Confusion Over N.S.A. Leaker’s Special Travel Document

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor leading the Obama administration on an international chase in the wake of leaking classified documents, had his passport revoked by the United States in recent days.

But Ecuador, the nation to which he has applied for asylum, has reportedly granted him a special document with which he can cross borders. And the Spanish-language television network Univision said, early Wednesday evening, that it had obtained a copy.

The document, titled a “SAFEPASS,” is essentially a sheet of printed A4paper, apparently issued in London, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has said he assisted Mr. Snowden, has been living in Ecuador’s embassy for more than a year.

Reuters reported, citing local news media, that Ecuador’s acting foreign minister, Galo Galarza, denied his government had issued documents to Mr. Snowden.

But in those news clips, according to my colleague William Neuman, it is not clear precisely what documents Mr. Galarza is refe! rring to.

It is, amid the confusion, not clear whether Mr. Snowden has the piece of paper Univision published, or any other travel documentation while his application for asylum is considered. Which could mean he may spend days, weeks, or months in a Moscow airport.

Confusion Over N.S.A. Leaker’s Special Travel Document

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor leading the Obama administration on an international chase in the wake of leaking classified documents, had his passport revoked by the United States in recent days.

But Ecuador, the nation to which he has applied for asylum, has reportedly granted him a special document with which he can cross borders. And the Spanish-language television network Univision said, early Wednesday evening, that it had obtained a copy.

The document, titled a “SAFEPASS,” is essentially a sheet of printed A4paper, apparently issued in London, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has said he assisted Mr. Snowden, has been living in Ecuador’s embassy for more than a year.

Reuters reported, citing local news media, that Ecuador’s acting foreign minister, Galo Galarza, denied his government had issued documents to Mr. Snowden.

But in those news clips, according to my colleague William Neuman, it is not clear precisely what documents Mr. Galarza is refe! rring to.

It is, amid the confusion, not clear whether Mr. Snowden has the piece of paper Univision published, or any other travel documentation while his application for asylum is considered. Which could mean he may spend days, weeks, or months in a Moscow airport.

A Conversation with Assad (No, Not That One)

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has antagonized many critics over the conflict in his country, including some members of his own extended family. Now one of them, a cousin who has long lived in Western exile, is making the rounds in the United States, denouncing both Mr. Assad and the increasingly diverse array of jihadists who have joined the insurgency against him.

The cousin, Ribal al-Assad, says he has no aspirations to power himself in Syria. But he says he is worried that the Obama administration’s recent decision to provide weapons to the insurgency will only further entrench President Assad, whose blanket portrayal of the insurgents as terrorists appears to be gaining more credibility among the war-weary population.

In an interview on Wednesday at The New York Times, the cousinsaid he believed that many Syrians are sticking by President Assad despite the horrific violence that the United Nations says has left more than 93,000 people dead over more than two years. “Not because they are with Bashar,” he said. “It’s just because they fear that they will be replacing the devil that they know with something that’s much worse.”

Ribal al-Assad, 38, is a fluent English speaker, schooled in the United States, who now lives in Britain and who runs a group he founded, the Organization for Democracy and Freedom in Syria, which describes him as an “international campaigner for democracy, freedom and human rights.” He was forced to flee Syria with his immediate family as a child because of the rivalries in the Assad clan, which has dominated Syrian politics since the 1970’s. Ribal’s father, Rifaat, was the loser in a Baath Party power struggle with Rifaat’s sibling Hafez, the predecessor and father of the current president.

Before his exile, Rifaat notoriously served as a government security enforcer who has been widely blamed as the architect of the 1982 Hama massacre, in which at least 10,000 people were killed. Both Rifaat and his son have called Rifaat’s involvement in that massacre a myth.

Ribal al-Assad said he had not spoken to the president or sought to directly communicate with him. But he said he knew early in the current crisis, which began as a peaceful Arab Spring uprising seeking a multiparty democracy, that “the regime’s only chance to survive was to militarize the conflict.”

Now, he said, money and weapons provided to the insurgency largely by Saudi Arabia and Qatar â€" hardly democratic models themselves â€" have made Prsident Assad’s work easier, by turning the conflict into a sectarian struggle waged by Sunni jihadists against Shiites and against Alawites â€" the offshoot of Shiism that is the Assad family’s sect. President Assad, he said, had “wanted it to become like that, but he didn’t do anything for it â€" they gave it to him, the Qataris and Saudi Arabia.”

With Sunni jihadists from more than 30 countries now believed to be among the insurgents fighting Mr. Assad’s forces, Ribal al-Assad said, Internet videos from Syria calling for death to what they call Shiite and Alawite infidels have proliferated, as have swathes of rebel-held territory where the black flag of the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate, denote the enforcement of Sharia law. This is why, he said, Mr. Assad’s core of support has rem! ained res! ilient despite the misgivings of many loyalists.

“We speak to a lot of people in the military, we speak to a lot of people in the Baath Party, a lot of people speak to us,” he said. “Of course they are for democratic change. But at the same time they tell us, ‘please, go check those videos. Is that the kind of democracy we’re going to have?’ This is not what the Syrian people want.”

“Those videos you are seeing that are worrying and scaring the West â€" those are the same videos that are worrying and scaring people inside Syria.”

Today’s Scuttlebot: Final Tweets, and Unfinished Web Security

Here are some of the more interesting items that the tech reporters and editors of The New York Times found on the Web recently. More Scuttlebot can be found here.

The Tweet Hereafter
Thetweethereafter.com | Poignant final tweets from people who have died, both famous and ordinary. â€" Vindu Goel

The Unfinished State of Web Encryption
CNet |  Encryption technology prevents eavesdroppers from tapping fiber cables, but few cmpanies other than Google have adopted it. â€" Claire Cain Miller

Communications Industry Forms Privacy Coalition
Politico.com |  A new advocacy coalition will focus on updating United States privacy and data security laws.  â€" Ashwin Seshagiri

Google Has Gone Rainbow for Gay Pride Month
Search Engine Land |  Google is celebrating gay pride as only Google can.  â€" Claire Cain Miller

Man Who Sold Unreleased iPhone 4 to Gizmodo Speaks
The Next Web |  Brian Hogan, who sold unreleased iPhone 4 to Gizmodo in 2010, tells of his regret in Reddit.  â€" Nick Bilton

What ‘Sent From My iPhone’ Really Means
Collisiondetection.net |  Why people forgive your bad spelling in e-mails “sent from my iPhone,” and why some keep it on their phones.  â€" Nick Bilton

Texting and Talking at Movies
Vulture.com |  What to do about obnoxious texters and talkers at the movies: “In the end, shushing won’t do.”  â€" Nicole Perlroth

Internet Rado Isn’t Ripping Off Artists
Medium.com |  It’s one of the few things helping them, argues a former intern at Pandora.  â€" Jenna Wortham

Lyft and UberX to Defy Orders from Los Angeles
Los Angeles Times |  Lyft and Uber defy cease-and-desist letters from Los Angeles authorities. One hopes there is a televised highway chase.  â€" Damon Darlin

On Facebook, 70% of Americans Have a Gay Friend
WSJ.com |  Evolving cultural norms, reflected on Facebook. Almost three-quarters of Americans on the site have a gay friend.  â€" Clair! e Cain Miller

Excerpts From Snowden\'s Letter Requesting Asylum in Ecuador

Spanish-language video of Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, at a news conference in Vietnam on Monday, posted online by the Ecuadorean government.

Speaking at a news conference in Vietnam on Monday, Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, said that his government was considering a written request for asylum from Edward J. Snowden, the former national security contractor accused of espionage by the United States.

In remarks the foreign ministry streamed live from Hanoi, Mr. Patiño suggested that Mr. Snowden “is being persecuted” for revea ling the vast scale of the National Security Agency's surveillance of electronic communications worldwide. “The word treason has been batted around in recent days,” Mr. Patiño said, “we need to ask who has betrayed who?”

Here, based on a simultaneous translation from Spanish to English broadcast by the BBC, are excerpts from the letter Mr. Snowden sent to President Rafael Correa, as read aloud by Mr. Patiño:

I, Edward Snowden, citizen of the United States of America, am writing to request asylum in the Republic of Ecuador because of the risk of being persecuted by the government of the United States and its agents in relation to my decision to make public serious violations on the part of the government of the United States of its Constitution, specifically of its Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and of various treaties of the United Nations that are binding on my country.

As a result of my political opinions, and my desire to exercise my freedom of speech, through which I've shown that the government of the United States is intercepting the majority of communications in the world, the government of the United States has publicly announced a criminal investigation against me. Also, prominent members of Congress and others in the media have accused me of being a traitor and have called for me to be jailed or executed as a result of having communicated this information to the public.

Some of the charges that have been presented against me by the Justice Department of the United States are connected to the 1917 Espionage Act, one of which includes life in prison among the possible sentences.

BBC News video of Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, reading a letter from Edward Snowden.

According to Mr. Patiño, Mr. Snowden also made reference to the fact that charges were filed against him by Justice Department officials in the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, close to the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, which is “the same district that has been conducting the Justice Department investigation against Wikileaks.” Mr. Snowden's letter continued:

Ecuador granted asylum to the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, in relation to this investigation. My case is also very similar to that of the American soldier Bradley Manning, who made public government information through Wikileaks revealing war crimes, was arrested by the United States government and has been treated inhumanely during his time in prison. He was put in solitary confinement before his trial and the U.N. anti-torture representative judged that Mr. Manning was submitted to cruel and inhumane acts by the United States government.

The trial against Bradley Manning is ongoing now, and secret documents have been presented to the court and secret witnesses have testified.

I believe that, given these circumstances, it is unlikely that I would receive a fair trial or proper treatment prior to that trial, and face the possibility of life in prison or even death. - Edward J. Snowden

Mr. Patiño told reporters that he did not have and could not share specific information about Mr. Snowden's whereabouts, but he said that Ecuador had been in contact with the authorities in Russia, where Mr. Snowden reportedly arrived from Hong Kong on Sunday. As my colleagues David Herszenhorn and Ellen Barry reported from Moscow, Mr. Snowden has not been photographed or seen in public in Russia.

Why Snowden Asked Visitors in Hong Kong to Refrigerate Their Phones

Before a dinner of pizza and fried chicken late Sunday in Hong Kong, Edward J. Snowden insisted that a group of lawyers advising him in the Chinese territory “hide their cellphones in the refrigerator of the home where he was staying, to block any eavesdropping,” as my colleague Keith Bradsher reported.

Why a refrigerator? The answer does not, as some might assume, have anything to do with temperature. In fact, it does not matter particularly if the refrigerator was plugged in. It is the materials that make up refrigerator walls that could potentially turn them into anti-eavesdropping devices.

“What you want to do is block the radio signals which could be used to transmit voice data, and block the audio altogether,” Adam Harvey, a designer specializing in countersurveillance products explained. Refrigerators made fro m metal with thick insulation could potentially do both, he says, regardless of whether it is mild or icy within.

On the data-transmission front, thick metal walls can create a sort of electromagnetic barrier, which enables the device to function as something known as a Faraday cage. A true Faraday cage is a space where radio waves cannot pass and therefore data cannot be transmitted. Although all fridges don't function this way, those constructed with more metal have the potential to serve this purpose.

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times A Faraday cage is a metal shield that protects anything inside from electrical charges. This means a person wearing a Faraday suit, as pictured here, is protected from the high-voltage arcs of a Tesla coil.

Another household object that functions similarly, Mr. Harvey has learned through his research into cellphone data transmission, is a stainless steel martini shaker.

“It's a perfect Faraday cage â€" it will block all radio signals unless you decide you need to pour yourself a martini,” he said. Although this sounds like a plot point in a James Bond movie, Mr. Harvey has actually done extensive tests on the shaker in the process of developing a surveillance-blocking cellphone case called the OFF Pocket.

Blocking data transmission, of course, is a different issue from muffling audio. Al though a thick refrigerator door is good at masking sound (as anyone who has lost a cat inside one knows), soundproofing is not necessarily integral to its design. An ideal refrigerator for a person on the run would be one that functioned as an acoustic anechoic chamber - a sort of Faraday cage for sound - meaning that not one hint of a syllable could make it from the Pepsi-laden kitchen table to the phone in the veggie crisper. Given that refrigerators' insulation levels vary, however, from an audio perspective, burying the phone in a pile of clothes one room over, Mr. Harvey suggested, might be a more reliable solution for someone seeking to subvert prying ears.

Those new to these issues are most likely asking the question â€" why not just ask everyone to turn off his phone and remove the batteries? Beyond the fact that many phones these days do not easily enable battery removal, identifying a pure off is complicated.

“A lot of modern devices (not just phones ) do have states that are somewhere in between fully on and fully off, where some circuits
are powered up and others are powered down,” Seth Schoen, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that focuses on rights in the online world, explained by e-mail. (Snowden appears to be a supporter of the organization, as he was photographed with an E.F.F. sticker on his laptop.) “These modes often allow the device to wake up autonomously if certain conditions are met, such as pressing a certain key or even receiving certain data over the Internet on a wired Ethernet connection (known as ‘wake-on-LAN').”

Battery removal can be equally deceptive. Even once one figures out how to extract the primary battery, there may be additi onal power sources within the apparatus. “Some phones use an additional battery for memory management; it's unclear whether this battery could be used by logging and/or tracking systems such as Carrier IQ,” Mr. Harvey explained, referring to software that monitors mobile phone users.

Video of Texas State Senator\'s Efforts to Block Abortion Bill

The crowd erupted online and inside the Texas state house to cheer State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, who led a filibuster to help block legislation restricting abortion rights.

On Tuesday, the hashtag “#standwithwendy” started popping up on Twitter. By midnight, it was trending across the country, shared on more than 400,000 posts as State Senator Wendy Davis helped block a bill in the Texas Legislature that would have become one of the nation's most restrictive laws on abortion.

For more than 10 hours, Ms. Davis, 50, who began her college education as a sing le mother at age 19 and ended up graduating from Harvard Law School, led a Senate filibuster against the legislation, slowly gathering attention online throughout the day as tens of thousands of people on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook began discussing the bill and her efforts to prevent a vote on it before midnight.

Still standing. 11:44 #WendyDavis http://t.co/fLwwkoER15

- Alyssa Harad (@alyssaharad) 26 Jun 13

When Republican lawmakers tried to proceed with a vote just before the clock struck midnight, as my colleagues, Manny Fernandez and Erik Eckholm report, cheers and chants of “Wendy” erupted both online and from the gallery, packed with sup porters of women's rights and abortion rights.

Watching live video of the events unfold were more than 170,000 people, viewing the proceedings on YouTube and The Texas Tribune's Web site. On Twitter, officials said that posts with the hashtag “standwithwendy” were shared 4,900 times per minute.

The crowd cheered “Wendy” for more than 10 minutes at midnight.

In a 2010 Texas Tribune profile, published in The New York Times, Ms. Davis was quoted as saying: “People are hungry for leadership that's not afraid of political consequence.”

Her filibuster on the legislation restricting abortion rights was not the first time she used that tactic to block a bill. The profile was published shortly after she first gained statewide attention for her Senate filibuster in Emily Ramshaw of the Tribune said “torpedoed the 82nd legislative session by refusing to settle for a school finance plan that would leave public schools $4 billion short.”

Ms. Ramshaw, in The Texas Tribune, wrote:

Ms. Davis's Senate filibuster last Sunday night - which prompted Gov. Rick Perry to send exhausted lawmakers, poised to adjourn Monday after a grueling budget battle, back into an immediate special session - has quickly become legend.

And it has catapulted this petite, eloquent and seemingly fearless politician into the spotlight, which she has seized to mobilize the state's downtrodden and outnumbered Democrats and to take jabs at Mr. Perry's potential presidential aspirations.

“I'm seeing hope being expressed by people who really felt it was useless, and that their voices didn't matter,” said Ms. Davis, who would not rule out the possibility of her own run for governor run in the future.

The filibuster was a defining moment for Ms. Davis, a twice-divorced single mother who had her first daughter as a teenager, was the first in her family to go to college, and who worked her way from junior college and a Tarrant County trailer park to Harvard Law School and the Fort Worth City Council. But what effect, if any, the moment will have on school financing or Ms. Davis's political future remains unclear.

In a video uploaded in 2011 by Generation Texas, an organization promoting higher education, Ms. Davis talks about how she decided to go to school while a single mom and then to apply to Harvard Law School because she decided she wanted to be a lawyer, not a legal assistant.

In a video uploaded onto YouTube in 2011 for Generation Texas, an organization Wendy Davis describes how she started college as a single mom at 19.

The year before, in 2010, she addressed fellow Texas Democrats.

Wendy Davis addresses fellow Texas Democrats at a meeting in 2010.

Throughout the day on Tuesday, people online talked about Ms. Davis standing firm at the podium for women's rights, una ble to take a bathroom break or even lean on the lectern in keeping with the filibuster rules.

The Tribune also uploaded a video showing aides to Ms. Davis helping her put on a back brace so that she could continue standing during her filibuster. She was not allowed to eat, lean or take a bathroom break.

Wendy Davis trying to put on a back brace during her filibuster with the assistance of her aides.

Joel Burns, a City Council member from Fort Worth, started a new hashtag, #sitwithwendy, in the early morning hours of Wednesday.

#sitwithwendy (Pic) @WendyDavisTexas sits down for 1st time in 15 hours. Talks to daughters, hydrates. So proud. http ://t.co/E1MidsvEkZ

- Councilm. Joel Burns (@JoelBurns) 26 Jun 13

On her Twitter account, @WendyDavisTexas, Ms. Davis began the day with about 8,000 followers. By Wednesday morning, she had more than 74,000 followers. She used it to thank her supporters early Wednesday after officials ruled that a vote by Republicans passing the bill failed because of procedural rules.

Thanks to the powerful voices of thousands of Texans, #SB5 is dead. An incredible victory for Texas women and those who love them.

- Wendy Davis (@WendyDavisTexas) 26 Jun 13

But as my colleagues noted, the Democratic victory is likely to be short-lived. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have made the bill a priority, and Mr. Perry may call a special legislative session so that the measure could be considered again. Advocates say the bill would improve women's health care by making abortion safer. Opponents say the legislation restricting abortion after 20 years and imposing new regulations on abortion clinics would give Texas among the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

As Ms. Davis left the Capitol early Wednesday, David Edmonson posted this photo on Twitter.

Senate Democrats (and @WendyDavisTexas) addresses supporters at the Capitol #sb5 #txlege http://t.co/902YTikCEC

- David Edmonson (@dedmo) 26 Jun 13

Evan Smith, editor in chief and chief executive officer of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news organization based in Austin, offered on Twitter an historical perspective about the events that unfolded Tuesday night and early Monday:

Have seen nothing like this in #txlege in 22 years. Not even close. Waiting for someone to yell “Attica.”

- Evan Smith (@evanasmith) 26 Jun 13

Robert Mackey contributed reporting from New York.

Australia\'s First Female Prime Minister Bows Out, Viral Fame Secured

Video of Julia Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, stepping down on Wednesday, from Britain's Channel 4 News.

As Matt Siegel reports from Sydney, Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, was forced from office on Wednesday by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, almost exactly three years after she had toppled him as leader of the ruling Labor Party in a similar fashion.

Ms. Gillard was saluted for the dignity of her remarks as she stepped down on Wednesday, but she will no doubt be remembered more on the global stage of the Internet for the stinging rebuke she delivered to a male politician last year. In that speech, which has been viewed more than 2.5 million times on YouTube, Ms. Gillard told the leader of Australia's opposition party, Tony Abbott, that he was a sexist, a misogynist and a hypocrite.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation video of Prime Minister Julia Gillard deli vering a rebuke of the opposition leader Tony Abbott last year.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.

Instagram Video and the Death of Fantasy

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Hope for the Future of Chromebooks and Ultrabooks

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Today\'s Scuttlebot: Rushing to Expand, and Looking Down From the Top

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Daily Report: More Wi-Fi Is Available During Flights

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Betaworks Unveils Its Highly Anticipated Digg RSS Reader

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Google Adds Malware Statistics to Transparency Report

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Today\'s Scuttlebot: Pandora vs. Musicians, and Prism Against the Secret Web

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A Different Approach at Google Ventures

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Daily Report: Barnes & Noble Changes Course on Nook

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F.T.C. Tells Search Engines to Label Advertising as Such

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F.T.C. Member Starts ‘Reclaim Your Name\' Campaign for Personal Data

The revelations this month about government surveillance programs that collect the phone logs of people in the United States and can monitor e-mail traffic abroad is provoking a larger debate on the rights of consumers to control the collection and sharing of data about them.

One industry under the microscope is data brokerages. These are business-to-business companies that collect thousands of details - like the shopping habits, vacation preferences, estimated income, ethnicity, hobbies, predilections for gambling or smoking and health concerns - about millions of consumers, the better to help marketers identify potential new customers as well as maintain their already loyal clients.

Although some of these companies do permit people to opt out of their marketing databases, most do not have systems to allow consumers to see records held about them and correct possible errors. Because of this lack of transparency, federal regulators and privacy advocates have lo ng warned about the potential for such data-mining to discriminate against consumers based on sensitive details like financial or health information.

Now Julie Brill, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, has proposed an industrywide initiative to give consumers access to their own records held by data brokers. She envisions an online portal where data brokers would describe their data collection practices and their consumer access policies.

Ms. Brill has come up with a handy nickname for her proposed effort: “Reclaim Your Name.”

“Reclaim Your Name would empower the consumer to find out how brokers are collecting and using data; give her access to information that data brokers have amassed about her; allow her to opt-out if she learns a data broker is selling her information for marketing purposes and provide her the opportunity to correct errors in information used for substantive decisions â€" like credit, insurance, employment, and other benefi ts,” Ms. Brill said in a speech on Wednesday morning at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington.

Here's a link to the full text of Ms. Brill's speech.

Over the last year, legislators in the House and Senate have separately opened investigations into the practices of some leading data brokers with the goal of increasing oversight of the industry. Participation in a voluntary “Reclaim Your Name” program of the kind Ms. Brill proposed might help the industry mitigate government efforts toward greater regulation.

‘Catfish\' and the Truth About Our False Online Selves

The Times's Jenna Wortham and Jon Caramanica spoke about the treatment of the intersection of technology and identity on MTV's “Catfish: The TV Show.”

Why the Airline Industry Needs Another Data Revolution

Over the years, airline travel has been a prime testbed for advanced computing and data tools. In the late 1950s and 1960s, American Airlines and I.B.M. teamed up to develop the Sabre computerized reservations system, perhaps the most impressive private-sector computer system of its day.

More recently, airline data has served as the raw material for predictive data-mining applications like Farecast, which tells consumers whether the price of a plane ticket, for a specific trip on a specific day, is likely to rise or fall. (Farecast, founded in 2003 by Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer scientist, was sold to Microsoft in 2008. It is now part of Bing Travel.)

But the airlines themselves have become laggards in data-handling innovation, according to Thomas H. Davenport, a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School. “They were early adopters, and they have not done much for many years,” Mr. Davenport said. Their loyalty programs and per-s eat revenue management systems, he said, both date to the 1970s.

Mr. Davenport is a longtime expert on information management and data analysis. From his main perch at Babson College, he has been researching and writing about the field for a few decades, tracking the evolution of the technology and the terms used to describe it - from business intelligence to analytics to Big Data.

Mr. Davenport, co-author of a new book, “Keeping Up With the Quants” (Harvard Business Review Press), with Jinho Kim, does his research on the quantitative world the qualitative way. He interviews people and does case studies.

His comments on the airlines result not from his work for the book, but from research for a study published on Wednesday, “At the Big Data Crossroads: Turning Towards a Smarter Travel Experience.” His research was sponsored by Amadeus IT Group, the big European computer reservation system and technology services company. But Mr. Davenport said it did not guide his research. (“We're just trying to facilitate the debate,” said Hervé Couturier, an executive vice president of Amadeus.)

For the 28-page report, Mr. Davenport interviewed executives at 21 companies involved in one way or another in travel, but representing a cross-section of airlines, hotel chains and technology companies. The companies included Air France-KLM, Applied Predictive Technologies, Facebook, Hipmunk, Intercontinental Hotels and Marriott.

The report includes short case studies on companies that are doing innovative data projects. Mr. Davenport's exemplary airline is British Airways for its new personalized service and offers program, Know Me. It collects and tracks an usual amount of data on individual passengers, their preferences and travel history.

If a person's bag went astray on a flight, that individual might be offered a free upgra de for his or her next flight. The system has the ability to identify customers and instantly suggest tailored offers at check-in counters or lounges. On planes, service personnel with iPads can make authorized offers for custom services. “If it's really personalized and appropriate for the context, it can be seen as a service instead of a marketing program,” Mr. Davenport said.

The software technology behind the Know You program is supplied by Opera Solutions, a New York-based Big Data analytics company. It assembles data on the online behavior and buying habits of 20 million British Airways customers, creating hundreds of predictive signals that suggest a person's “behavioral DNA,” Arnab Gupta, chief executive of Opera Solutions, said in an interview.

Such signals, he said, might include a person's tendency to book an airline ticket a month or more in advance or buy a ticket a few days ahead. Other signals might be a person's history of booking two-star versus five-star hotels. Online behavior might include visits to BA.com and whether a person booked with a few clicks or frequently abandoned digital shopping carts.

A key conclusion from Opera Solutions' work with companies in many industries, including travel, Mr. Gupta said, is that “90 percent of the predictive value is in the behavioral data.” That is, by monitoring what people do online and in the physical world rather than demographic profiles that seek to predict what people will do based on gender, race, age and income.

“It's liberating,” Mr. Gupta said. “We cluster more by behavior than by demographics.”

Bringing Invisible Stories to Instagram Followers

The Jamaican photographer Radcliffe Roye takes Instagram photos of residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to tell the stories of “the forgotten man.”

Microsoft Moves to Simplify 3-D Printing

Back when digital cameras were the hot new Christmas gift, Apple zinged Microsoft with an ad suggesting that a computer running the Windows operating system could ruin the holidays.

The ad, in 2003, told a tale of how the joys of Christmas morning could be threatened. To get his new digital camera to work, a father might spend all day downloading Windows-compatible drivers - not exactly a great way to spend the holiday.

If today's hot new technology, 3-D printers, starts showing up under Christmas trees this year, Microsoft has begun a pre-emptive strike against any such criticism. It announced that the newest version of the company's operating system, Windows 8.1, will be the first to include built-in support for 3-D printers.

“It's going to unlock huge potential for people all o ver the world,” said Shanen Boettcher, a general manager at Microsoft. Windows 8.1 is expected to be available later this year.

The idea is to make 3-D printing as easy as printing out a Word document. Plug in the printer, click “print,” and a 3-D printer can begin squirting out hot plastic to make your design real.

At the moment, however, things are not so easy.

3-D printing requires an array of different software packages, from design software to “slicing” software and separate programs that connect your home computer to each individual printer. All of these steps make getting started with 3-D printing cumbersome. And when any link in the chain breaks down, it can be maddening.

Just as you can plug in any standard paper printer to a desktop computer, Windows 8.1 allows users to plug in printers like the MakerBot Replicator, the Cube, the Fabbster and Up printers, as well as open-source models, to work with Windows straight out of the box.

Microsoft announced the move at its Build developer conference in San Francisco. The company is hoping that native support for 3-D printers will encourage developers to create easier-to-use 3-D printing software, while also taking advantage of the touch-screen capabilities of Windows 8, said Mr. Boettcher.

“It would be great to see virtual potter's wheels, or block-builder apps,” he said. “I hope there's a wide range of easy 3-D creation apps that are really optimized for printing objects.”

The 3-D support in Windows is not Microsoft's only step in positioning itself as a leader in 3-D printing. Microsoft has also begun carrying the MakerBot Replicator, which costs $2,199, in its stores.

And the company's Kinect motion sensor (originally developed for video games) could brin g Microsoft an advantage by filling one of the most challenging issues of 3-D printing: how average people, without design or engineering degrees, can create computer models of complex objects.

In March, the company announced tools to use the Kinect as a kind of 3-D scanner, called Kinect Fusion. The tools can be used to create computer models of 3-D surfaces, as seen in the image below:

What developers create with these tools remains to be seen, but if they live up to Microsoft's vision, we will be much closer to what's been described as “the home manufacturing revolution.” For now, though, 3-D printing remains the rea lm of hobbyists and the do-it-yourself crowd.

Microsoft Moves to Simplify 3-D Printing

Back when digital cameras were the hot new Christmas gift, Apple zinged Microsoft with an ad suggesting that a computer running the Windows operating system could ruin the holidays.

The ad, in 2003, told a tale of how the joys of Christmas morning could be threatened. To get his new digital camera to work, a father might spend all day downloading Windows-compatible drivers â€" not exactly a great way to spend the holiday.

If today’s hot new technology, 3-D printers, starts showing up under Christmas trees this year, Microsoft has begun a pre-emptive strike against any such criticism. It announced that the newest version of the company’s operating system, Windows 8.1, will be the first to include built-in support for 3-D printers.

“It’s going to unlock huge potential for people all over the world,” said Shnen Boettcher, a general manager at Microsoft. Windows 8.1 is expected to be available later this year.

The idea is to make 3-D printing as easy as printing out a Word document. Plug in the printer, click “print,” and a 3-D printer can begin squirting out hot plastic to make your design real.

At the moment, however, things are not so easy.

3-D printing requires an array of different software packages, from design software to “slicing” software and separate programs that connect your home computer to each individual printer. All of these steps make getting started with 3-D printing cumbersome. And when any link in the chain breaks down, it can be maddening.

Just as you can plug in any standard paper printer to a desktop computer, Windows 8.1 allows users to plug in printers like the MakerBot Replicator, the Cube, the Fabbster and Up printers, as well as open-source models, to work with Windows straight out of the box.

Microsoft announced the move at its Build developer conference in San Francisco. The company is hoping that native support for 3-D printers will encourage developers to create easier-to-use 3-D printing software, while also taking advantage of the touch-screen capabilities of Windows 8, said Mr. Boettcher.

“It would be great to see virtual potter’s wheels, or block-builder apps,” he said. “I hope there’s a wide range of easy 3-D creation apps that are really optimized for printing objects.”

The 3-D support in Windows is not Microsoft’s only step in positioning itself as a leader in 3-D printing. Microsoft has also begun carrying the MakerBot Replicator, which costs $2,199, in its stores.

And the company’s Kinect motion sensor (originally developed for video games) could bring Microsoft an advantage by filling one of the most challenging issues of 3-Dprinting: how average people, without design or engineering degrees, can create computer models of complex objects.

In March, the company announced tools to use the Kinect as a kind of 3-D scanner, called Kinect Fusion. The tools can be used to create computer models of 3-D surfaces, as seen in the image below:

What developers create with these tools remains to be seen, but if they live up to Microsoft’s vision, we will be much closer to what’s been described as “the home manufacturing revolution.” For now, though, 3-D printing remains the realm of hobbyists and the do-it-yourself crowd.

Daily Report: Barnes & Noble Changes Course on Nook

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Bringing Invisible Stories to Instagram Followers

The Jamaican photographer Radcliffe Roye takes Instagram photos of residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to tell the stories of “the forgotten man.”

Australia’s First Female Prime Minister Bows Out, Viral Fame Secured

Video of Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister, stepping down on Wednesday, from Britain’s Channel 4 News.

As Matt Siegel reports from Sydney, Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, was forced from office on Wednesday by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, almost exactly three years after she had toppled him as leader of the ruling Labor Party in a similar fashion.

Ms. Gillard was saluted for the dignity of her remarks as she stepped down on Wednesday, but shewill no doubt be remembered more on the global stage of the Internet for the stinging rebuke she delivered to a male politician last year. In that speech, which has been viewed more than 2.5 million times on YouTube, Ms. Gillard told the leader of Australia’s opposition party, Tony Abbott, that he was a sexist, a misogynist and a hypocrite.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation video of Prime Minister Julia Gillard lambasting opposition leader Tony Abbott for sexism last! year.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.

Why the Airline Industry Needs Another Data Revolution

Over the years, airline travel has been a prime testbed for advanced computing and data tools. In the late 1950s and 1960s, American Airlines and I.B.M. teamed up to develop the Sabre computerized reservations system, perhaps the most impressive private-sector computer system of its day.

More recently, airline data has served as the raw material for predictive data-mining applications like Farecast, which tells consumers whether the price of a plane ticket, for a specific trip on a specific day, is likely to rise or fall. (Farecast, founded in 2003 by Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer scientist, was sold to Microsoft in 2008. It is now part of Bing Travel.)

But the airlines themselves have become laggards in data-handling innovation, according to Thomas H. Davenport, a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School. “They were early adopters, and they have not done much for many years,” Mr. Davenport said. Their loyalty programs and per-seat revenue management systems, h said, both date to the 1970s.

Mr. Davenport is a longtime expert on information management and data analysis. From his main perch at Babson College, he has been researching and writing about the field for a few decades, tracking the evolution of the technology and the terms used to describe it â€" from business intelligence to analytics to Big Data.

Mr. Davenport, co-author of a new book, “Keeping Up With the Quants” (Harvard Business Review Press), with Jinho Kim, does his research on the quantitative world the qualitative way. He interviews people and does case studies.

His comments on the airlines result not from his work for the book, but from research for a study published on Wednesday, “At the Big Data Crossroads: Turning Towards a Smarter Travel Experience.” His research was sponsored by Amadeus IT Group, the big European computer reservation system and technology services compa! ny. But Mr. Davenport said it did not guide his research. (“We’re just trying to facilitate the debate,” said Hervé Couturier, an executive vice president of Amadeus.)

For the 28-page report, Mr. Davenport interviewed executives at 21 companies involved in one way or another in travel, but representing a cross-section of airlines, hotel chains and technology companies. The companies included Air France-KLM, Applied Predictive Technologies, Facebook, Hipmunk, Intercontinental Hotels and Marriott.

The report includes short case studies on companies that are doing innovative data projects. Mr. Davenport’s exemplary airline is British Airways for its new personalized service and offers program, Know Me. It collects and tracks an usual amount of data on individual passengers, their preferences and travel history.

If a person’s bag went astray on a flight, that individual might be offered a free upgrade for his or her next flight. The system has the ability to identify customers and istantly suggest tailored offers at check-in counters or lounges. On planes, service personnel with iPads can make authorized offers for custom services. “If it’s really personalized and appropriate for the context, it can be seen as a service instead of a marketing program,” Mr. Davenport said.

The software technology behind the Know You program is supplied by Opera Solutions, a New York-based Big Data analytics company. It assembles data on the online behavior and buying habits of 20 million British Airways customers, creating hundreds of predictive signals that suggest a person’s “behavioral DNA,” Arnab Gupta, chief executive of Opera Solutions, said in an interview.

Such signals, he said, might include a person’s tendency to book an airline ticket a month or more in advance or buy a ticket a few days ahead. Other signals might be a person’s history of booking two-star versus five-star hotels. Online behavior might include visits to BA.com and whether a person booked wit! h a few c! licks or frequently abandoned digital shopping carts.

A key conclusion from Opera Solutions’ work with companies in many industries, including travel, Mr. Gupta said, is that “90 percent of the predictive value is in the behavioral data.” That is, by monitoring what people do online and in the physical world rather than demographic profiles that seek to predict what people will do based on gender, race, age and income.

“It’s liberating,” Mr. Gupta said. “We cluster more by behavior than by demographics.”

‘Catfish’ and the Truth About Our False Online Selves

The Times's Jenna Wortham and Jon Caramanica spoke about the treatment of the intersection of technology and identity on MTV's “Catfish: The TV Show.”

‘Catfish’ and the Truth About Our False Online Selves

The Times's Jenna Wortham and Jon Caramanica spoke about the treatment of the intersection of technology and identity on MTV's “Catfish: The TV Show.”

Video of Texas State Senator’s Efforts to Block Abortion Bill

The crowd erupted online and inside the Texas state house to cheer State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, who led a filibuster to help block legislation restricting abortion rights.

On Tuesday, the hashtag “#standwithwendy” started popping up on Twitter. By midnight, it was trending across the country, shared on more than 400,000 posts as State Senator Wendy Davis helped block a bill in the Texas Legislature that would have become one of the nation’s most restrictive laws on abortion.

For more than 10 hours, Ms. Davis, 50, led a filibuster against the legislation, slowly gathering attention onlne throughout the day as tens of thousands of people on Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook began discussing the bill and her efforts to prevent a vote on it before midnight.

When Republican lawmakers tried to proceed with a vote just before the clock struck midnight, as my colleagues, Manny Fernandez and Erik Eckholm report, cheers and chants of “Wendy” erupted both online and from the gallery, packed with supporters of women’s rights and abortion rights.

Watching live video of the events unfold were more than 170,000 people, viewing the proceedings on YouTube and The Texas Tribune’s Web site. On Twitter, officials said that posts with the hashtag “standwithwendy” were shared 4,900 times per minute.

The crowd cheered “Wendy” for more than 10 minutes at midnight.

Evan Smith, editor in chief and chief executive officer of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news organization based in Austin, offered on Twitter an historical perspective:

Have seen nothing like this in #txlege in 22 years. Not even close. Waiting for someone to yell “Attica.”

â€" Evan Smith (@evanasmith) 26 Jun 13

Throughout the day, people online talked about Ms. Davis standin firm at the podium for women’s rights, unable to take a bathroom break or even lean on the lectern in keeping with the filibuster rules.

The Tribune also uploaded a video showing aides to Ms. Davis helping her put on a back brace so that she could continue standing during her filibuster. She was not allowed to eat, lean or take a bathroom break.

Wendy Davis trying to put on a back brace during her filibuster with the assistance of her aides.

On her Twitter account, @WendyDavisTexas, Ms. Davis began the day with about 8,000 followers. By Wednesday morning, she had more than 74,000 followers. She used it to thank her supporters early Wednesday after officials ruled that a v! ote by Re! publicans passing the bill failed because of procedural rules.

Thanks to the powerful voices of thousands of Texans, #SB5 is dead. An incredible victory for Texas women and those who love them.

â€" Wendy Davis (@WendyDavisTexas) 26 Jun 13

But as my colleagues noted, the Democratic victory is likely to be short-lived. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have made the bill a priority, and Mr. Perry may call a special legislative session so that the measure could be considered again. Advocates say the bill would improve women’s health care by making abortion safer. Opponents say the legislation restricting abortion after 20 years and imposing new regulations on abortion linics would give Texas among the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

As Ms. Davis left the Capitol early Wednesday, David Edmonson posted this photo on Twitter.

Senate Democrats (and @WendyDavisTexas) addresses supporters at the Capitol #sb5 #txlege http://t.co/902YTikCEC

â€" David Edmonson (@dedmo) 26 Jun 13

Reclaim Your Name

The revelations this month about government surveillance programs that collect the phone logs of people in the United States and can monitor e-mail traffic abroad is provoking a larger debate on the rights of consumers to control the collection and sharing of data about them.

One industry under the microscope is data brokerages. These are business-to-business companies that collect thousands of details â€" like the shopping habits, vacation preferences, estimated income, ethnicity, hobbies, predilections for gambling or smoking and health concerns â€" about millions of consumers, the better to help marketers identify potential new customers as well as maintain their already loyal clients.

Although some of these companies do permit people to opt out of their marketing databases, most do not have systems to allow consumers to see records held about them and correct possible errors. Because of this lack of transparency, federal regulators and privacy advocates have long warned about the potentia for such data-mining to discriminate against consumers based on sensitive details like financial or health information.

Now Julie Brill, a member of the Federal Trade Commission, has proposed an industrywide initiative to give consumers access to their own records held by data brokers. She envisions an online portal where data brokers would describe their data collection practices and their consumer access policies.

Ms. Brill has come up with a handy nickname for her proposed effort: “Reclaim Your Name.”

“Reclaim Your Name would empower the consumer to find out how brokers are collecting and using data; give her access to information that data brokers have amassed about her; allow her to opt-out if she learns a data broker is selling her information for marketing purposes and provide her the opportunity to correct errors in information used for substantive decisions - like credit, insurance, employment, and other benefits,” Ms. Brill said in a speech on Wednesday morning at! the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Washington.

Here’s a link to the full text of Ms. Brill’s speech.

Over the last year, legislators in the House and Senate have separately opened investigations into the practices of some leading data brokers with the goal of increasing oversight of the industry. Participation in a voluntary “Reclaim Your Name” program of the kind Ms. Brill proposed might help the industry mitigate government efforts toward greater regulation.

F.T.C. Tells Search Engines to Label Advertising as Such

Search engine companies should more clearly distinguish on their Web pages between advertising, paid content and the results of an Internet search, the Federal Trade Commission told two dozen search engine providers on Tuesday.