France 'has vast data surveillance'

4 July 2013 Last updated at 10:11 ET

France's foreign intelligence service intercepts computer and telephone data on a vast scale, like the controversial US Prism programme, according to the French daily Le Monde.

The data is stored on a supercomputer at the headquarters of the DGSE intelligence service, the paper says.

The operation is "outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision", Le Monde says.

Other French intelligence agencies allegedly access the data secretly.

It is not clear however whether the DGSE surveillance goes as far as Prism. So far French officials have not commented on Le Monde's allegations.

The DGSE allegedly analyses the "metadata" - not the contents of e-mails and other communications, but the data revealing who is speaking to whom, when and where.

Connections inside France and between France and other countries are all monitored, Le Monde reports.

The paper alleges the data is being stored on three basement floors of the DGSE building in Paris. The secret service is the French equivalent of Britain's MI6.

The operation is designed, say experts, to uncover terrorist cells. But the scale of it means that "anyone can be spied on, any time", Le Monde says.

There is a continuing international furore over revelations that the US has been systematically seizing vast amounts of phone and web data.

The French government has sharply criticised the US spying, which allegedly included eavesdropping on official EU communications.

The scale of surveillance by America's National Security Agency (NSA) emerged from classified intelligence documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The UK spy agency GCHQ is reported to run a similarly vast data collection operation, co-operating closely with the NSA.

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Talking train window ads tested

3 July 2013 Last updated at 11:07 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

A German firm is proposing to transmit adverts via train windows so that the sound appears to "come from inside the user's head" when passengers lean against them.

The idea would use bone conduction technology, a technique that transmits sound to the inner ear by passing vibrations through the skull.

The concept has been developed by ad agency BBDO Germany on behalf of broadcaster Sky Deutschland.

It is already proving controversial.

Comments posted under a video showing off the concept include "This is a violation to a person's right to rest" and "I think I'd take a sledgehammer to the window."

Streamed video

The Talking Window campaign idea was shown off at the International Festival of Creativity in Cannes last month.

The video shows passengers on a German train being surprised to hear ads urging them to download the Sky Go app on to their smartphones to watch streamed video.

The audio is created by a special Sky-branded transmitter made by Audiva attached to the windows.

"Tired commuters often rest their heads against windows," says the ad.

"Suddenly a voice inside their head is talking to them. No-one else can hear this message."

Details posted online note that bone conduction technology has previously been used in hearing aids, headphones for swimmers and runners, and devices used by magicians to make someone think they have had a message planted in their head.

Google also plans to use the tech in its forthcoming Glass headset.

Weather reports

BBDO Germany said it had had a positive response to tests using prototype transmitters placed in public transport in Munich and Aachen.

"If our customer Sky Deutschland agrees, we will start with the new medium as quickly as possible," spokesman Ulf Brychcy told the BBC.

"At present, this is limited to the German market. If we look into the future: everything is possible.

"Some people don´t like advertising in general. But this is really a new technology. [It might] not only be used for advertising, but also for music, entertainment, mass transport information, weather reports and so on."

A spokeswoman for Sky Deutschland said it had yet to make a decision on whether to run the campaign.

Although the firm shares the same logo as the UK's BSkyB's satellite TV service, the two are separate companies, albeit both part-owned by News Corp.

BSkyB said it had not been aware of the campaign before the BBC brought it to its attention, and was not planning to launch anything similar.

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Samsung buys TV firm Boxee

3 July 2013 Last updated at 13:55 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Samsung is buying Boxee - an Israeli firm that makes media streaming devices.

The South Korean electronics giant said it had "acquired key talent and assets" from the company.

"This will help us continue to improve the overall user experience across our connected devices," it added.

Boxee's latest product lets subscribers record TV shows onto its servers and then stream them to TVs, computers and smart devices "from the cloud".

It had previously raised $26.5m (£17.3m) in funds from a range of US and Israeli investors.

Samsung is the world's best-selling maker of smart TVs - screens which which offer access to apps, video-on-demand and other internet content without the need for a separate set-top box.

According to Informa Telecoms and Media, 54 million smart TVs were sold worldwide in the last year, and it expects that number to grow to 221 million in 2017.

The consultancy suggested the takeover might prove a good match because, despite its apparent success, Samsung was still struggling to convince consumers to use its services rather than those of others.

"When people are going into stores they may end up with a smart TV by default but at the moment they have little desire to use their internet functions even if they have a fast enough connection," said Paul Jackson, principal analyst at Informa.

"But within the TV industry there is a lot of optimism that consumers will want to use these kind services in the future.

"Boxee has been playing with its own TV user interface and has a good reputation for making a link between its hardware and a back-end service.

"But it's still early days for cloud TV services and it's been difficult for Boxee to make money. It makes more sense for it to be part of a wider offering rather than selling itself as a single function device."

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Computer mouse inventor dies at 88

3 July 2013 Last updated at 18:04 ET

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Richard Lister looks back at his life

The inventor of the computer mouse, Doug Engelbart, has died aged 88.

Engelbart developed the tool in the 1960s as a wooden shell covering two metal wheels, patenting it long before the mouse's widespread use.

He also worked on early incarnations of email, word processing and video teleconferences at a California research institute.

The state's Computer History Museum was notified of his death by his daughter, Christina, in an email.

Her father had been in poor health and died peacefully on Tuesday night in his sleep, she said.

Doug Engelbart was born on 30 January 1925 in Portland, Oregon, to a radio repairman father and a housewife mother.

'Mother of all demos'

He studied electrical engineering at Oregon State University and served as a radar technician during World War II.

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Dr Engelbart's first ever mouse demo

He then worked at Nasa's predecessor, Naca, as an electrical engineer, but soon left to pursue a doctorate at University of California, Berkeley.

His interest in how computers could be used to aid human cognition eventually led him to Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and then his own laboratory, the Augmentation Research Center.

His laboratory helped develop ARPANet, the government research network that led to the internet.

Engelbart's ideas were way ahead of their time in an era when computers took up entire rooms and data was fed into the hulking machines on punch cards.

At a now legendary presentation that became known as the "mother of all demos" in San Francisco in 1968, he made the first public demonstration of the mouse.

At the same event, he held the first video teleconference and explained his theory of text-based links, which would form the architecture of the internet.

He did not make much money from the mouse because its patent ran out in 1987, before the device became widely used.

SRI licensed the technology in 1983 for $40,000 (£26,000) to Apple.

At least one billion computer mice have been sold.

Engelbart had considered other designs for his most famous invention, including a device that could be fixed underneath a table and operated by the knee.

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How the computer mouse got its name

He was said to have been driven by the belief that computers could be used to augment human intellect.

Engelbart was awarded the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize in 1997 and the National Medal of Technology for "creating the foundations of personal computing" in 2000.

Since 2005, he had been a fellow at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

He is survived by his second wife, Karen O'Leary Engelbart, and four children.

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'Master key' to Android phones found

4 July 2013 Last updated at 06:12 ET

A "master key" that could give cyber-thieves unfettered access to almost any Android phone has been discovered by security research firm BlueBox.

The bug could be exploited to let an attacker do what they want to a phone including stealing data, eavesdropping or using it to send junk messages.

The loophole has been present in every version of the Android operating system released since 2009.

Google said it currently had no comment to make on BlueBox's discovery.

Writing on the BlueBox blog, Jeff Forristal, said the implications of the discovery were "huge".

The bug emerges because of the way Android handles cryptographic verification of the programs installed on the phone.

Android uses the cryptographic signature as a way to check that an app or program is legitimate and to ensure it has not been tampered with. Mr Forristal and his colleagues have found a method of tricking the way Android checks these signatures so malicious changes to apps go unnoticed.

Any app or program written to exploit the bug would enjoy the same access to a phone that the legitimate version of that application enjoyed.

"It can essentially take over the normal functioning of the phone and control any function thereof," wrote Mr Forristal. BlueBox reported finding the bug to Google in February. Mr Forristal is planning to reveal more information about the problem at the Black Hat hacker conference being held in August this year.

The danger from the loophole remains theoretical because, as yet, there is no evidence that it is being exploited by cyber-thieves.

One other hurdle is that in order to catch out Android users, malicious hackers would have to get their booby-trapped version of a legitimate application on to the Google Play store, said security expert Dan Wallach in an interview with Ars Technica.

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Twitter translates Egypt tweets

4 July 2013 Last updated at 10:50 ET

Tweets from leading Egyptians are being automatically translated as part of a new Twitter service for non-Arabic speakers.

As Egypt's military ousted President Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday, non-Egyptians were able to read his tweets in their local languages.

Other figures being translated included opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei and Arab Spring activist Wael Ghonim.

Twitter is using Microsoft Bing translator as an "experiment".

President Morsi's last tweet, posted at 21:39 BST on 2 July, was translated as: "Mohammed Morsi confirms its attachment to the constitutional legitimacy and rejected any attempt to break them and call the forces armed pull its ultimatum and rejects any dictates dakhlihaokhargih."

The translation tool is clearly not yet 100% accurate and Twitter has not officially launched the service, but in a statement to digital news site AllThingsD it said: "As part of our experiment with tweet text translation, we've enabled translation for some of the most-followed accounts in Egypt, so people around the world can better understand and keep up with what's happening there."

Twitter has provided a list of all the Egyptian accounts it is translating, called egypt2013, which has 63 members.

The list includes Wael Ghonim, who has more than 1.1 million followers, and Tahrir News, which has more than 900,000 followers.

'Independent storytellers'

Twitter began its experimental translation service this month, covering European languages such as Italian, French and Spanish, before extending it to Arabic on Wednesday.

Social media site Facebook also offers a translate feature for its foreign-language posts, while Google's search engine also offers a translate feature.

"I think it opens a lot of chances for independent storytellers and bloggers to make their voice reach a wider audience," Federico Guerrini, a journalist fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, told the BBC.

"In the future, activists and bloggers from foreign countries could bypass the filter of Western 'curators' and tell the world live what is happening.

"Journalists will also have easier access to a number of sources previously unavailable," he added.

While Twitter is undoubtedly growing in popularity as an unfiltered news source, research by the University of Edinburgh suggests news wires are still faster than Twitter for breaking news.

Dr Miles Osborne, from the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, said: "Twitter and traditional news outlets each have their strengths in terms of delivering news.

"However, Twitter can bring added value by spreading the word on events that we might not otherwise hear about, and for bringing local perspectives on major news items."

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Europe gets tougher on cybercrimes

4 July 2013 Last updated at 11:54 ET

Tougher penalties for a wide range of cybercrimes have been agreed by European politicians.

A draft directive outlining minimum jail terms for some crimes was adopted by the European Parliament on 4 July.

The directive says those found guilty of running a botnet of hijacked home computers should serve at least three years in jail.

It also seeks to improve co-operation between member states to investigate crimes and prosecute offenders.

"The perpetrators of increasingly sophisticated attacks and the producers of related and malicious software can now be prosecuted, and will face heavier criminal sanctions," said Cecilia Malmstrom, European Commissioner for Home Affairs in a statement.

The directive builds on Europe-wide rules that have been in force since 2005 but introduces new offences that cover use of a botnet, the theft of confidential details such as passwords and use of tools that make cybercrimes possible.

Botnets have become a staple in cybercrime circles and are used by many criminal hackers to send spam, attack websites or as a resource that can be plundered for saleable data. Some botnets have millions of PCs enrolled in them.

In addition, the directive recommends that criminals involved in some crimes should serve minimum sentences. The longest jail term of five years should be served by those who do serious damage to systems or attack computers controlling a nation's critical infrastructure.

In addition, it said companies could be be shut down if they hired hackers to attack rivals or steal corporate secrets.

Under terms outlined in the directive, member nations will also be required to render aid to another state stricken by a significant cyber-attack within eight hours.

The directive is widely expected to be formally adopted soon after which member states will have two years to translate it into national law.

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Windows 8 update timing revealed

8 May 2013 Last updated at 09:05 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Microsoft has announced it will offer a preview version of its first major update to Windows 8 next month.

The news comes amid growing criticism of the software's user interface.

Microsoft said the revision to the operating system (OS), codenamed Windows Blue, would be released at Build, a three-day developers event in San Francisco starting on 26 June.

However, while the company said it had listened to "feedback", it has still not disclosed what changes are planned.

Microsoft added that a final version of Windows Blue would be released before the end of the year, and highlighted that it had already sold more than 100 million licences for the system.

FT accusation

The Verge, ZDNet and other tech blogs have reported that the update could mean Microsoft reversing its decision to remove the start button from the system's desktop environment.

They also suggested it would give users the option of booting their PCs directly into Windows 8's desktop mode rather than having to visit the tile-based Start menu screen first.

On Tuesday the Financial Times ran a front-page story suggesting that a U-turn over key elements of Windows 8 would mark "one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola's New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago".

This was a reference to the beverage makers' decision to launch and then abandon a new version of its fizzy drink.

The FT's article followed a news briefing given by Microsoft to mark the first six months of Windows 8.

The tech company has issued a statement taking issue with the report.

"It is unfortunate that the Financial Times did not accurately represent the content or the context of our conversation about the good response to date on Windows 8 and the positive opportunities ahead on both Windows 8 and Windows Blue," it said.

"Our perspective is accurately reflected in many other interviews on this topic as well as in a Q&A with [chief financial officer] Tami Reller posted on the Windows blog."

The FT told the BBC it stood by its story.

Confused

More than 1.5 billion devices used Windows 7 and earlier versions of the system at the time of Windows 8's launch, making the OS both the most popular of its kind and one of the company's key sources of revenue.

However, Microsoft was aware that sales of tablets and other touch-controlled devices had been growing at a much faster rate than PCs.

This helped prompt it to introduce a new start screen, initially dubbed "Metro", containing resizable tiles that could be tapped and swiped to launch and navigate apps.

Users can still switch to a more traditional desktop mode by clicking on an icon, but the environment lacks the start menu button offered since Windows 95.

This caused some people to become confused about how to shut down their PC and carry out other tasks. Several third-party developers subsequently released their own software allowing users to restore the facility.

"Many people have recoiled in horror at Windows 8 because it is such a stark change over what they had become used to over the past 15 or so years," Chris Green, principal technology analyst at consultants Davies Murphy Group Europe, told the BBC.

"Unless you are using it on a brand-new computer or laptop with a touchscreen display it's not as intuitive to use as Microsoft makes out - and these are still premium-priced products."

Since businesses traditionally wait until at least a major service pack has come out before updating their computers to a new OS, the major impact of the changes has mostly been limited to consumers.

But Mr Green added that it would be a worry for Microsoft if companies now opted to skip Windows 8 in the same way many had previously decided not to install Windows Vista.

"Microsoft wouldn't necessarily miss out on revenue from their largest blue-chip customers because they pay an annual subscription fee for access to its tech whether they use it or not," he said.

"But it's the mid-sized companies - who buy computers and software as they need it - which is where the big money and margins are."

Touchscreen focus

Microsoft has acknowledged that "there is a learning curve [to Windows 8] and we can work to address that," but it also points out it has sold a similar number of licences for the OS as were achieved over the first six months of Windows 7's life.

"It's too early to say that it's flopped," said Benedict Evans, a digital media specialist at research firm Enders Analysis.

"However, there's clearly a lot of pushback from consumers and corporates about the radical change the firm wants to make in the user interface.

"The broader issue is that Microsoft is building an operating system designed with a touchscreen in mind. That's essential for its future because computing is shifting to tablets and mobile, where Microsoft has been irrelevant."

"What in effect they've done is compromise the desktop experience to create a great tablet and mobile experience. The problem is that it's the desktop buyers that pay for everything right now."

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Spotify rushes to fix download flaw

8 May 2013 Last updated at 13:17 ET

Music streaming site Spotify has rushed to fix a security hole that allowed users free song downloads.

Downloadify, an extension to Google's Chrome browser, enabled users to download MP3 files by exploiting a vulnerability in Spotify's web player.

Google removed the extension, but Downloadify was still available via other websites.

Spotify has confirmed to the BBC that the issue has now been fixed.

Downloadify was created by Dutch developer Robin Aldenhoven. On Twitter, he noted that music stored online by Spotify was not encrypted.

"I could not believe it myself that they did so little to protect their library," he wrote, later adding: "Spotify = awesome... so I don't want to damage them."

Infringement

Other web streaming services are susceptible to similar exploits. Various services allow for the downloading, knowing as "ripping", of content from sites such as YouTube.

Such actions are illegal and against the sites' terms of service.

Sheena Sheikh, a solicitor from intellectual property specialists Briffa, told the BBC that the law is straightforward on such downloading activity.

"You are committing an infringement," she said.

"You're not authorised to download the songs. You don't have permission."

Spotify is the world's most popular music streaming service. Recent figures from the company said the service has 24 million active users, of whom six million pay a monthly fee for added features.

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BitTorrent reveals Bundle media file

8 May 2013 Last updated at 14:11 ET

The developers of the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol have unveiled what they describe as a new "multimedia format" called a Bundle.

The file groups together a range of content, some of which can only be accessed once the user enters a key.

It is designed to help artists sell or otherwise distribute material to fans in addition to the initial music file or film clip downloaded.

One analyst said it represented BitTorrent's effort to reinvent itself.

The San Francisco company's peer-to-peer data transfer technology has been blamed for helping online piracy to flourish, thanks to its use by several copyright-infringing media sites.

However, Mark Mulligan, editor of the Music Industry Blog, said Bundle was a "strong step" towards the company repositioning itself as a genuine partner to owners of content.

Teaming up with music label

BitTorrent said it believed the format had the potential to "revolutionise" the media industry.

"Since Edison invented the record player the idea has been you sell the record inside a store," Matt Mason, vice-president of marketing, told the BBC.

"What's different about this is that the 'record' is the store, or the 'movie' has the box office baked into it.

"The idea is that if you put the store or place to interact with the content creator inside the Bundle itself, then every creator stands to earn either money or a connection to a new fan every time that piece of content is shared."

To promote the format, the company has teamed up with music label Ultra to release material from Kaskade, an American DJ.

When the file is downloaded, users are taken to a webpage offering them instant access to a song and video trailer. However, they need to enter their email address to unlock other content, including a tour booklet and short film.

Cutting out the middlemen

This email address can later by used by the artist to promote their concerts or other merchandise.

In the future, BitTorrent said users could also be required to pay a fee before added content was released.

"If you publish a Bundle as an artist you can get the email addresses from fans. You can get the money," said Mr Mason.

"Content creators and their fans can connect directly, and that's useful for anyone from a small band to Disney, who now won't need to use Facebook, Spotify or Netflix as a middleman."

Mr Mulligan said he agreed this was a direction that the media industry needed to go in, but questioned whether Bundle itself would succeed.

"It is simply not good enough to just give a digital file of analog media and call it a digital product. That misses the potential of what technology can enable," he said.

"That doesn't mean this exact iteration that they've created is going to make millions. It's part of an innovation experiment process."

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