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Thursday, August 8, 2013

Two Providers of Encrypted E-Mail Shut Down

Two major secure e-mail service providers on Thursday took the extraordinary step of shutting down service.

A Texas-based company called Lavabit, which was reportedly used by Edward J. Snowden, announced its suspension Thursday afternoon, citing concerns about secret government court orders.

By evening, Silent Circle, a Washington-based firm that counts heads of state among its customers, said it was following Lavabit’s lead and shutting its e-mail service as a protective measure.

Taken together, the closures signal that e-mails, even if they are encrypted, can be accessed by government authorities and that the only way to prevent turning over the data is to obliterate the servers that the data sits on.

Mike Janke, Silent Circle’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview late Thursday that his company had destroyed its server. “Gone. Can’t get it back. Nobody can,” he said. “We thought it was better to take flak from customers than be forced to turn it over.”

The company, in a blog post dated Friday, Aug. 9, said it had taken the extreme measure even though it had not received a search order from the government.

Ladar Levison, the owner of Lavabit, suggested â€" though did not say explicitly â€" that he had received a search order, and was opting to shut the service so as not to be “complicit in crimes against the American people.”

“After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations.,” he wrote. “I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on â€" the First Amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.”

The gag order could refer to a secret court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or a National Security Letter. Both prohibit the recipient from saying anything about it.

Silent Circle, which has been in operation for less than a year, said it would continue its phone and text messaging service, which are encrypted end-to-end. E-mail, by its very nature, Mr. Janke said, “is within the reach of any government.”

“We’d considered phasing the service out, continuing service for existing customers, and a variety of other things up until today,” the company’s blog post continued. “It is always better to be safe than sorry, and with your safety we decided that the worst decision is always no decision.”

The announcements spread fast on social media, drawing praise, anxiety and donations to Lavabit’s legal defense fund.

Lavabit’s Facebook page had lit up with comments from frustrated, angry users. “please re-open the servers just that we can recover th info!!!” wrote one.

Mr. Levison described how his service worked in a lengthy post in 2009, saying that Lavabit had 140,000 users, including 70 companies. The security researcher Mikko Hypponen posted a link to his post on Twitter earlier today.



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Canadian Teenager’s Suicide Case Is Back in Spotlight

The suicide of a Canadian teenager in April revived outrage that the police did not go far enough to investigate allegations that she was gang-raped in 2011, then bullied, after photographs of the assault were shared and posted online. But now the first arrests have been reported by the police, putting the case of the teenager, Rehtaeh Parsons, once again in the spotlight.

On Thursday morning, investigators took two men into custody for questioning, according to the statement by the Halifax district Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In an interview with CP24, Cpl. Scott MacRae, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, described the arrests as a “significant event” in Ms. Parsons’s case. The police have 24 hours to charge or release them.

As The Lede reported in April, the authorities quoted in a Canadian television network’s online report had said there was not enough evidence earlier to bring charges. But Corporal MacRae said on Thursday that the arrests were the result of months of renewed investigation with the regional police into files and additional information after she died.

On April 4, Ms. Parsons hanged herself in the bathroom at home and was discovered when her mother broke down the door. Three days later, she was taken off life support and died.

Her suicide, at age 17, had sparked criticism over how the authorities handled the gang rape allegations and whether they were equipped to fight cyberbullying. Some drew comparisons with the Steubenville rape in Ohio in the United States, because a cellphone photograph that was distributed among students at Ms. Parsons’s school apparently showed the sexual assault taking place.

Ms. Parsons’s case also attracted support from a loose network of hackers who identify themselves as belonging to the Anonymous collective, who said they had uncovered the names of the teenagers believed involved in the rape, soliciting online support through Twitter using #OpJustice4Rehtaeh. A video attributed to Anonymous said that it had names of two of the “alleged rapists” but would soon have all four.

An account called AnonNorth and others reacted to the news of the arrests by noting the role played by Anonymous.

In addition to the renewed police investigation, Ms. Parsons’s case influenced parts of a new Cyber-Safety Act that went into effect on Wednesday in Nova Scotia, according to a statement by the Nova Scotia justice minister, Ross Landry.

While criminal law in Canada is federal, the provincial legislation allows victims to apply for a protection order that could place restrictions on, or help identify, the cyberbully, and even sue the cyberbully, whose parents can be held liable for damages if the cyberbully is a minor, the statement said.

There was cautious reaction about where the arrests might lead in the case.

In media interviews, Ms. Parsons’s mother, Leah Parsons, said the police came to her home on Thursday morning after the arrests to let her know what had happened. She said her immediate reaction was “a little bit of a sense of relief that finally something has been done after all this time,” she was quoted as saying in a report by The Chronicle Herald. “I’m just hoping that charges will be laid.”

The newspaper quoted her as saying that she knows who was arrested: “The boys (have said) they want to give their side of the story, but they’ve never given their side of the story. So here’s their opportunity.”

She also spoke in an interview with CBC News, saying that the men arrested were “in the heart of it,” when asked whether they were on the periphery of what happened to her daughter or central to it.

The Chronicle Herald interviewed her father, Glen Canning, who called the news of the arrests “bittersweet.”

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



Canadian Teenager’s Suicide Case Is Back in Spotlight

The suicide of a Canadian teenager in April revived outrage that the police did not go far enough to investigate allegations that she was gang-raped in 2011, then bullied, after photographs of the assault were shared and posted online. But now the first arrests have been reported by the police, putting the case of the teenager, Rehtaeh Parsons, once again in the spotlight.

On Thursday morning, investigators took two men into custody for questioning, according to the statement by the Halifax district Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In an interview with CP24, Cpl. Scott MacRae, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, described the arrests as a “significant event” in Ms. Parsons’s case. The police have 24 hours to charge or release them.

As The Lede reported in April, the authorities quoted in a Canadian television network’s online report had said there was not enough evidence earlier to bring charges. But Corporal MacRae said on Thursday that the arrests were the result of months of renewed investigation with the regional police into files and additional information after she died.

On April 4, Ms. Parsons hanged herself in the bathroom at home and was discovered when her mother broke down the door. Three days later, she was taken off life support and died.

Her suicide, at age 17, had sparked criticism over how the authorities handled the gang rape allegations and whether they were equipped to fight cyberbullying. Some drew comparisons with the Steubenville rape in Ohio in the United States, because a cellphone photograph that was distributed among students at Ms. Parsons’s school apparently showed the sexual assault taking place.

Ms. Parsons’s case also attracted support from a loose network of hackers who identify themselves as belonging to the Anonymous collective, who said they had uncovered the names of the teenagers believed involved in the rape, soliciting online support through Twitter using #OpJustice4Rehtaeh. A video attributed to Anonymous said that it had names of two of the “alleged rapists” but would soon have all four.

An account called AnonNorth and others reacted to the news of the arrests by noting the role played by Anonymous.

In addition to the renewed police investigation, Ms. Parsons’s case influenced parts of a new Cyber-Safety Act that went into effect on Wednesday in Nova Scotia, according to a statement by the Nova Scotia justice minister, Ross Landry.

While criminal law in Canada is federal, the provincial legislation allows victims to apply for a protection order that could place restrictions on, or help identify, the cyberbully, and even sue the cyberbully, whose parents can be held liable for damages if the cyberbully is a minor, the statement said.

There was cautious reaction about where the arrests might lead in the case.

In media interviews, Ms. Parsons’s mother, Leah Parsons, said the police came to her home on Thursday morning after the arrests to let her know what had happened. She said her immediate reaction was “a little bit of a sense of relief that finally something has been done after all this time,” she was quoted as saying in a report by The Chronicle Herald. “I’m just hoping that charges will be laid.”

The newspaper quoted her as saying that she knows who was arrested: “The boys (have said) they want to give their side of the story, but they’ve never given their side of the story. So here’s their opportunity.”

She also spoke in an interview with CBC News, saying that the men arrested were “in the heart of it,” when asked whether they were on the periphery of what happened to her daughter or central to it.

The Chronicle Herald interviewed her father, Glen Canning, who called the news of the arrests “bittersweet.”

Follow Christine Hauser on Twitter @christineNYT.



Happy Birth Data! A New App Tracks Fertility

High-tech companies keep trying to fix America’s health care woes. This time, the effort is a combination of Big Data research and an old-fashioned Christmas club.

On Thursday, a start-up called Glow began offering an iPhone app for women who are trying to get pregnant. The app combines a calendar and data-seeking questions around things like fertility cycles, emotional and health conditions, even the type and quality of intercourse the woman has had.

The idea is to improve the odds of pregnancy by showing optimal days in which a woman might become pregnant, and, at the same time, anonymously gather data on a subject that is difficult to study. An Android version of the app is expected soon.

People can also join a program in which they pay $50 a month. If, at the end of 10 months, they do not conceive naturally, they get that money back, plus a share of funds from participants who did conceive, which they can put toward fertility treatment. That kind of purposeful forced savings, way back when, was how banks got people to save for Christmas (only they didn’t get other people’s money too.)

“Once we have a few hundred thousand data points, we’ll know a lot more about infertility,” said Max Levchin, Glow’s co-founder. Of the optional pay-in program, he said, “we think of it as crowdfunding babies.”

Mr. Levchin is a well-known tech figure who was a co-founder and chief technical officer at PayPal, where he figured out much of its breakthrough fraud detection system. He then started Slide, a media-sharing service that was sold to Google for $182 million, and was also an early investor in Yelp and other companies.

Glow’s other founder, Mike Huang, also worked at Slide and, like Mr. Levchin, worked for a time at Google after the Slide acquisition. Investors in Glow include the Founders Fund, an investment firm started by several PayPal veterans, and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Over the past several years, there have been many efforts by tech executives to address aspects of health care. The more successful ones have tended to focus on fitness and nutrition, which are not as heavily regulated as, say, prescription drugs or hospital stays, and which don’t infringe on the turf of powerful health insurance companies.

Mr. Levchin called fertility treatments “almost ridiculously poorly covered” by health insurance, “an elective treatment that nobody who wants to conceive would call elective.”

Of course, for the data to roll in, people will have to at least somewhat faithfully enter their data. The fertility treatment club could help in that regard. To seed the opt-in program, called Glow First, Mr. Levchin said he was contributing $1 million of his own fortune.

While the app is free, Mr. Levchin’s main goal seems to be to amass data on a poorly studied area. He said he could find little research, for example, on the connection between mood or stress and conception. That data will be donated to researchers, but it could also lead to new ways of addressing the finances associated with not just fertility, but other elective treatments.

“Giving people a better sense of decision-making, promoting activist health care, is the only way to change the system,” he said. “This is a transitional first step to building a new kind of way to finance things.”



Happy Birth Data! A New App Tracks Fertility

High-tech companies keep trying to fix America’s health care woes. This time, the effort is a combination of Big Data research and an old-fashioned Christmas club.

On Thursday, a start-up called Glow began offering an iPhone app for women who are trying to get pregnant. The app combines a calendar and data-seeking questions around things like fertility cycles, emotional and health conditions, even the type and quality of intercourse the woman has had.

The idea is to improve the odds of pregnancy by showing optimal days in which a woman might become pregnant, and, at the same time, anonymously gather data on a subject that is difficult to study. An Android version of the app is expected soon.

People can also join a program in which they pay $50 a month. If, at the end of 10 months, they do not conceive naturally, they get that money back, plus a share of funds from participants who did conceive, which they can put toward fertility treatment. That kind of purposeful forced savings, way back when, was how banks got people to save for Christmas (only they didn’t get other people’s money too.)

“Once we have a few hundred thousand data points, we’ll know a lot more about infertility,” said Max Levchin, Glow’s co-founder. Of the optional pay-in program, he said, “we think of it as crowdfunding babies.”

Mr. Levchin is a well-known tech figure who was a co-founder and chief technical officer at PayPal, where he figured out much of its breakthrough fraud detection system. He then started Slide, a media-sharing service that was sold to Google for $182 million, and was also an early investor in Yelp and other companies.

Glow’s other founder, Mike Huang, also worked at Slide and, like Mr. Levchin, worked for a time at Google after the Slide acquisition. Investors in Glow include the Founders Fund, an investment firm started by several PayPal veterans, and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Over the past several years, there have been many efforts by tech executives to address aspects of health care. The more successful ones have tended to focus on fitness and nutrition, which are not as heavily regulated as, say, prescription drugs or hospital stays, and which don’t infringe on the turf of powerful health insurance companies.

Mr. Levchin called fertility treatments “almost ridiculously poorly covered” by health insurance, “an elective treatment that nobody who wants to conceive would call elective.”

Of course, for the data to roll in, people will have to at least somewhat faithfully enter their data. The fertility treatment club could help in that regard. To seed the opt-in program, called Glow First, Mr. Levchin said he was contributing $1 million of his own fortune.

While the app is free, Mr. Levchin’s main goal seems to be to amass data on a poorly studied area. He said he could find little research, for example, on the connection between mood or stress and conception. That data will be donated to researchers, but it could also lead to new ways of addressing the finances associated with not just fertility, but other elective treatments.

“Giving people a better sense of decision-making, promoting activist health care, is the only way to change the system,” he said. “This is a transitional first step to building a new kind of way to finance things.”



Daily Report: T-Mobile US Expands Its Customer Base

T-Mobile US, the fourth-largest American carrier, lost thousands of customers in the last few years to rivals that offered cooler phones. But it appears to be getting its groove back, Brian X. Chen reports.

The company said on Thursday that it had gained 1.1 million customers, including 685,000 contract subscribers, in the second quarter. That compares with a loss of 557,000 contract subscribers, the most valuable type of customer, in the period a year earlier. The uptick represents its largest customer growth in four years.

There is no question that finally being able to sell Apple‘s iPhone in April was good for T-Mobile. This year has also been jam-packed with other changes for the company. It began an overhaul of its network, it started offering lower-cost plans to lure customers from competitors and it also gained extra muscle from its merger with the smaller carrier MetroPCS, which was completed in May.

“By fixing the things that drive them mad, like contracts and upgrades, and freeing them from the two-year sentences imposed on them by our competitors, they are choosing the new T-Mobile in unprecedented numbers,” John Legere, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.

To be sure, the change has come at a cost for T-Mobile. The company posted a loss of $16 million for the quarter, compared with a profit of $207 million in the second quarter of 2012. But it also reported that revenue rose to $6.23 billion from $4.9 billion in the period a year earlier. And it expects the growth to continue. For the full year, T-Mobile said it expected to add 1 million to 1.2 million contract subscribers.



YouTube’s Founders Challenge Vine and Instagram with New Video App

After months of teasing, the wait is over: Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who brought us the video-sharing site YouTube, are taking the wraps off their newest project, a video creation app called MixBit.

Versions for Apple mobile devices and the Web will be going live on Thursday, and an Android version is due in several weeks.

On the surface, MixBit resembles two other leading video apps, Twitter’s Vine and Facebook’s Instagram. As with those apps, users press and hold the screen of their smartphone to record video. Instagram users can capture up to 15 seconds of video, a bit longer than Vine’s six-second maximum. MixBit allows 16 seconds.

But as the name suggests, MixBit is all about mixing and editing video. Both the app and a related Web site, MixBit.com, are aimed at making it easy to clip and stitch together snippets of video. Simple tools built into the app allow users to edit each 16-second clip and combine up to 256 clips into an hourlong video. The final product can then be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or the MixBit Web site.

Think of it as “shoot, mix, share.” You don’t even have to do the shooting â€" the MixBit site allows anyone to snip and remix any publicly shared video content.

In fact, Mr. Hurley said, encouraging users to remix other people’s videos to create new works is the principal goal of the service, which is the first big product to emerge from Avos Systems, the start-up he co-founded with Mr. Chen two years ago. (The company has received funding from the venture arm of Google, which bought YouTube, as well as from Innovation Works, Madrone Capital and New Enterprise Associates.)

“The whole purpose of MixBit is to reuse the content within the system,” Mr. Hurley said in an interview. “I really want to focus on great stories that people can tell.”

The ability to create those more complex video stories could give MixBit an edge, at least momentarily, over Vine and Instagram, which are growing rapidly. Vine has no editing tools and Instagram introduced rudimentary ones on Wednesday.

In a recent interview, Laura Krajecki, chief consumer officer of the advertising company Starcom MediaVest Group, said that neither Twitter nor Vine were quite fulfilling the desire of young consumers around the world to play around with video, mixing and mashing their own work with that of others.

“Create an app that lets people edit it, and that’s where people are going to go,” she said, speaking generally of the market opportunity and not about MixBit in particular.

But one crucial decision by Avos is likely to hold it back: the app is totally anonymous and communal. Users cannot post their videos under a name, and they cannot comment on each other’s work.

Showing off is a big part of modern Internet culture. The competition to create popular videos helped build YouTube into the powerful force that it now is, and it propels social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

“Everyone wants to be recognized,” Mr. Hurley acknowledged. He said MixBit would add identity features at some point.

But for now, it’s all about sharing, commune-style.

“We wanted to do that to first build a community within MixBit,” he said. “To see how that unfolds will be pretty interesting.”



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