Browser Surveillance, Cancer Drugs, Flying Cars

By Peter Ward     June 10, 2016

FBI and Silicon Valley Clash Over Surveillance – Again

The FBI and Silicon Valley are locked in another dispute about surveillance, this time over whether web-browsing records should be considered legally equivalent to phone records.

The battle focuses on an intended rewrite of U.S. surveillance law that would allow the justice department access to the web browsing history, location data and some email records of a citizen without approval from a judge. Under current statutes, investigators can obtain phone records with some called a national security letter (NSL).

The FBI argues that the data is already covered under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, although it only explicitly mentions data associated with telephone records. FBI Director James Comey is lobbying congress to ensure the law applies to all digital data as well.

On Monday evening, technology companies including Google, Facebook and Yahoo sent a letter warning congress that they will fight any attempt to change the wording of the law. “This expansion of the NSL [National Security Letter] statute has been characterized by some government officials as merely fixing a ‘typo’ in the law,” the companies wrote. “In reality, however, it would dramatically expand the ability of the FBI to get sensitive information about users’ online activities without court oversight.”

The Obama administration made a similar effort to change the law six years ago, but halted its efforts after privacy advocates and the technology industry raised concerns. Comey has said changing this law is the bureau’s top legislative priority this year.

Cancer Drugs Affordability Around the World

Cancer patients in low and middle income countries are less likely to be able to afford treatments, despite lower prices for the drugs, according to new research.

The Boston Globe’s Stat magazine created an interactive data visualization this week that presents the findings, revealed this week by Dr. Daniel Goldstein at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting. The article measures the price of cancer drugs in a country against its GDP per capita per month (PPP), which represents an individual’s personal purchasing power.

The median price of eight branded cancer drugs ranges from $1,515 in India to $8,694 in the U.S., according to the data. But the drugs are much less affordable in India, the research shows. The price of a patented cancer drug as a percentage of India’s GDP PPP is 313%, while in the U.S. the percentage is 192%. In Australia the same figure was just 71% but in China the number was 286%.

For-Profit Colleges Accreditation Council Suspends Applications

On Monday, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges, a group that accredits for-profit colleges, announced it would temporarily stop taking new applications from campuses, following reporting by ProPublica and others on problems within the organization.

ProPublica found that students at ACICS-accredited schools graduate at particularly low rates, and are often unable to pay off their debt. The ACICS said the move to suspend taking college applications for accreditation was to restore “trust and confidence.”

The investigative report revealed that many of ACICS’ commissioners come from for-profit colleges which are under investigation. College accreditors are not government agencies but colleges need their approval for their students to qualify for federal loans.

In April, 12 state attorneys general wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Education John King, calling on the Department of Education to rescind ACICS’ recognition. “Even in the crowded field of accrediting failures, ACICS deserves special opprobrium,” the attorneys general wrote.

ACICS gave accreditation to Corinthian Colleges, a chain that received $3.5 billion in federal aid despite investigations from the inspector general of the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission and several state attorneys general. Corinthian Colleges kept its accreditation right up until it declared bankruptcy in 2015.

“If there are effective cancer therapies available in the West and not in developing countries, it will become a serious issue in coming years,” said Goldstein, an oncologist at Israel’s Rabin Medical Center.

Google Founder’s Flying Cars

Flying cars may sound far-fetched, but Larry Page, the billionaire cofounder of Google, is attempting to make personal airborne vehicles a reality. A feature in this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek, published online on Thursday, details Page’s secretive attempts to build a flying automobile.

Page is the latest in a long line of ambitious technologists attempting to achieve every sci-fi fan’s dream. In 1927 an engineer named Alexander Weygers began designing a flying saucer that could travel between rooftops, and in 1945 he received a patent for a “discopter.”

Another flying car enthusiast Paul Moller built his first prototype in 1966 and ended up spending more than $100 million on his designs in the following years, before declaring personal bankruptcy in 2009.

Page has founded two separate companies to chase his flying cars dream, but has attempted to keep his involvement in both ventures a complete secret. The first of those companies, Zee.Aero, attracted attention three years ago when it set up an office next to Google headquarters and a reporter found a patent filing showing the company was working on a small electric plane that could take off and land vertically. The company denied it was involved with Google at all, and then stopped talking to the media altogether.

But now Businessweek, citing ten sources with knowledge of the company, has revealed that Page has been personally funding the company from day one, and even lived above its offices until it outgrew its first headquarters. Last year Page set up Kitty Hawk, another company that is working to design a flying car, as he wanted to see if a smaller team could make faster progress on the problem.

Page’s companies are not the only ones attempting to build a flying car, and experts believe the future of the technology is exciting. “Over the past five years, there have been these tremendous advances in the under­lying technology,” Mark Moore, an aeronautical engineer who’s spent his career designing advanced aircraft at NASA told Businessweek. “What appears in the next 5 to 10 years will be incredible.”

This Week’s Top Headlines

Vodafone NZ and Sky TV make $2.4bn deal – BBC

Tesla Motors to Restart Sales of Lower-Range Model S Sedan – Mike Ramsay, Wall Street Journal

French court fines Uber, execs for illegal taxi service – Chine Labbe, Reuters

Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills – Steve Reilly, USA Today

Gross Says Negative Rates Are Like ‘Supernova’ That Will Explode – John Gittelsohn, Bloomberg News

Paul Ryan tried and failed to get Republicans to agree on helping the poor – Max Ehrefreund, Washington Post

Verizon’s bid for Yahoo’s web assets topped by others: source – Greg Roumeliotis, Reuters

Burger King’s Shareholders Reject Pledge to Add Women to Board – Leslie Patton, Bloomberg News

Sweden bans M&M’s logo in trademark battle – BBC

Volkswagen Not Alone in Flouting Pollution Limits – Jack Ewing, New York Times

This entry was posted on Friday, June 10th, 2016 at 4:01 pm. It is filed under Week in Review and tagged with cancer drugs, flying card, for-profit colleges, surveillance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.