Net neutrality activists were dragged out of a news conference and threatened with arrest while protesting against the Federal Communications Commission.
The activists attempted to unfurl a banner claiming that “85 percent of Republican voters support Net neutrality,” as found last fall in a
Net neutrality protestors Commish Pai's anti-net neutrality press conference. #NetNeutrality pic.twitter.com/C3nuumrWrk
— Brooks Boliek (@technocowboy) February 10, 2015 " target="_blank">University of Delaware poll, when security guards stopped them and forced them out of the room.The protest came as Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, attacked a proposal by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to reclassify broadband Internet as a utility.
"The American people are being misled about President Obama's plan to regulate the Internet," Pai said. "Last week's carefully managed rollout was designed to downplay the plans of a massive intrusion in the Internet economy."
Internet activists Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, of Popular Resistance, were dragged from the room by security after interrupting Pai’s comments.
“Commissioner Pai, don’t you see Republicans love net neutrality?” they shouted. “Stop being a mouthpiece for the telecoms – your job is to represent the public interest.”
“The Internet should be a level playing field for all not one rigged for Comcast and Verizon,” the activists continued shouting as they were forced from the conference room. “No crony capitalism for Comcast and Verizon. Equal access for all.”
Net neutrality protestors Commish Pai's anti-net neutrality press conference. #NetNeutrality pic.twitter.com/C3nuumrWrk
— Brooks Boliek (@technocowboy) February 10, 2015Hacker collective Anonymous claims to have taken control of almost 100 Twitter accounts associated with Isis in an operation begun in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
The accounts seized in “#OpISIS”, loosely linked to #OpCharlieHebdo, no longer exist, having been either closed down by Anonymous or suspended by Twitter.
In the video put up by the group to announce its success , a masked speaker, talking with the group’s iconic generated speech, declares that: “The terrorists that are calling themselves Islamic State (Isis) are not Muslims. Isis, we will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you. From now on no safe place for you online. You will be treated like a virus and we are the cure. We own the internet.”
The group also names a selection of Facebook accounts “suspected to have been keeping contact with terrorists Isis in Syria and Iraq” and says it “won’t hurt to keep an eye on them”.
It is not yet clear whether Anonymous’s actions have had any wider effect on Isis’ ability to organise using social media. While the group declares that there will be “more to come”, Isis members continue to create accounts as fast as they are taken down.
Indeed, the group already has to contend with Twitter itself attempting to remove accounts which it identifies as promoting terror, and in August 2014 there were reports that it was considering abandoning mainstream social networks entirely.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2015
Newsweek magazine's Twitter account was the victim of hackers on Tuesday who posted a threat to U.S. President Barack Obama and his family and the words "CyberCaliphate" and "Je suis IS," a reference to Islamic State and the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The group, which also took responsibility for hacking Pentagon social media accounts last month, tweeted "#CyberCaliphate Bloody Valentine's Day #MichelleObama! We're watching you, your girls and your husband!"
It also posted a message intended for the United States in retaliation for its actions in the Muslim world.
"While the U.S. and its satellites are killing our brothers in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, we are destroying your national cyber security system from inside," it said.
The message contained a list of names under the heading "brave mujahideen."
Newsweek removed the CyberCaliphate banner and tweets by mid-morning. It was not immediately clear how long the intrusion lasted.
The group took responsibility for the intrusion last month of the Twitter and YouTube accounts for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East. The hackers claimed to be sympathetic toward the Islamic State militant group being targeted in American bombing raids.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Lisa Lambert)
When it comes to popularity, cable companies rank down there with members of Congress, root canals and Nickelback. Current and former customers agree; they hate the high cost and poor service, and they especially hate the runaround they get from call centers.
Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two largest cable television providers in the U.S., are consistently at the bottom of consumer satisfaction surveys and are among the least trusted corporations in the nation. Now these two monolithic companies are on the brink of a mega-merger.
The merged company — which will be named Comcast — would control more than two-thirds of all cable television subscriptions in the country, and some 40% of the home Internet market. The $45.2 billion merger, proposed a year ago, is awaiting approval from the feds, and there are unfortunate signs the merger will be approved.
Survey after survey shows that Americans wholeheartedly oppose the proposed merger. The latest survey, by Consumer Reports, finds nearly three-quarters of Americans believe it will result in higher cable and Internet rates, while two-thirds say it will likely have a negative impact on customer service and that Comcast would have no incentive to improve.
So, knowing that most of their customers hate their guts, you would think that Comcast and Time Warner would do some corporate soul searching and perhaps polish their respective images. Maybe some acts of goodwill like rolling back prices, making a true commitment to net neutrality or providing better customer service would do the trick. But that hasn’t been the case. As regional monopolies, these companies know that when they are awarded a local franchise, they can pretty much do as they please without fear of consequences.
Comcast even seems to have grown surlier toward its customers since the unpopular merger was first proposed. This past spring, technology journalist Ryan Block attempted to cancel his service. Not only did Comcast’s customer retention specialist try to talk Block out of it, he got hostile with him, chiding Block and refusing to take back Comcast’s cable card. What the rep didn’t know is that Block was recording the last 10 minutes of the conversation, after it became ridiculous.
"This phone call is actually an amazing representative example of why I don't want to stay with Comcast," Block tells the retention specialist at one point.
The recording, which went viral after it was posted on TechCrunch, further amplified customers’ frustrations with Comcast and other cable providers. Comcast didn't handle this bad publicity well; the response was your typical corporate lip service. The company said the rep’s behavior was “unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives.”
But was it?
Earlier this month, Lisa Brown, a Comcast customer from Spokane, Wash., was rechristened “Asshole Brown” on the service bill she received in the mail. Upset by this, Brown believes her name changed after she phoned Comcast’s local offices to remove the pay-TV portions of her cable package. Brown’s call, like other customers who attempt to downgrade or cancel, was forwarded to a rep who tried to talk her out of dropping premium channels.
“I was never rude,” Brown told consumer advocate Chris Elliott. “It could have been that person was upset because I didn’t take the offer.”
After she received her bill, Brown said she called Comcast asking for an explanation and to have her billing name changed back to Lisa, but she says the local and regional offices were of no help. It wasn’t until Elliott contacted Comcast’s headquarters for a comment about the incident that the company sprang into action. Again, Comcast claimed it has no tolerance for this type of behavior and would investigate.
But it turns out this wasn't an isolated incident by a rogue employee. Only days after Brown’s story went viral, three other customers reported that they, too, were defamed by Comcast employees.
Julie Swano reported that her December bill was addressed to “Whore” Julia Swano. Swano said she had to talk to at least 20 Comcast employees in a three week period to find out what happened and to get her name changed back, yet she says “they did nothing about it.”
Another customer, Carolina Heredia, contacted Elliott after her name was changed to “dummy” on her online account. When she gained access to her customer page, the greeting said, “Hello, dummy.” Heredia says she called Comcast several times about the name change, but got no satisfaction until she visited a local office. Even then, she says no one from Comcast has offered an apology or an explanation.
And finally, a 63-year-old Chicago-area woman told WGN-TV that she, too, was insulted on her Comcast bill. Mary Bauer of suburban Addison was having trouble with her Comcast service for months. After the issues were resolved, her bills stopped showing up, but Bauer said she would call customer service to make her payments. Recently, bills started showing up in her mailbox again, with "Super Bitch" stamped where her name should go. Again, Comcast responded and said it was investigating the matter.
A former Comcast subcontractor told Chris Elliott that it's easy to change a customer’s name, but the changes would have to be made deliberately. "It does take some serious navigation to get to the portion of the biller, or the software they used to make changes on accounts, where you change account names and information. So the rep who changed the customer’s name to ‘a**hole’ couldn’t have done it by accident,” he tells Elliot.
But who would do something like that? And why?
Signs point to exasperated customer service reps or retention specialists who have access to a customer’s profile. They can do atrocious things to the account, including abusing a customer’s name. And after hard day of dealing with dissatisfied customers and cynical managers, it's an easy way to vent some frustrations.
“It’s high-pressure work,” one former retention specialist told AlterNet. “It’s a sales job, and you’re monitored all the time.”
Retention specialists are given small bonuses for "saves," when they persuade customers not to cancel services or disconnect. But they’re also punished for “discos,” the term used when they are unsuccessful in retaining a customer. These call center salespeople work from a script that is supposed to persuade customers to reconsider disconnecting their service. It’s a step-by-step method and a formula that is supposed to succeed a large percentage of the time. “And if it’s not working for you, managers know it's not the fault of the script," the former specialist said.
The Verge, a tech news site, contacted several current and former Comcast employees. They concur that all disconnect requests are forwarded to retention specialists and that front-line customer service reps don’t have the ability to cancel subscribers. If customers wish to disconnect or downgrade service, they have to endure a high-pressure sales pitch to convince them otherwise, and some retention specialists just won’t take no for an answer.
“There’s a stock answer for every concern,” the former retention specialist told us. “If the price is too high or someone just wants to drop everything but Internet, we stick with the script. So, you’re really focused on your results, not the customer's needs."
The script is a simple ordered checklist of what to say to a possible “disco.” Some parts of the script are innocuous enough, but it mostly guides retention specialists how to feign empathy and build rapport with the customer while subconsciously maneuvering the subject away from cancellation. The checklist includes instructions to how to “relate and empathize,” “take control,” “set the agenda,” “overcome objections” and “take ownership.” These sales tactics are similar to those used by car salespeople and boiler-room stock brokers. The retention specialists are also given some leeway to offer customers modest discounts on service and Internet speed upgrades to try to retain them. Bonus points can also be earned for steering customers away from trap words like “disconnect,” “downgrade” and “cancel.”
And while retention specialists are rewarded for saves, it can be brutal when one of them is riding a bad luck streak. Some retention specialists say they will go as far as to hang up on customers or put them on hold indefinitely if they don't think they can talk them out of disconnecting. Because they know that if they string together just a few discos in a short period of time, it can result in dismissal. That’s probably why they lash out at customers.
In a post on his LinkedIn page, Frank Eliason, a former Comcast executive, says the issue starts with the business atmosphere, and the customer experience with retention contractors could be just one symptom of a larger cultural problem.
“Customer service is often the most expensive line on any company's balance sheet, especially for a company like Comcast which has more than 300 million interactions each year,” says Eliason, the former senior director of national customer operations. “Call centers tried to shift to become sales centers. This is why any time a customer calls, they're pitched everything under the sun instead of actually helping you with the reason why you called in the first place.”
When client care gives way to seedy sales tactics, that's when the wheels fall off customer service operations.
“Incidents like these most often happen because of a culture within the company,” says Eliason. “The reason you tend not to hear about incidents like this from other companies is because people within the company would be horrified if they heard of such a thing, and they can easily escalate the situation to higher levels.”
Eliason says he would “hit the roof” if he heard that a customer’s name was changed to Asshole, but this evidently didn’t upset current Comcast employees enough to rectify the affront to Brown. It wasn't until Brown's humilation made national headlines that it was taken up by Comcast’s public relations department.
So, it appears Comcast’s infamous customer service gaffes aren't isolated incidents at all, but inspired by the narcissistic corporate culture of a juggernaut that couldn't care less about its customers, just so long as they’re paying their bills. And why should they? Without any real competition in most of the areas it serves, Comcast enjoys the impregnability of a captive audience.
Law enforcement cannot indefinitely forbid Yahoo Inc from revealing a grand jury subpoena that seeks subscriber account information, a U.S. judge ruled, because doing so would violate the company's free speech rights.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California on Thursday wrote that the government's request would prohibit Yahoo from disclosing the subpoena, even years after the grand jury concluded its probe. The court order does not disclose the target of the federal investigation.
"In an era of increasing public demand for transparency about the extent of government demands for data from providers like Yahoo!, this cannot stand," Grewal wrote.
Representatives for Yahoo and the U.S. Department of Justice could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday.
Internet companies such as Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook have sought to clarify their relationship with U.S. security agencies and law enforcement, and to challenge secret orders to turn over information, as they seek to re-assure users that they will safeguard their personal information.
In this case, however, the government's secrecy request was presented directly to the judge outside of the presence of Yahoo lawyers or attorneys for the target of the probe, according to the ruling.
Instead of asking that Yahoo be gagged for 60 or 90 days, the government asked that the company be gagged until further order of the court. The government did not demonstrate why such an indefinite request was necessary, Grewal wrote.
"The government is free to try again to make such a showing," Grewal wrote. "Alternatively, it may submit a renewed request justifying a finite period."
(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Health insurer Anthem Inc on Friday warned U.S. customers about an email scam targeting former and current members whose personal information was suspected to have been breached in a massive cyber attack.
The No. 2 U.S. health insurer said on Wednesday that hackers breached its computer system containing data on up to 80 million people.
Anthem said there was no indication the email scam was connected to those who perpetrated the security breach. It wants customers to know it is not calling members regarding the breach and not asking for credit card information or social security numbers over the phone.
The company said it will contact current and former members via mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service about the attack.
Anthem confirmed media reports that data accessed by hackers had not been encrypted to prevent such a security breach.
"When the data is moved in and out of the warehouse it is encrypted. But when it sits in the warehouse it's not encrypted," Anthem spokeswoman Cindy Wakefield said.
Anthem needs to be able to easily access patient data in order to create the numerous reports it generates for customers and regulators as part of doing business, Wakefield explained. "I think that is standard practice," she added.
"How we managed our data in the warehouse has been appropriate," Wakefield said. "No one has pointed a finger and said you did this wrong and this is why this happened."
Several U.S. states are investigating the cyber attack on Anthem that a person familiar with the matter said is being examined for possible ties to China.
"The level of protection of this highly sensitive information is very much a focus of our investigation," said Jaclyn Falkowski, a spokeswoman for Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen.
Cyber security has become a major concern for U.S. firms. Some of the biggest data breaches reported to date include those at retailers Target Corp and Home Depot Inc.
Wakefield said Anthem was not worrying about lawsuits by states or customers as a result of the security breach.
"Our first priority is to determine who was impacted and to notify our members," she said, adding that Anthem was working with cyber security experts on ways to prevent future attacks.
The insurer has been communicating with regulators and attorneys general in the markets where it does business, Wakefield said.
U.S. law does not specifically require sensitive health data be encrypted, said Washington lawyer Deven McGraw, an expert in healthcare privacy.
"Encryption is one physical safeguard that can be very helpful to lowering cyber security risk," McGraw said.
Anthem's shares were down 1.1 percent at $135.69 on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Bill Berkrot and Karen Freifeld in New York and Anjali Rao Koppala in Bengaluru; Editing by Don Sebastian and Lisa Shumaker)
Electronics retailer RadioShack Corp filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection on Thursday and said it had a deal in place to sell as many as 2,400 stores to an affiliate of hedge fund Standard General, its lender and largest shareholder.
Wireless company Sprint Corp would operate as many as 1,750 of those stores under an agreement with Standard General, Sprint said separately.
RadioShack's bankruptcy, which has been expected for months, follows 11 consecutive unprofitable quarters as the company has failed to transform itself into a destination for mobile phone buyers. But its sale agreement with Standard General could spare it the fate most retailers suffer in Chapter 11, liquidation.
RadioShack said in a statement that the Standard General affiliate, called General Wireless, would acquire between 1,500 and 2,400 of its 4,100 stores.
Sprint would occupy about one-third of each RadioShack store, selling "mobile devices across Sprint`s brand portfolio as well as RadioShack products, services and accessories," Sprint said in its statement.
Other potential buyers will also have the opportunity to bid on RadioShack assets. Any deal will need approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, so nothing is etched in stone.
Sprint's chief executive, Marcelo Claure, in a statement said the deal will "allow Sprint to grow branded distribution quickly and cost effectively."
In an interview with Reuters earlier on Thursday, Claure said RadioShack had "incredible store locations," and he was keen to acquire some to cut down on long waits at Sprint's current stores. "Customers have to wait one or two hours to get a phone and that’s not acceptable," Claure said. [L1N0VF26W]
A spokesman for Standard General did not respond to a request for comment.
RadioShack, with 21,000 employees, $1.2 billion of assets and $1.39 billion of debts according to court papers, said it also has an agreement with a lender group led by DW Partners for a $285 million loan to operate in bankruptcy.
OTHER RESTRUCTURING MOVES
The Standard General deal is only a piece of its restructuring efforts. RadioShack has a deal with liquidation firm Hilco to shutter as many as 2,100 underperforming stores and said it has already begun discussions with other potential buyers to acquire the rest of its assets.
"These steps are the culmination of a thorough process intended to drive maximum value for our stakeholders," RadioShack Chief Executive Joe Magnacca said in the statement.
The chain's more than 1,000 dealer franchise stores, its Mexican subsidiary and its Asian operations are not part of the bankruptcy, it said.
RETAIL BLUES
Fort Worth, Texas-based RadioShack, a 95-year-old company that began as a mail-order radio service, hopes to avoid liquidation, the fate many bankrupt retailers suffer due to laws that give them little time to decide whether to keep or break leases.
Recent retailers that met their demise in bankruptcy include Loehmann's Inc and Borders Group, which were sold to liquidation firms, and Coldwater Creek.
RadioShack over the past year tried to avoid bankruptcy by closing 400 stores and reducing workforce by 19 percent, court documents show. It changed its logo, reduced store clutter and tried to connect with tech-savvy shoppers through brighter "concept stores" featuring interactive displays.
But as the company's public struggles went on, vendors lost confidence, RadioShack's chief financial officer, Carlin Adrianopoli, said in a court statement on Thursday.
"RadioShack's operating losses have been well documented, which has caused many vendors to alter their relationships with the company," Adrianopoli said.
RadioShack had hoped to ramp up store closures but butted heads with lenders who would not agree unless RadioShack prepaid a chunk of its debt and agreed to other concessions.
(Reporting by Nick Brown in New York; Additional reporting by Malathi Nayak; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Cynthia Osterman)
New rules on privately owned drones can't come fast enough for most Americans.
Some 73 percent of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Thursday said they want regulations for the lightweight, remote-control planes that reportedly have been involved in an increasing number of close calls with aircraft and crowds. People are also uneasy about potential invasions of privacy by drones carrying cameras or other devices.
Forty-two percent went as far as to oppose private ownership of drones, suggesting they prefer restricting them to officials or experts trained in safe operation.
Another 30 percent said private drone ownership was fine, and 28 percent were not sure, according to the survey of more than 2,000 respondents, conducted Jan. 21-27.
Many respondents were surveyed before a small quad copter breeched the White House security perimeter and crash-landed on the grounds on Jan. 26.
The poll results show widespread unease about the devices, many of which can fly as high as 6,000 feet carrying video cameras or other payloads.
"In regular peoples' hands, it's easy for them to get misused," said poll respondent Sandy Gifford, a 58-year-old daycare worker in Portland, Oregon. She equated drone dangers with those posed by guns and drugs.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is months late in developing small drone regulations. A draft FAA rule, under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget, is expected to be published soon, kicking off a year or two of comment and revisions before it takes effect.
The FAA rule will cover commercial drone uses, such as photography, surveying and crop inspection, which are now mostly banned. It will not apply to hobbyists operating model aircraft under a safety code of a community-based organization. Congress granted these users an exemption from rules in 2012.
It was unclear how the rule will deal with people who buy drones online or at a big box store, rather than joining the sport through a club or hobby shop.
These non-traditional users, "don't have the same safety mindset that a modeler does," said Rich Hudson, government affairs director at the Academy of Model Aeronautics, world's largest community-based model aircraft group, with nearly 80 years of safe flying.
The AMA safety code says devices should stay below 400 feet near airports, not be flown carelessly or recklessly, and avoid all other aircraft, among other things.
Drones also have sparked fears of snooping by neighbors or law enforcement. The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed strong attitudes on both questions. Seventy-one percent said drones should not be allowed to operate over someone else's property, and 64 percent said they would not want their neighbor to have a drone.
But respondents widely supported drone use in law enforcement. Sixty-eight percent of respondents support police flying drones to solve crimes, and 62 percent support using them to deter crime.
"Where there's suspicious activity, it would help the police," said Phillip Gimino, 75, a retired engineer in Edmond, Oklahoma, who flew gas-powered radio-controlled aircraft as a kid. "But it should be limited."
Gimino, a former gun dealer, opposes gun control laws, but said drones should be off limits to private owners until rules are in place.
The survey showed a split on other uses: 46 percent don't want news organizations using drones to gather news, while 41 percent support that use. And 49 percent think parents should be able to use drones to monitor their children, while 38 percent oppose that use.
The survey of 2,405 American adults has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
(Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by David Gregorio)
Health insurer Anthem Inc said hackers broke into a database containing personal information on about 80 million of its customers and employees, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Investigators are still determining the extent of the incursion that was discovered last week, and Anthem said it is likely that tens of millions of records were stolen, the Journal reported.
Reuters could not immediately reach Anthem for comment.
The company told the Journal that the breach exposed names, birthdays, addresses and Social Security numbers but did not appear to involve medical information or financial details such as credit card or bank account numbers, nor were there signs the data was being sold on the black market.
"This attack is another reminder of the persistent threats we face, and the need for Congress to take aggressive action to remove legal barriers for sharing cyber threat information," U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas and chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement late Wednesday.
The FBI had warned last August that healthcare industry companies are being targeted by hackers, publicizing the issue following an attack on U.S. hospital group Community Health Systems Inc that resulted in the theft of millions of patient records.
Medical identity theft is often not immediately identified by patients or their provider, giving criminals years to milk such credentials. That makes medical data more valuable than credit cards, which tend to be quickly canceled by banks once fraud is detected.
Security experts say cyber criminals are increasingly targeting the $3 trillion U.S. healthcare industry, which has many companies still reliant on aging computer systems that do not use the latest security features.
Anthem, which detected the breach, said it would send a letter and email to everyone whose information was stored in the hacked database, the newspaper reported. It is also setting up an informational website and will offer to provide a credit-monitoring service.
(Reporting by Supriya Kurane in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken Wills)
The suspected operator of the underground website Silk Road was convicted on Wednesday on narcotics and other criminal charges for his role in orchestrating a scheme that enabled around $200 million of anonymous online drug sales using bitcoins.
Ross Ulbricht, 30, was convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan on all seven counts he faced following a closely watched four-week trial that spilled out of U.S. investigations of the use of the bitcoin digital currency for drug trafficking and other crimes.
The jury of six men and six women needed a little over three hours to deliberate before finding Ulbricht guilty of charges that included drug trafficking and conspiracies to commit money laundering and computer hacking.
Ulbricht faces up to life in prison. He has attracted many supporters to his cause, including some who say the government's case is an attack on Internet freedom.
After the verdict was read, Ulbricht turned toward his supporters and raised his hand as he was led from the court. "Ross is a hero," shouted one supporter wearing dreadlocks.
Silk Road operated from at least January 2011 until October 2013, when authorities seized the website and arrested Ulbricht at a public library in San Francisco.
Prosecutors said Ulbricht ran Silk Road as "Dread Pirate Roberts," an alias borrowed from a character in the 1987 movie "The Princess Bride."
"FALL GUY"
The website relied on the so-called Tor network, which lets users communicate anonymously, and accepted payment through bitcoins, which according to prosecutors allowed users to conceal their identities and locations.
By the time it was shut down, Silk Road had generated nearly $213.9 million in sales and $13.2 million in commissions, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Ulbricht took extreme steps to protect Silk Road, soliciting the murder of several people who posed a threat. No evidence exists that the murders were carried out.
Ulbricht conceded that he created Silk Road, and his lawyer Joshua Dratel said it was intended as a "freewheeling, free market site" where all but a few harmful items could be sold.
But Dratel said Ulbricht's "economic experiment" eventually became too stressful for him, so he handed it off to others. He was lured back toward its end, he said, becoming the "fall guy" for its true operators.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli, Noeleen Walder and Dan Grebler)
Google late Monday fired off a terse tweet that appeared aimed at putting brakes on a report that it is readying a ride-sharing service that would rival Uber.
"We think you'll find Uber and Lyft work quite well," said a message fired off at the Internet titan's official @google Twitter account. "We use them all the time."
Google referred AFP to the tweet in response to a request for comment regarding a Bloomberg report citing an unnamed source as saying that the California company is developing its own car-hailing service, most likely in connection with its work on self-driving cars.
The report came the same day that Uber and Carnegie Mellon University announced a partnership to collaborate on a center devoted to research and development of mapping, car safety, and autonomous vehicle technology.
"As a global leader in urban transportation, we have the unique opportunity to invest in leading edge technologies to enable the safe and efficient movement of people and things at giant scale," Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden said in a release.
"This collaboration and the creation of the Uber Advanced Technologies Center represent an important investment in building for the long term of Uber."
Google was an early backer of Uber, investing in the controversial ride-sharing service through its venture capital arm.
Google Maps software integrated into Uber's smartphone application lets users check progress of drivers on their way to pick them up.
San Francisco-based Uber has grown into one of the world's largest startups, valued at some $40 billion, with operations in more than 200 cities in 54 countries around the world.
But Uber's growth has also generated frictions with existing taxi operations, and posed challenges for regulators.
Uber does not employ drivers or own its vehicles, but instead uses independent contractors with their own cars.
Uber allows consumers to use a smartphone app to locate a driver -- in some cities with several classes of service -- and instantly book a ride.
Since launching in 2010, Uber has also been the prime example of a "disruptive" economic force. Taxi drivers in dozens of cities have staged protests against Uber, and regulators in many cities have sought to shut it down.
The prominent Anonymous “hacktivist” Jeremy Hammond, who participated in some of the hacking collective’s most audacious cyber acts, was placed by the FBI on a terrorism watchlist, the Daily Dot reported on Monday.
The internet news website obtained a leaked document from the New York state division of criminal justice services that shows Hammond was classified as a “possible terrorist organisation member”. The document is marked “destroy after use” and includes the instruction: “Do not advise this individual that they are on a terrorist watchlist.”
The document obtained by the Daily Dot, which is dated just weeks before Hammond’s arrest, suggests that he was put on a central terrorism watchlist compiled by the FBI known as the Terrorist Screening Database. The documents do not spell out what justification, if any, the federal agency offered for including Hammond on the list, raising the possibility that the FBI designated him a possible terrorist by dint of his role as a so-called “hacktivist” within Anonymous.
Civil liberties groups said they were concerned that a hacker with no apparent history of terrorist behaviour or affiliations should be classified in this way.
“This raises questions about the US government’s definition of terrorism and whether they have expanded it to including hackers,” said Hanni Fakhoury, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Fakhoury said he was curious to know the identity of the “terrorist organisation” mentioned in the documents.
“If it was al-Qaida or Islamic State that would pose no problem for me, but if they were referring to Anonymous that would be a different proposition,” he said.
Hammond was arrested in March 2012 and sentenced in November the following year to 10 years in prison for his part in a series of high-profile hacks carried out in the name of Anonymous. One of the largest of those breaches in which Hammond played a leading role was the release of five million emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor.
He was prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). There was never any suggestion during the proceedings that he was involved in any activities related to terrorism or terrorist organisations.
Hammond has always insisted he is an activist and not a criminal, let alone a terrorist. In a recent opinion article for the Guardian, he argued that he and his fellow hackers were misunderstood.
“We are condemned as criminals without consciences, dismissed as anti-social teens without a cause, or hyped as cyber-terrorists to justify the expanding surveillance state. But hacktivism exists within the history of social justice movements,” he wrote.
A representative of the Terrorist Screening Center, which administers the database, said the centre “does not publicly confirm nor deny whether any individual may be included in the US government’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). Disclosure of an individual’s inclusion or non-inclusion in the TSDB would significantly impair the government’s ability to investigate and counteract terrorism.”
The guidelines governing terrorism watchlists are overseen by an inter-agency committee within the US National Counterterrorism Center. They are cast very wide to include “acts dangerous to human life, property or infrastructure” that are “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction”.
Hugh Handeyside of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project said the US government’s approach to the watchlists was problematic on several levels.
“It involves a very broad definition of terrorism, has a poorly defined standard of ‘reasonable suspicion’ that has numerous exemptions, and has no meaningful way to seek redress,” he said.
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