sit rows of empty offices for visiting police, Microsoft customers or other allies expected to join specific missions for days or weeks at a time.

There are hundreds or thousands of botnets, and Microsoft is trying to get only the biggest or most damaging, or else to pursue fights that would establish key precedents.

In the past few years "at least half of the major, significant takedowns have been driven by Microsoft," said Steve Santorelli, a former Microsoft investigator and Scotland Yard cybercrime detective who now works at a security nonprofit group called Team Cymru.

Microsoft has tangled with a Mexican mafia family that proudly put brand labels on pirated Xbox game CDs, a ring that took online payments via a parking garage in Malaga, Spain, and a Russian virus writer paid with a paper bag full of cash -- by a 12-year-old boy on a bike.

U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan accepted Google's argument that its scanning of more than 20 million books, and making "snippets" of text available for online searches, constituted "fair use" under U.S. copyright law.

The judge said the massive library makes it easier for students, teachers, researchers and the public to find books, while maintaining "respectful consideration" for authors' rights. He also said the digitization was "transformative," and could be expected to boost rather than reduce book sales.

"In my view, Google Books provide significant public benefits," Chin wrote. "Indeed, all society benefits."

The decision on Thursday is a turning point for litigation that began in 2005, when authors and publishers sued Google over its digital books plan.

Google had estimated that it could owe more than $3 billion if the Authors Guild, an association of authors that demanded $750 for each scanned book, prevailed.

Michael Boni, a partner at Boni & Zack, the law firm representing authors, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Google did not immediately respond to a similar request.

In March 2011, Chin rejected a $125 million settlement, saying it raised copyright and antitrust issues by giving Google a "de facto monopoly" to copy books en masse.

The publishers eventually settled in October 2012.

In July, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Chin had prematurely certified a class of authors without first evaluating the fair use defense.

Chin oversaw the case as a trial judge, and kept jurisdiction after joining the 2nd Circuit.

In a statement, the companies said the plants are being built and sold by Recurrent Energy, a San Francisco developer of utility-scale solar projects that is owned by Japan's Sharp Corp.

The deal is valued at $400 million, according to a Google spokeswoman. That includes equity investments and debt financing from Google and KKR.

It is one of the key messages to come out of a review of an industry that has been growing by an average of more than 7% a year, even through the recession.

The Space Innovation & Growth Strategy (IGS) sets out a plan to boost exports from £2bn to £25bn per annum by 2030.

But to achieve this, the report says, state support needs more coherence.

"I don't want this to be a criticism of government because they have done some incredible things for space of late, but we have been doing these things piece by piece," explained Andy Green, the co-chair of the UK Space Leadership Council.

"It's time now that we take a long-term view on our technologies and the bi-laterals we have with other space nations, and make available a pool of funding over, say, the next five years that has some certainty. "That will give us best value for money; the most bang for our buck," he told BBC News.

The majority of the civil space budget in the UK (nearly £300m) ends up being spent on programmes organised through the European Space Agency. A relatively small sum is spent on exclusively home-grown initiatives, and very often that money is delivered as one-offs to support special projects - such as the £60m announced in June for the Sabre air-breathing rocket engine being developed by Reaction Engines Ltd.

This is in contrast to Germany, France and Italy - the other big space players in Europe - who have robust national programmes in addition to their Esa participation.

The IGS report sets out a Space Growth Action Plan that it believes can lead to a thriving environment for space businesses in the UK - particularly for small and medium enterprises, or SMEs.

It is a call to industry to reach out into the wider UK and the global economy to sell the opportunities that exist in space applications, data and services. The hope is that new ideas and new markets can boost demand, drive technological innovation and further amplify the already healthy growth in the sector.

To achieve this, however, requires that the right sort of ecosystem is put in place.

The IGS wants the government to champion the absolute best regulatory and licensing arrangements, to ensure both that indigenous companies flourish but also that foreign concerns are persuaded they need to invest more in Britain.

Cloaking technology is popular science fiction trope, but real scientists have been researching and developing new ways to make cloaking objects a reality for years. Most recently, two researchers at the University of Toronto have found a new way to cloak an object using tiny antennas.

In a paper published this week in the journal Physical Review X, they describe their new take on cloaking. They're not making objects invisible to the human eye but making them undetectable by radar. They can even control the signals bouncing back to make objects seem larger or smaller than they really are.

Radar works by sending out electromagnetic waves that reflect off objects and bounce back to the detector. In the past, researchers have made things invisible to radar by redirecting the waves around the object. University of Toronto researchers Dr. George Eleftheriades and Michael Selvanayagam took a different approach more suited to large objects.

The nanoantennas they used radiate an electromagnetic field that prevents waves from reflecting back to the radar detector. The small antennas can be even printed flat to create a flexible skin for the desired object. While the technology only works for radio waves at the moment, the researchers say the same principals could be applied to other waves such as light waves, which could potentially hide an object from the human eye.

Scientists a step closer to 'invisibility cloak' In their demonstration, Eleftheriades and Selvanayagam tested the antennas on an aluminum cylinder. Currently, the antennas need to be manually set to the proper frequency they're blocking, but in a more advanced set up, they could detect the different waves and adjust accordingly.

There have been numerous other attempts to make things disappear. In March, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin created a material that could be used to cancel out the microwaves bouncing off an object.

Researchers at Michigan Technological University have experimented with cloaking objects from microwave and infrared frequency waves using shells of nonconductive materials such as ceramics and glass metamaterial to distort waves.

A professor in Japan used cameras to film a scene and then project it on an object in front of that area onto a special reflective material, creating a visual camouflage.

The administrative fix offered by Obama would allow insurers to offer certain health plans in 2014 that do not meet the minimum requirements of the health reform law, but require the companies to spell out how the policies are substandard and what alternatives are available.

"This fix won't solve every problem for every person, but it's going to help a lot of people," Obama told reporters at the White House. "We're going to do everything we can to help Americans who received these cancellation notices."

The shift was designed to end a growing revolt by Democrats worried that the canceled policies, as well as the botched rollout of the government website for enrollment in the exchanges, would threaten their re-election bids in 2014.

Before the law went into effect, Obama had repeatedly promised that Americans who liked their health insurance plans could keep them under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.

The law included a grandfathering provision that allowed insurers to maintain policies that did not meet new minimum coverage levels required by Obamacare, as long as the policies were created before the law was enacted in 2010.

But insurers did not maintain many of these plans or created new ones that would not meet the new requirements, and several million people have since been notified their current plans will be canceled.

It was unclear how much relief Obama's fix would provide. Senior White House officials said it will be up to state insurance commissioners to allow the Obamacare fix to go ahead, and it will be up to insurance companies whether to renew plans that have already been canceled.

Republicans have opposed the healthcare law as an unwarranted expansion of the federal government, and on Thursday, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said: "The only way to fully protect the American people is to scrap this law once and for all."

Some Democrats had threatened to support legislative bills that would have re-opened the healthcare law to halt the growing wave of policy cancellations.

Cisco said on Wednesday that its revenue would drop 10 percent this quarter, and continue to contract until the middle of 2014, in part due to a backlash in China against revelations about U.S. government surveillance programs worldwide.

"The U.S. government isn't doing any favors for Cisco," said Evercore Partners analyst Mark McKechnie, after the company's shares fell 10 percent in late trade.

In June, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the spy agency had hacked network backbones around the world to gain access to sensitive information.

The leaks provoked a storm in the Chinese media and added urgency to Beijing's efforts to use its market power to create indigenous software and hardware capabilities, analysts and businessmen say.

"This is all about China using its own technology, and China building leading technology companies," said James McGregor, chairman for Greater China at consultancy APCO Worldwide.

In a call with analysts, Cisco Chairman John Chambers said Cisco "and our peers" were facing "challenging political dynamics" in China.

One of those peers, IBM, reported in October a 22 percent drop in China revenue, leading to a decline of 4 percent in third-quarter profit for the world's biggest technology services company.

IBM Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge attributed the company's problems to the "process surrounding China's development of a broad-based economic reform plan", which caused state-owned enterprises and governments to delay purchasing.

The company subsequently reassigned the head of its growth markets unit. IBM declined to comment for this story.

FOREIGN COMPANIES MISTRUSTED

Beijing has long mistrusted foreign technology companies, China executives said, and the Snowden revelations have exacerbated those concerns.

Although Beijing has not prohibited state firms from purchasing Western-made technology services and equipment, the government has sent a clear message to chose Chinese-made equipment first, China-based executives say.

"While a formal document hasn't been issued, in the future we will try to buy IT equipment from domestic brands, such as Lenovo," said a person familiar with technology purchases at one of China's four big state-owned banks.

"The government's signal is pretty clear - they want to rely less on U.S. products, such as IOE (IBM, Oracle and EMC Corp," said a former China-based telecommunications executive.

TUV Rheinland, which awarded EU safety certificates to the French implant manufacturer, "neglected its duties of vigilance", the court said.

PIP (Poly Implant Prothese) was shut down in March 2010 amidst a worldwide health scare.

The company used sub-standard silicone gel, causing many implants to rupture. Six implant distributors and 1,700 women had sued TUV Rheinland for 50m euros (£42m), arguing anything but a cursory inspection would have found problems.

The plaintiffs in the civil case will be given an initial payment of 3,000 euros per victim for surgery to have the implants removed.

Jan Spivey, a British woman who received PIP implants as part of reconstructive surgery following breast cancer in 2002, said she was "delighted" with the ruling.

"Of course TUV has some responsibility and should be held to account. They're the organisation that gives the CE certification for safety, and that was what my surgeon relied on when he gave the implants to me.

"Anybody that gives safety certification for a product that is going to make women very sick does have responsibility," she told the BBC's Newshour programme.

It could open the door to many more compensation claims, says the BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris.

TUV Rheinland had won two previous cases in Germany. This was the first such case in France.

The German firm has said it will appeal against the verdict.

Hidden from view TUV Rheinland awarded PIP - formerly one of the world's leading suppliers of implants - its European safety certificate for 17 years.

The founder of PIP, Jean Claude Mas, is still on trial for aggravated fraud in Marseilles, along with four of his executives.

He revealed during police interviews that he had ordered employees to hide the unauthorised silicone when inspectors visited his factory.

It has since emerged the substandard gel was used in 75% of the implants.

The court heard an employee in charge of quality control had only a cooking diploma - another in charge of the lab had previously trained as a pastry chef, our correspondent says.

The patent says the tattoo would communicate with smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and wearable tech like Google Glass via a Bluetooth-style connection and would include a microphone and power source. The idea is that wearers could communicate with their devices via voice commands without having to wear an earpiece or the the Glass headset.

And how's this for future tech? It could even be used as a lie detector. "Optionally, the electronic skin tattoo can further include a galvanic skin response detector to detect skin resistance of a user," the 10-page document reads. "It is contemplated that a user that may be nervous or engaging in speaking falsehoods may exhibit different galvanic skin response than a more confident, truth telling individual."

"Galvanic" is a reference to the way some surfaces, even skin, conduct electricity. Google explains mystery barge In images attached to the filing, the tattoo appears to be between a postage stamp and a Band-Aid in size. The filing says that in addition to sticking via an adhesive to the throat, the tattoo could go on a collar or a band around the user's neck.

Other possible uses include making both incoming and outgoing audio clearer. That could mean anything from making smartphone conversations clearer in a crowded room to being able to listen to music without earphones.

And we can't quite figure out the use case for this one, but: "the electronic tattoo can also be applied to an animal as well."

Digital tattoos and mind-reading headphones

With Google Glass, the company has moved to be at the forefront of the rapidly emerging trend in wearable tech. Glass is a wearable computer with a smartphone-like display that lets users text, browse the Web, take photos and run other apps, all hands free.

The latest version rolling out to field testers includes an ear bud, in response to complaints from some that the first version's bone-conduction sound system didn't work well. It's not hard to envision the throat tattoo as an eventual answer to that complaint.

In written testimony submitted to a U.S. Senate judiciary subcommittee, a Google executive said that the official secrecy was contrary to American values and hurting U.S. economic interests.

"Governments have a duty to protect their citizens. The current lack of transparency about the nature of government surveillance in democratic countries, however, undermines the freedoms most citizens cherish," Google's director for law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, said in the written testimony. He was expected to take questions later in the hearing.

Members of Congress are grappling with what changes to make to U.S. surveillance programs and laws after documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to newspapers revealed the extent of the spying.

President Barack Obama's administration has defended the programs and the secrecy around them as necessary to counter militant groups such as al Qaeda.

Some U.S. lawmakers have said they did not intend to authorize programs that are so sweeping, such as the daily collection of millions of pieces of data about telephone calls. At the request of spy agencies and government lawyers, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the programs, has allowed them to go on.

Google, Microsoft Corp and other major tech companies have asked that they be allowed to provide the public greater detail on the orders they receive from the U.S. surveillance court.

They want to be able to say, without running afoul of secrecy laws, how many demands they get under various sections of U.S. spying laws. Not being allowed to publish that level of detail represents a "prior restraint of speech" that is presumptively unlawful, Salgado said.

Government lawyers say that level of detail would tell U.S. enemies too much about spying capabilities.

Salgado also quoted reports that U.S. companies may lose billions of dollars in revenue as non-American users of the Internet grow wary of services based in the United States.

"The Apple investigation is under way," the judicial source said on Wednesday, without giving details.

The Italian subsidiary of Apple was not immediately available for comment.

The maker of the iPhone is the latest prominent corporation to become the target of a tax probe in Italy amid a global crackdown on tax cheating by multinationals.

The Moto G will be sold contract-free from £135 in the UK and $179 in the US.

The handset has a 4.5in (11.4cm) 720p high-definition screen, a five megapixel rear camera, a 1.3MP front one, and runs the latest versions of the Android operating system.

Analysts suggests the budget end of the market is set to enjoy huge growth.

"The second wave of smartphone adopters is now starting," said Francisco Jeronimo, a mobile device analyst at the consultancy IDC.

"This wave is characterised by consumers looking to get their first smartphone at the cheapest price they find. "They don't have the need nor the money to afford the most advanced smartphones, as the first wave of adopters had. "

'Fast to assemble' The Moto G is being launched in 30 countries including the UK, US, France, Germany and parts of Latin America and Asia. That contrasts with the country's last model - the Moto X - which is currently only available in the US.

Its price makes it slightly cheaper than Samsung's Galaxy S3 Mini, HTC's Desire X and Sony's Xperia M but still more expensive than Huawei's Ascend G510.

However, Motorola's device is the only one of these to come preinstalled with the Android Jelly Bean operating system. The firm is also promising to release an upgrade to the newest version of its Android platform, KitKat, in the near future.

It also has the highest resolution display and is the only one to feature a quad-core, rather than dual-core, CPU (central processing unit). This should in theory allow it to offer superior processing power while minimising the toll on battery life.

Motorola's chief executive told the BBC it had helped cut each handset's cost by putting in a large orders for their components from the start.

"The engineers also designed this for cost - there's fewer pieces [and] it's designed to be easy and fast to assemble," said Dennis Woodside.