Within the European Union, airlines will be able to install the latest 5G technology on their aircraft, allowing passengers to use their smartphones and other connected devices just as they do on the ground. From a report: The European Commission has adapted the legislation on mobile communications to the most modern standards. As a result, 5G coverage can also be made available on aircraft. "The sky is no longer the limit when it comes to high-speed, high-capacity connections," said EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton. "5G will enable innovative services for people and growth opportunities for European companies." The 5G coverage will be made possible by installing a so-called "pico-cell" in the aircraft.

The president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, has confirmed there are multiple ongoing investigations into TikTok. From a report: The probes concern the transfer of EU citizens' data to China and targeted advertising aimed at minors. Investigators are seeking to ensure that TikTok meets General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. "The data practices of TikTok, including with respect to international data transfers, are the object of several ongoing proceedings," Ursula von der Leyden wrote in a letter shared by Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr.

"This includes an investigation by the Irish [Data Protection Commission] about TikTok's compliance with several GDPR requirements, including as regards data transfers to China and the processing of data of minors, and litigation before the Dutch courts (in particular concerning targeted advertising regarding minors and data transfers to China)." Von der Leyden was responding to concerns raised by members of the European Parliament regarding Chinese public authorities potentially gaining access to EU citizens' TikTok data, following a report by BuzzFeed News. The app's data practices have been under the EU's spotlight for a while. Earlier this year, TikTok agreed to enforce certain policies concerning ads and branded content following a complaint that accused the app of breaching EU consumer rules.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A little more than a year ago, Amazon, specifically Amazon Web Services, flashed its stacks of cash as it announced it was buying up the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Wickr. AWS users could suddenly use Wickr's services, and some reporters speculated Amazon could have been trying to make a move in the increasingly crowded encrypted messaging space. That's much more unlikely now as Amazon announced Monday it was nixing its secure messaging app Wickr Me.

The tech giant said that Wickr would instead be focused on business and public sector communications, specifically through AWS Wickr and Wickr Enterprise. The company will no longer allow registrations for Wickr Me after Dec. 31, and a year later, at the tail end of 2023, the app will be but a puff of smoke and a memory. Wickr was worth in the ballpark of $60 million when it was purchased, but just a few years ago Wickr was spouting off about its features that encrypted conference calls, which was a major evolution in the encrypted messaging space. Amazon's other messaging app, Chime, does videoconferencing without encryption. In September, Amazon finally added end-to-end encryption for the data sent to users through its Ring doorbells.

Regulators are pushing the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to examine ways of making single pilot operations the eventual norm in commercial flights. From a report: In a working paper filed with the aviation standards body, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) requested on behalf of member states that the "necessary enablers" be created "for a safe and globally harmonized introduction of commercial air transport (CAT) operations of large aeroplanes with optimised crew/single-pilot operations while ensuring an equivalent or higher level of safety compared to that achieved in current operations." There are two obvious drivers for the proposal -- cost cutting and crew shortages. Technology has over decades reduced the need for more people in the cockpit and the hope seems to be that further improvements can pare the current two down to one.

"One of the driving factors for the industry to propose taking advantage of the introduction of these new concepts of operations is a foreseen reduction in operating costs," the paper says, though it does note: "Potential additional costs related to higher-level ground support and two-way communications should also be considered. On the aircraft manufacturer side, the development and certification of new cockpit designs and associated systems may require significant investment, although these will likely produce safety benefits and savings in the medium/long term." The requirements for a full flying license are also incredibly onerous, which creates a bottleneck in the supply for qualified pilots. For most European airlines, you need 1,500 hours flight time before you get a full license. Until then, you're on provisional terms and need a fully qualified pilot operating alongside you.

"Dear internet service providers of America: We're onto your tricks," writes Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler: Last year, I encouraged Washington Post readers to participate in a major nationwide study of ISPs by uploading a copy of their monthly bills to Fight for Fair Internet, a project of Consumer Reports and other partners. Some 22,000 Americans did, and the results released Thursday reveal the many ways internet and cable companies get away with jacking up our bills.

For you and me, the study of big and small ISPs alike offers a clearer view of their worst behaviors — and how to fight back. The most important cost-saving lesson: Calling up and threatening to quit your internet service works. It's super annoying, I know, but Verizon (for example) applied discounts to 58 percent of the bills people submitted, with an astounding monthly median discount of $40.

The study's spotlight on ISP tricks, including bogus fees, data caps and wildly inconsistent pricing, also is fresh evidence that in many parts of the United States, there just isn't a competitive market for internet service. Who would put up with it if there were? About 200 million people live in parts of the country with only one or two choices for reliable, fast internet, according to a 2021 report from the White House.
The report identified the U.S. internet providers charging the highest equipment rental fees (Wave Broadband) and the highest data-cap fees (Cox Communications), as well as the ones with the lowest and highest monthly service fees. But in addition, Consumer Reports notes that "Download speeds routinely fail to match the advertised 'up to' speeds of several ISPs. This was especially true of consumers paying for 'premium' plans purporting to offer download speeds of between 940 and 1,200 Mbps, who in fact experienced median speeds of between 360 and 373 Mbps."

The Washington Post highlights one case "Where you might pay more for less: AT&T" On volunteer bills, AT&T's median pricing across different speed plans was all over the map. People getting:

12 mbps paid $63.
45 mbps paid $80.
100 mbps paid $60.
1000 mbps paid $80.

Why should people who aren't even getting minimum broadband speeds (25 mbps) be paying more than people getting zippy service? ISPs can and will charge whatever they can get away with in your neighborhood.

"The charges on those bills may reflect older plans that we no longer sell," said AT&T spokesman Jim Kimberly. "Customers with older plans can check on our website or call in to see if a lower cost offer is available to them for faster speeds and switch service."

That's another lesson for all of us: It's always worth checking to see if there's a new deal available. Unlike the cellphone carriers, ISPs rarely proactively switch consumers into cheaper or better plans.

According to documents recently declassified by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), former President Donald Trump posted a classified satellite image of a failed rocket launch in Iran on Twitter in 2019. NPR reports: Now, three years after Trump's tweet, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has formally declassified the original image. The declassification, which came as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by NPR, followed a grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public. Many details on the original image remain redacted -- a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the U.S. government's most prized intelligence on social media, says Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists. "He was getting literally a bird's eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran," he says. "And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter." "[A]erospace experts determined the photo was taken by a classified spacecraft called USA 224, believed to be a multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance aircraft," adds Gizmodo. "The spacecraft is similar to the Hubble Telescope, but instead of getting a closer look at the stars, it views the Earth's surface."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Privacy-focused search site DuckDuckGo has added yet another way to prevent more of your data from going to advertisers, opening its App Tracking Protection for Android to beta testers. DuckDuckGo is positioning App Tracking Protection as something like Apple's App Tracking Transparency for iOS devices, but "even more powerful." Enabling the service in the DuckDuckGo app for Android (under the "More from DuckDuckGo" section) installs a local VPN service on your phone, which can then start automatically blocking trackers on DDG's public blocklist. DuckDuckGo says this happens "without sending app data to DuckDuckGo or other remote servers."

Google recently gave Android users some native tools to prevent wanton tracking, including app-by-app location-tracking approval and a limited native ad-tracking opt-out. Apple's App Tracking Transparency asks if users want to block apps from accessing the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), but apps can still use the largest tracking networks across many apps to better profile app users. Allison Goodman, senior communications manager for DuckDuckGo, told Ars Technica that App Tracking Protection needs Android's VPN permission so it can monitor network traffic. When it recognizes a tracker from its blocklist, it "looks at the destination domain for any outbound request and blocks them if they are in our blocklist and the requesting app is not owned by the same company that owns the domain." Goodman added that "much of the data collected by trackers is not controlled by [Android] permissions," making App Tracking Protection a complementary offering.

The UK Treasury has opened an account on Discord to a torrent of abuse from users of the gamer-focused chat app -- abuse they managed to send despite the government blocking all comments on the service. The Guardian reports: With its community-focused approach, where servers encourage tight-knit groups to form and discuss issues related to the overall focus of the topic, Discord may seem an odd fit for the strait-laced world of government communications. But the app has a lot of users interested in finance, thanks to solid take-up among day traders and crypto fans, two groups the Treasury is eager to connect with. The result: a read-only Discord server, where the only user who is allowed to post is the snappily named HMTreasurySocialAdmin1, who shares tweet-length news about the Treasury and chancellor.

But trolls will always find a way. Although posting is banned, emoji reactions are enabled, letting any user respond to a post from the Treasury with a single emoji, and new users are cheerily announced in a "welcome" channel. That means the Treasury's server has been eagerly posting automated messages such as, "Welcome, LOCK UP PRINCE ANDREW. We hope you brought pizza," and "Welcome Jeremy Corbyn. Say hi!". The latter does not appear to be the real account of the former leader of the opposition. [...] UPDATE: Emoji reactions and the welcome channel vanished but eventually returned. According to the HM Treasure admin, Discord is the reason to blame for the issues.

"Due to the rapid growth of today's channel which has seen over 7,000 members join, a technical difficulty has led to reactions being paused," a post in the news channel read. "We are working with Discord to get reactions turned back on." The trolling can be continued here.

The Linux Foundation Europe (LF Europe) -- the recently launched European offshoot of the open source Linux Foundation -- today announced the launch of Project Sylva, which aims to create an open source telco cloud framework for European telcos and vendors. TechCrunch: This is the first project hosted by LF Europe and is a good example of what the organization is trying to achieve. The project aims to create a production-grade open source telco cloud stack and a common framework and reference implementation to "reduce fragmentation of the cloud infrastructure layer for telecommunication and edge services." Currently, five carriers (Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Orange, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom) and two vendors (Ericsson and Nokia) are working on the project.

"There's a whole bunch of Linux Foundation networking projects already that have taken telecommunications into the open source era," Arpit Joshipura, the general manager for Networking, Edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation, told me. "All those projects are under what is called the [LF] Networking foundation. [â¦] So whatever that work is that is done by the telcos, Sylva is going to leverage and build on top of it with these European vendors to solve EU specific requirements. Those are security, energy, federated computing, edge and data trust." At the core of Sylva is a framework for a compute platform that can be agnostic to whether a workload is running on the telco access network, edge or in the core. The project aims to build a reference implementation, leveraging all of the work already being done by LF Networking, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (the home of Kubernetes and other cloud-native infrastructure projects), LF Energy and others.

Apple on Tuesday announced that Emergency SOS via satellite is officially available to iPhone 14 users in the US and Canada. Next month, Apple will launch Emergency SOS via satellite in France, Germany, Ireland, and the UK. Apple is enabling the feature on all iPhone 14 models that are running iOS 16.1, which was released near the end of October. From a report: If you have the feature, you'll see a new section detailing your phone's new capability of connecting to satellites, and offering a demo mode for you to get a feel for what the process is like should you ever have to use it. For those unfamiliar, Emergency SOS via Satellite will allow an iPhone 14 owner to contact emergency services when in an area without cellular or Wi-Fi coverage. The feature is triggered by calling 911 when "SOS" is shown at the top of the iPhone's screen where the cellular coverage bars are normally visible. Once you're connected to a satellite, you'll either directly exchange messages with a local dispatcher if they accept text messages, or talk with local emergency services using an Apple-trained emergency specialist as a go-between.

Microsoft has released its first Digital Transparency Report for the Xbox gaming platform, revealing that the company took proactive action against throwaway accounts that violated its community guidelines 4.78 million times within a six-month period, usually in the form of temporary suspension. The Verge reports: The report, which provides information regarding content moderation and player safety, covers the period between January 1st and June 30th this year. It includes a range of information, including the number of reports submitted by players and breakdowns of various "proactive enforcements" (i.e., temporary account suspensions) taken by the Xbox team. Microsoft says the report forms part of its commitment to online safety. The data reveals that "proactive enforcements" by Microsoft increased almost tenfold since the last reporting period and that 4.33 million of the 4.78 million total enforcements concerned accounts that had been tampered with or used suspiciously outside of the Xbox platform guidelines. These unauthorized accounts can impact players in a variety of ways, from enabling cheating to spreading spam and artificially inflating friend / follower numbers.

A further breakdown of the data reveals 199,000 proactive enforcements taken by Xbox involving adult sexual content, 87,000 for fraud, and 54,000 for harassment or bullying. The report also claims that 100 percent of all actions in the last six-month period relating to account tampering, piracy, and phishing were taken proactively by Xbox rather than via reports made by its player base, which suggests that either fewer issues are being reported by players or the issues themselves are being addressed before players are aware of them. As proactive action has increased, the report also reveals that reports made by players have decreased significantly despite a growing player base, noting a 36 percent decline in player reports compared to the same period in 2021. A total of 33.07 million reports were made by players during the last period, with the vast majority relating to either in-game conduct (such as cheating, teamkilling, or intentionally throwing a match) or communications.

A report from the Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce found that Bachelor's degree holders generally earn 84% more than those with just a high school diploma, reports CNBC.

"Still, 44% of all job seekers with college degrees regret their field of study." Journalism, sociology, communications and education all topped the list of most-regretted college majors, according to ZipRecruiter's survey of more than 1,500 college graduates who were looking for a job. "When you are barely managing to pay your bills, your paycheck might become more important." Of graduates who regretted their major, most said that, if they could go back, they would now choose computer science or business administration instead.

All in, the top-paying college majors earn $3.4 million more than the lowest-paying majors over a lifetime.

Graduates entering the workforce with good career prospects and high starting salaries are the most satisfied with their field of study, job site ZipRecruiter also found. Computer science majors, with an average annual starting salary of almost $100,000, were the happiest overall, according to ZipRecruiter. Students who majored in criminology, engineering, nursing, business and finance also felt very good about their choices.

In a statement in February, America's Federal Bureau of Investigation "confirmed that it obtained NSO Group's powerful Pegasus spyware" back in 2019, reported the Guardian. At the time the FBI added that "There was no operational use in support of any investigation, the FBI procured a limited licence for product testing and evaluation only."

"But dozens of internal F.B.I. documents and court records tell a different story," the New York Times reported today: The documents, produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times against the bureau, show that F.B.I. officials made a push in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to deploy the hacking tools — made by the Israeli spyware firm NSO — in its own criminal investigations. The officials developed advanced plans to brief the bureau's leadership, and drew up guidelines for federal prosecutors about how the F.B.I.'s use of hacking tools would need to be disclosed during criminal proceedings. It is unclear how the bureau was contemplating using Pegasus, and whether it was considering hacking the phones of American citizens, foreigners or both. In January, The Times revealed that F.B.I. officials had also tested the NSO tool Phantom, a version of Pegasus capable of hacking phones with U.S. numbers.

The F.B.I. eventually decided not to deploy Pegasus in criminal investigations in July 2021, amid a flurry of stories about how the hacking tool had been abused by governments across the globe. But the documents offer a glimpse at how the U.S. government — over two presidential administrations — wrestled with the promise and peril of a powerful cyberweapon. And, despite the F.B.I. decision not to use Pegasus, court documents indicate the bureau remains interested in potentially using spyware in future investigations. "Just because the F.B.I. ultimately decided not to deploy the tool in support of criminal investigations does not mean it would not test, evaluate and potentially deploy other similar tools for gaining access to encrypted communications used by criminals," stated a legal brief submitted on behalf of the F.B.I. late last month....

The specifics of why the bureau chose not to use Pegasus remain a mystery, but American officials have said that it was in large part because of mounting negative publicity about how the tool had been used by governments around the world.
The Times also notes two responses to their latest report. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden complained the FBI's earlier testimony about Pegasus was incomplete and misleading, and that the agency "owes Americans a clear explanation as to whether the future operational use of NSO tools is still on the table."

But an F.B.I. spokeswoman said "the director's testimony was accurate when given and remains true today — there has been no operational use of the NSO product to support any FBI investigation."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader crazyvas for suggesting the story.

"KFC has apologised after sending a promotional message to customers in Germany, urging them to commemorate Kristallnacht with cheesy chicken," reports the BBC. The Nazi-led series of attacks in the country in 1938 left more than 90 people dead, and destroyed Jewish-owned businesses and places of worship. It is widely seen as the beginning of the Holocaust....

The fast-food chain sent an app alert on Wednesday, saying: "It's memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!"

Around an hour later another message was sent with an apology, according to the Bild newspaper. "We are very sorry, we will check our internal processes immediately so that this does not happen again. Please excuse this error," the message is reported to have said.
The fast food chain "apologized for the error," reports the Jerusalem Post, "explaining that they 'use a semi-automated content creation process linked to calendars that include national observances.'" "In this instance, our internal review process was not properly followed, resulting in a non-approved notification being shared." Calling the mistake "obviously wrong, insensitive and unacceptable," KFC Germany added that they "have suspended app communications while we examine our current process to ensure such an issue does not occur again.

whoever57 writes: Would you trust your communications to a company that has links to a spyware company and claims that its address is a UPS store in Toronto? You probably already do. Washington Post reports: An offshore company that is trusted by the major web browsers and other tech companies to vouch for the legitimacy of websites has connections to contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement, according to security researchers, documents and interviews. Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, nonprofit Firefox and others allow the company, TrustCor Systems, to act as what's known as a root certificate authority, a powerful spot in the internet's infrastructure that guarantees websites are not fake, guiding users to them seamlessly.

The company's Panamanian registration records show that it has the identical slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which public contracting records and company documents show has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. One of those TrustCor partners has the same name as a holding company managed by Raymond Saulino, who was quoted in a 2010 Wired article as a spokesman for Packet Forensics. Saulino also surfaced in 2021 as a contact for another company, Global Resource Systems, that caused speculation in the tech world when it briefly activated and ran more than 100 million previously dormant IP addresses assigned decades earlier to the Pentagon. The Pentagon reclaimed the digital territory months later, and it remains unclear what the brief transfer was about, but researchers said the activation of those IP addresses could have given the military access to a huge amount of internet traffic without revealing that the government was receiving it. whoever57 has also shared a unpaywalled link to the story.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deadline: AMC Entertainment plans to launch "Zoom Rooms" at movie theaters in up to 17 U.S. cities serving businesses with in-person events and meetings. The partnership with Zoom will roll out "sometime in 2023," the giant exhibitor said. It will give the chain access to the "multi-billion market for corporate and other meetings," according to CEO Adam Aron, and during weekdays when most theaters are quiet.

Users will book three-hour blocks online, selecting preferred theaters and meeting time. AMC and Zoom will provide the necessary equipment. Auditorium sizes are expected to range between 75 to 150 seats. Additional services like food and beverage offerings, movie viewings, and concierge-style personalized handling of meeting needs will be available for an added cost. "As hybrid work has become more commonplace throughout the United States, Zoom Rooms at AMC will enable companies and other entities with decentralized workforces and customer bases to bring people from different markets together at the same time for cohesive virtual and in-person events and meeting experiences," the nation's biggest chain said.

"One of the lessons learned during the pandemic when so many of us were forced to work remotely was the importance of a reliable, dynamic communications platform. We also learned that even though we may be spread far apart, the ability to come together in person is as important as ever," said Aron. "This creates an all-new product in major cities across the U.S. for companies and meeting planners."

The Intercept reports that protesters in Iran "have often been left wondering how the government was able to track down their locations or gain access to their private communications — tactics that are frighteningly pervasive but whose mechanisms are virtually unknown."

But The Intercept now has evidence of a new possibility: While disconnecting broad swaths of the population from the web remains a favored blunt instrument of Iranian state censorship, the government has far more precise, sophisticated tools available as well. Part of Iran's data clampdown may be explained through the use of a system called "SIAM," a web program for remotely manipulating cellular connections made available to the Iranian Communications Regulatory Authority. The existence of SIAM and details of how the system works, reported here for the first time, are laid out in a series of internal documents from an Iranian cellular carrier that were obtained by The Intercept.

According to these internal documents, SIAM is a computer system that works behind the scenes of Iranian cellular networks, providing its operators a broad menu of remote commands to alter, disrupt, and monitor how customers use their phones. The tools can slow their data connections to a crawl, break the encryption of phone calls, track the movements of individuals or large groups, and produce detailed metadata summaries of who spoke to whom, when, and where. Such a system could help the government invisibly quash the ongoing protests — or those of tomorrow — an expert who reviewed the SIAM documents told The Intercept.

"SIAM can control if, where, when, and how users can communicate," explained Gary Miller, a mobile security researcher and fellow at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. "In this respect, this is not a surveillance system but rather a repression and control system to limit the capability of users to dissent or protest."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for submitting the article.

Vietnam's information minister said on Friday authorities had tightened regulations to deal with "false" content on social media platforms so that it must be taken down within 24 hours instead of 48 hours previously. From a report: The new rules will enshrine Vietnam's position as one of the world's most stringently controlled regimes for social media firms and will strengthen the ruling Communist Party's hand as it cracks down on "anti-state" activity. Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung told parliament there was risk that "false news, if it is handled in a slow manner, will spread very widely." Reuters had previously reported government plans to bring in the new regulations, as well rules so that very sensitive information has to be taken down within three hours. Most governments do not have laws imposing the taking down of content on social media firms, but Vietnam's move comes amid intensifying crackdowns in some parts of the world on online content.

Ericsson subsidiary Vonage will pay $100 million to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations that it created a web of obstacles for its customers to cancel the internet-based telephone service and charged unexpected termination fees. From a report: The agreement, filed in a federal court Thursday, represents the largest settlement of its kind in the FTC's enforcement push against companies that allegedly throw up high hurdles to customers seeking to cancel subscriptions or services. New Jersey-based Vonage will be required to obtain consumers' express consent for services and simplify its cancelation process. The cost of a subscription ranged from $5 to $50 a month for consumers, and potentially thousands a month for businesses, the FTC said. The commission said it received hundreds of complaints from consumers about Vonage's tactics.

T-Mobile may be joining rivals Verizon and AT&T by introducing an $35 charge for all new postpaid activations and upgrades, according to The T-Mo Report and some Redditors. Engadget: According to T-Mobile internal documents, it's introducing a "Device Connection Charge" for "all activations and upgrades for mobile, Beyond the Smartphone and broadband devices." Before, the Uncarrier charged activation fees only if you received in-store customer support for new activations, with online orders exempt. Now, all new postpaid activations are charged, whether or not you were assisted. This includes updating to a new device, adding a Bring-Your-Own-Device line, or ordering a Home Internet line, according to The T-Mo Report. T-Mobile has always tried to separate itself from regular telecoms, but charging customers for essentially nothing doesn't sound very Uncarrier-like, if the reports are accurate. And you can't take your business to Sprint, as it no longer exists thanks to its merger with T-Mobile. When that deal was finalized, T-Mobile said things would be "better for customers," but constant activation charges would definitely not be better.