Computers

Google has asked a secret Washington court to declare that it has a right under the First Amendment to disclose the number of security letters it receives under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such letters, which the government uses to obtain phone and internet data about foreign nationals, are currently subject to an automatic gag order that forbids companies from disclosing their very existence. On Tuesday, Google said it is filing a petition to the secret court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The petition, embedded below, notes that the search giant has already received information from the FBI to publish the number of so-called National Security Letters it receives — these are similar to FISA letters but cover US citizens. The Google petition comes as a brouhaha continues to rage over the revelation of secret government programs, such as PRISM, that collect meta-data on phone and internet users. The controversy has not only let to questions about the expansion of government surveillance under the Patriot Act, but has also led the various tech companies ensnared in the dragnet to claim vociferously that they are standing up for their users. The nature of this advocacy has led to tension between some of the companies — Google and Twitter, for example, have suggested that alleged victories claimed by Microsoft and Facebook against the government are misleading. In its filing, Google also repeated its criticism of the Guardian and Washington Post for misleading reporting — and says that the disclosure of the FISA requests are necessary to help it refute false accusation leveled by the media. “Google reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading requests in the media, and Google’s users are concerned by the allegations,” the company wrote, several times singling out the Guardian and the Post. If Google’s petition is successful, the company’s semi-annual Transparency Report will include two new categories that reveal: the number of FISA requests received; the number of accounts each request covers. Here’s the filing: Google 1st Amendment FISA Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.Content monetization: News licensing and syndication still need marketplaces and infrastructureHow the mega data center is changing the hardware and data center marketsWhere the next-generation console fits in today’s video game market

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At the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India's state-owned telecom company, a message emerges from a dot matrix printer addressing a soldier's Army unit in Delhi. "GRANDMOTHER SERIOUS. 15 DAYS LEAVE EXTENSION," it reads. It's one of about 5,000 such missives still being sent every day by telegram – a format favored for its "sense of urgency and authenticity," explains a BSNL official. But the days of such communication are numbered: The world's last telegram message will be sent somewhere in India on July 14. That missive will come 144 years after Samuel Morse sent the first telegram in Washington, and seven years after Western Union shuttered its services in the United States. In India, telegraph services were introduced by William O'Shaughnessy, a British doctor and inventor who used a different code for the first time in 1850 to send a message. The BSNL board, after dilly-dallying for two years, decided to shut down the service as it was no longer commercially viable. "We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegraph services, told the Monitor. RECOMMENDED: How well do you know India? Take the quiz. An important tool of British colonial administration and control in India, the telegram is connected with some key moments in Indian history, such as helping the British put down a popular revolt in 1857 and being the mode of communication with which Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru informed London of Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir. Colloquially known as "taar" or wire in India, the telegram has been a part of Indian life, a metaphor for an urgent message, bypassing the delays of the postal system. Responsible for a twist in the plot of many a Bollywood film, telegrams were often the harbinger of the news of the death of a family member. Today, death telegrams, still priced at a fifth of the regular fee, account for less than 1 percent of telegram traffic. At their peak in 1985, 60 million telegrams were being sent and received a year in India from 45,000 offices. Today, only 75 offices exist, though they are located in each of India's 671 districts through franchises. And an industry that once employed 12,500 people, today has only 998 workers. One of them is R.D. Ram, who has been working in the Delhi office for 38 years. "They will now move me to another department where I will feel like a fresher [beginner]," he complains. Mr. Ram once learned the Morse code technology for telegraphy, but today oversees staff who type out and send telegrams over a Web software. He tries to put up a spirited defense of the obsolete technology in the age of the smartphone, arguing that mobile penetration is much lower than it is hyped to be. Mobile penetration is indeed a dismal 26 percent, but even in the remotest village, at least someone has a phone. Ram notes that the telegram has legal benefits as well. "It is still accepted by the courts as a valid form of evidence. And is taken seriously by a judge when a government official sends a telegram to say he is unwell and cannot be present in court today," he says. Sixty-five percent of daily telegrams are sent by the government. But it is the remaining 35 percent that Ram worries about. A number of telegrams are from runaway couples who marry secretly because their parents wouldn't let them marry in the wrong caste, class, or religion. "They inform their parents that they are married, and fearing violence from the family, inform the police and the National Human Rights Commission," he said. Saddened as Ram is by the impending death of his profession, his sentiment could not match that of a telegraph whose sender threatened suicide unless the decision was overturned. The telegram was from A.P. Tripathi, who runs an anticorruption nonprofit in Lucknow. Addressed to the president, prime minister, the minister for communications, and others, it said th

Facebook for iOS has gotten a small update today that adds a couple of nice changes. Foremost is the ability to very quickly edit the privacy of a given post so that it’s visible only to the people you choose. This is accomplished by tapping on the small downward chevron next to any post, which presents you with an ‘edit privacy’ option. Once you’re in there you can choose to have it seen by friends, family or a particular list. Note that this can also be defined before you post the item as well, it’s just made a bit easier to do it after the fact now. In addition to the slightly easier privacy controls, Facebook for iOS also now supports ‘emoticons’ of sorts that tie into their actions feed. This means that you can post what you’re feeling, reading, watching, listening to, drinking, eating, playing and more. Each option, which is accessed via the ‘what are you doing’ smiley face, leaves behind a short message which is now accompanied by an icon. So, if you’re a frequent user of the activity feature of Facebook, you’ve got some shiny new icons to go along with your status updates. You can now also begin new conversations off of photos that you get inside Messages by tapping and sharing to ‘a new message’. There are also a few new Chat Heads animations in the update, including a ‘swipe up’ that shrinks your window as it closes it. Facebook for iOS Disclosure: This article contains an affiliate link. While we only ever write about products we think deserve to be on the pages of our site, The Next Web may earn a small commission if you click through and buy the product in question. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.

The NSA surveillance controversy continues this week, and TNW would be remiss to keep you out of the loop. However, instead of shipping a number of short posts on the most recent news, what follows is a short compendium of what you need to know. For full coverage of PRISM, and the phone records program, head here. Let’s begin. The LIBERT-E Act As TNW previously reported, a bipartisan bill under the name of the ‘LIBERT-E Act’ is in the works. That awkward name breaks down in the following way: the “Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act.” As reported in Politico, the bill’s backers, Republican Rep. Justin Amash and Democrat Rep. John Conyers, stated the following: We accept that free countries must engage in secret operations from time to time to protect their citizens. Free countries must not, however, operate under secret laws. Secret court opinions obscure the law. They prevent public debate on critical policy issues and they stop Congress from fulfilling its duty to enact sound laws and fix broken ones. Their bill would increase the amount of disclosure provided to both Congress and the wider public. It’s chances of passage are unclear. It has attracted 31 co-sponsors thus far. The views of the two were articulated in a Huffington Post editorial: “[t]he government has no business stockpiling so much of our data.” We’ll track the bill and keep you informed. 50 Plots Today General Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, stated that surveillance efforts have stopped “over 50? potential terror threats in the last decade. That is a bold claim. This comes after the General had stated that, as TNW wrote at the time, “the two previously secret programs have, as Reuters reports, ‘helped to prevent ‘dozens’ of potential terrorist events.’” The claim is a bit suspect as when it has come to specific events that are discussed as perhaps defused using data collected from the phone record program, or PRISM, they have been circumspect. Please allow me another short quote: Before, President Obama had indicated that a terrorist attack had been thwarted by PRISM. That attack, it came out, was a 2009 plot in New Yorkin which PRISM played a role. However, others have stated that PRISM’s role in that incident was superfluous, making the argument specious. Thus, to state that 50 events were disrupted or avoided using NSA surveillance feels perhaps a bit high. This leads us to our next topic. New York Stock Exchange Sean Joyce, FBI deputy director, today pointed to Khalid Ouazzani as someone that had been stopped. The mentioned effort was the exploding of a bomb at the New York Stock Exchange. “Ouazzani had been providing information and support to this plot,” Joyce said. As reported by Wired, Ouazzani’s lawyer disputes that, claiming that he pled guilty to money laundering, and that “Khalid Ouazzan was not involved in any plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.” It’s also worth noting that his plea deal mentioned no such plot. In a real way, this appears to be another somewhat hollow example of how recently uncovered NSA programs have proved critical to national security, which is the stated reason we should allow elements of our privacy to be eroded in the face of physical danger. Three Experts Praise Snowden The USA Today recorded an incredible interview with three whistle-blowers who were all formerly employed at the NSA. The video is worth your time. Here’s the nub of the discussion, in the paper’s words: They say the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who worked as a systems administrator, proves their claims of sweeping government surveillance of millions of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. They say those revelations only hint at the programs’ reach. That final segment mirrors what the AP reported over the weekend, that the NSA’s overall reach into the data streams of the world is far greater than what PRISM and the phone program are capable of. Google

Google has filed a petition with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court citing its first amendment rights as it asks for permission to disclose controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests. The company revealed in a Google+ post that it is seeking to separate out federal criminal requests from those related to national security: We have long pushed for transparency so users can better understand the extent to which governments request their data—and Google was the first company to release numbers for National Security Letters. However, greater transparency is needed, so today we have petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow us to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately. Lumping national security requests together with criminal requests—as some companies have been permitted to do—would be a backward step for our users. The Washington Post obtained a copy of Google’s motion, which referred to the first amendment, which protects freedom of speech, and the high value that the company places on transparency. According to the Post, Google is specifically asking to reveal the number of national security requests it receives and how many user accounts are affected. Last week, Google sent an open letter with a similar request addressed to the US Attorney General and the head of the FBI. The company  cited a need to defend itself from inaccurate claims that suggest it is giving the government “unfettered access” to its data. Facebook announced last week that it would begin publishing national security orders in its transparency reports. Apple and Yahoo have followed suit as well. The National Security Agency has come under scrutiny this month after a series of reports revealed a massive surveillance apparatus that was believed to have the cooperation of the technology industry’s biggest players. President Obama has spoken out in defense of the NSA programs, noting that citizens aren’t getting the “complete story”. The FBI has pointed out that the data collection programs helped the agency thwart bomb plots against the New York Stock Exchange and the New York subway system. Photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Adobe today announced that publications created with its Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) have surpassed a total of 100 million publication downloads. DPS is Adobe’s software collection designed to help publishers create content for tablets and mobile devices. The company noted that the number of brands and corporations using DPS has jumped 30 percent over the past six months. Adobe marked the milestone as it announced its second quarter earnings. The firm beat expectations with revenue of $1.011 billion and earnings per share of $0.36. The company released a major update to its Creative Cloud offerings on Monday as it navigates away from a software purchase model toward cloud subscriptions. Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock

Mobile Insights is a daily newsletter from BI Intelligence that collects and delivers the top mobile industry news. It is delivered first thing every morning exclusively to BI Intelligence subscribers. iOS Shoppers Are 30 Percent More Likely to Make A Purchase On Their Device (TechCrunch)That's according to a new Forrester survey of 58,000 U.S. shoppers. iOS users are also 15% more likely to do product research on their mobile devices than Android users. Despite this, it's not like commerce-focused companies can afford to give up on Android. Read > Video Could Be Coming To Instagram (TechCrunch)Facebook's mysterious press conference this week could announce the arrival of video to Instagram. The idea of "Instagram for video" has been floating around for a while, but none of the services have really taken off. However, it may end up being more of a direct response to the growing popularity of Twitter-owned Vine. Read > Flurry Is Launching A Mobile Real-Time Bidding Platform (Ad Exchanger)The company expects to have 20 demand-side platform partners at launch. Elsewhere in the interview, CEO Simon Khalaf reveals that 80% of the time spent on the mobile Internet is through apps. Read > For more info on real-time bidding, please read our report from earlier this year. Enabling The Mobile-First Enterprise (ReadWrite)A guide to creating a mobile-focused environment in your enterprise. Read > Skype Launches Its Video Messaging Service (Engadget)Users can now send unlimited video messages on Windows 8, Windows desktop, iOS, Android, and Blackberry, but Windows Phone is curiously not supported. Read > A Peek At iOS 7 On iPads (9to5Mac)While Apple only showcased the iPhone interface at WWDC, 9to5Mac got their hands on screenshots of the iPad interface from a hacked iPad iOS 7 simulator. Read > Responses to WWDC From Across The Internet (Mutual Mobile)An infographic of the responses to the mobile initiatives Apple introduced at WWDC last week. (See below.) Join the conversation about this story »

Today Chris Dixon, a partner at venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz, led a $15 million round in a company called FiftyThree. FiftyThree's most famous app is called Paper. Paper lets people draw out ideas and sketches on their iPads with incredible detail. FiftyThree is aiming to become the Adobe of the tablet and smartphone generation. Dixon wrote on his blog why he chose to invest in FiftyThree and why he believes in the company: Steve Jobs predicted that tablet computers would become so dominant that “PCs would become like trucks” – special-purpose industrial devices. Skeptics replied that tablets were only useful for consumption and not creation and therefore couldn’t replace PCs, to which Jobs said: We are just scratching the surface on the kinds of apps for the iPad…I think there are lots of kinds of content that can be created on the iPad. When I am going to write that 35-page analyst report, I am going to want my Bluetooth keyboard. That’s 1 percent of the time. The software will get more powerful. I think your vision would have to be pretty short to think these can’t grow into machines that can do more things, like editing video, graphic arts, productivity. You can imagine all of these content creation possibilities on these kind of things. Time takes care of lots of these things. History supports Jobs’ argument. In the past, new user interfaces led to new categories of creation applications. Back in the 70s and 80s, when computers had text-based interfaces, word processors and spreadsheets were invented. In the 80s and 90s, when computers had graphical interfaces, presentation and image editors proliferated. Jobs was simply predicting that historical patterns would repeat. Today we are announcing that Andreessen Horowitz is leading a $15M Series A investment in FiftyThree, a company whose goal is to build the essential suite of mobile tools for creativity. You might know FiftyThree as the company behind the iPad app Paper. Paper has been embraced by millions of everyday creators, and has won dozens of awards (including Apple’s App of the Year). It is also one of the top grossing iPad productivity apps ever. But this is only the beginning of FiftyThree’s ambitious plans. The FiftyThree team spent their careers working on breakthrough computing projects, including lead roles on Office, Kinect, Sonos, and the Xbox. Particularly relevant was a project they led at Microsoft called Courier that has been widely praised as a visionary take on tablet computing (unfortunately, Courier was never brought to market). FiftyThree didn’t need to raise money, but decided that the opportunity was so large that it made sense to accelerate their efforts with additional capital and resources. They’ll be expanding their engineering teams in New York and Seattle, and will broaden their offerings across software, services, and hardware. I first met the founders in New York in 2011, and have since spent a lot of time with them. I’m convinced that they are one of the most innovative design and engineering teams in the world. In the past, they reimagined how we play games, view images, listen to music, create documents, and more. With FiftyThree, they are rethinking the very way we create and collaborate on ideas. I couldn’t be more excited to be involved.SEE ALSO: Paper, A Drawing App, Raises $15 Million From Star-Studded Investors Join the conversation about this story »